No Man's Sky

On October 22nd 2022, I bought a Steam key for a game that at the time was a little over six years old: No Man's Sky. This article is going to be a bit of a retrospective but also the juxt of it is I ended up quite liking the game; but only after I played it by myself and completely ignored the multiplayer aspects of it. So anyway, I bought it because a friend of mine wanted to play something new, and having seen a few people playing the game together, and apparently enjoying it, he thought it'd be a good idea for us to jump in and give it a go. So we did.

I had originally suggested our friend group buy it shortly before it was due to be released in 2016 since it was garnering some pre-release hype making everyone think it was going to be the next best thing since sliced bread. But of course, history tends to repeat itself and whenever that's happened in the past it rarely winds up being true, and NMS was no exception. When it actually came out to much fanfare, the immediate reactions it got from a vast majority of players was severely negative. Complaints were rife with people pointing out everything from how incredibly dull and repetitive it was to it being essentially a (very) early access title that had been released as a full game, with multiplayer aspects and advanced features being practically non-existent compared to what had been supposedly touted and shown off at various points in its development cycle.

The game seemed like it was an abject failure. But despite this, Hello Games continued to support NMS, patching and updating it over the proceeding years until it enticed a lot of people who still owned it back into playing, and many of them changed their tune and actually started to like it. Unusually in this day and age, the game has had not one single piece of paid-for content to date. So naturally, after six years, we thought maybe things were finally good enough in the world of No Man's Sky to have some fun together playing it.

We were wrong.

My friend had already been in game for about an hour by the time my download finished and I tried to join him, although I found initially I too had to play through a fair amount of what amounted to tutorial gumph before I was even allowed to join his game. But eventually after not too long I did. And I was stumped. We'd been talking over comms as usual fairly jovially at first, but not too long after I joined him and started wondering around, the conversation dried up (I'd mostly caught up with where he was in his story by this point by fast tracking, but despite being in the game together it still seemed largely a solo affair to do what we each needed to do - there didn't seem to be any point in us playing together). I could tell he was regretting his purchase as he'd become increasingly quiet by this point.

We both played the game for just over four hours each. Although only two of them were spent together in the multiplayer. And we both eventually agreed that it became incredibly boring, too much so to continue. Gameplay seemed fairly shallow and the missions seemed vague and still in the vein of being a tutorial more than being actually plot-driven, and above all else there didn't seem to be much point doing anything together. Even after getting to the space station things didn't seem to be going to pick up any time soon. I think we both thought that we would inevitably be joining forces on advanced missions to go hunt down space pirates or loot caches for aliens or trying to figure out why we'd woken up with apparent amnesia. You know, the sort of thing you'd probably expect to do in a space-based exploration game that supposedly had a minor plot and a coop spin to its multiplayer.

Or maybe we thought at the back of our minds it'd even have some fun PvP or PvE modes dotted around systems or planets where loads of people could join in, say like a space battle for resources or planet exploration rights. Instead it was apparently a "go back to your base and build something" type of quest line, with a hint of "your friend can help if he wants" sprinkled on top. Followed by more building, and harvesting, and building. We both quit the game around this point with a sour taste in our mouths and up until last week, neither of us had touched the game since.

Well, he still hasn't and probably never will play NMS again, I on the other hand, let it rot for nearly three years, occasionally looking at it in my Steam library pondering if I should ever just give it a second chance. Then last week, having seen a popular video of the game showcasing a person riding what seemed like a giant dick monster bouncing around on three bollocks, I was weirdly reminded of Spore, that game by Maxis and EA that also suffered a bit of a similar issue to No Man's SKy in so much as being overhyped before release.

I never tried Spore but kind of always wanted to. So call it nostalgia, call it regret, call it hesitant fascination and amusement of the idea of being able to ride around on a giant cock-horse-thing, but I decided to give No Man's Sky another shot, only this time entirely on my own, as to me it always did seem more like Minecraft (except with spaceships), and to be honest I've never particularly enjoyed playing Minecraft with other people.

Well, I started a new save and got to work. And I'm now nearly 20 hours in and I'm actually enjoying myself. My only way of describing it is that it really is just Minecraft set in space. Which some may say doesn't do it a lot of justice because there's a lot of things in No Man's Sky you'd never expect to see in Minecraft (and vice versa). However it does seem like the multiplayer side of the game, seemingly something largely pushed as its best feature prior to its release in 2016, is completely pointless. At best, you might come across planets and systems discovered by other real people that have played or are still playing the game, but apparently the chances are small due to how big the universe is in the game. The system I spawned in for example was largely unexplored, except eight years ago someone apparently passed thru it and landed at the space station before moving on.

Beyond small nuances like that though, the multiplayer as I say seems largely pointless, at least early on. Perhaps once you've got a hang on things, crafted a base, maybe built, bought or found a better ship, met plenty of aliens and learned some of the various alien languages in the game as well as gained reputations and also essentially enjoyed what it largely has to offer, by yourself, then it might actually be worth joining forces with another space pilot who's in a similar situation as you. Until then though, I do feel this game is largely singleplayer only, or at least that's how it should be viewed even if you do play with others (in other words none of you should be expecting much to do that you couldn't just do on your own).

This isn't Destiny with Minecraft mechanics. It's Minecraft in Space.

So yes treat it as such and forget the multiplayer at least early on in your journey and you'll probably end up like me and have a much better time enjoying this fairly unique game, now that it's nearly nine years old (oh my).

Video Games No Man's Sky Retrospective