No Man's Sky Reviewed for PlayStation 4. Also available for PC.
The light slowly creeps in. Where am I? The ground is deep purple, the sky a faded red. A crashed ship sits beside me—is it mine? On the horizon a planet looms. As I absorb the scenery around me, a creature crests the hill in front of me. He’s magnificent … and utterly silly. He has giant, spiked fins on his back and hulking forearms with hooves that he holds in the air as he walks on two impossibly skinny chicken legs. His limp donkey tail dangles behind him as he snorts at me with his anteater face.
Those were my first few moments with No Man's Sky. I caught an early glimpse of Hello Games’ latest during E3 2015 and had been looking forward to getting my hands on it ever since. Initially, its possibilities feel endless. Once I repaired my ship and gathered enough fuel to leave my starting planet, I felt almost euphoric breaking atmosphere and racing up to the stars. What amazing things might be out there? My mind raced with the possibilities. My first two hours with No Man's Sky couldn’t have been better.
I spent the next 30 hours trying to recapture that feeling. For all there is to explore—every new planet, ancient monolith, alien space station and abandoned underwater observatory—I felt like it was all too similar. You mine and scavenge materials to upgrade your ship and space suit while cataloging planets and their flora and fauna. The information you gather gets uploaded to the network, which pays you for your effort in UNITS, the galactic standard currency. Early on, it becomes apparent that your starting equipment and ship won’t cut it, and upgrading them becomes a welcome distraction. There’s also an interesting story involving the mysterious Atlas that leads to some breathtaking visuals.
But I can see the wizard behind the curtain. The quirky animal I encountered on my first planet reappeared in alternate forms several times—with bat wings on his hands, then with a dog face and ram horns. The algorithm that makes the universe endless becomes repetitive by planet four or five. Thirty hours in and dozens of planets later, I barely look at the giant T. Rex with bug eyes and owl wings as he tramples past me. I've seen some rendition of him before.
On my journey to the center of the universe, No Man's Sky did impress me. My ability to launch from one planet to the next, dock at space stations and warp to other star systems is an amazing achievement in game technology. It's also worth noting that Hello Games announced plans to add significant features in the future. As it currently stands, though, my excitement to cross the universe faded far sooner than I expected.
