When I was a kid, I used to love and hate looking at the night sky. I used to stand under it and stare up into its vastness and feel fascinated by all the twinkling stars, the promises of galaxies and stars and suns and planets and the possibility of alien life out there. But I would also feel painfully small and insignificant and sad that I’d never see any of it firsthand. I’d start to feel overwhelmed by that same vastness that had just moments earlier held me transfixed with awe.
It might seem an odd comparison, but the game I most liken No Man’s Sky to is UbiSoft Montreal’s 2008 sand box shooter, Far Cry 2. Why? Because Far Cry 2 was a game that was way ahead of its time, and thus it was a game that could only really be enjoyed if you began by throwing away your preconceptions of how games are supposed to be played.
If you tried to rush through Far Cry 2 running and gunning your way across its vast open world jumping from objective to objective ticking missions off a to-do list and completing the game in record time so you could brag about it on internet forums, you were in for a really hard time and a thoroughly un-enjoyable experience. Far Cry 2 rewarded patience, calculation, and a thoughtful approach. If you went in guns blazing the (much criticized but incredibly intuitive and in that respect to this day, unmatched) enemy AI would surround and obliterate you. On harder difficulties, playing the game this way was actually impossible.
And here is a point which is key: as with any wildly ambitious game, Far Cry 2’s reach far exceeded its grasp. The developers wanted the game to be a far deeper experience than the finished product ended up being. But what they delivered was a game that was as memorable for its flaws as for what it got right. And what it got right, it got fantastically right.
I feel the exact same way about No Man’s Sky.
And if you’re the type of gamer who needs objectives blinking at you, a sense of being led through a world (even an open one) by constantly needing to hit the next mission and complete it and scratch it off the to-do list (and I want to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with playing games this way), you will hate No Man’s Sky.
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| This is my little corner of the universe...and I think someone PEED in it |
I began No Man’s Sky by attempting to rush through the first few objectives. I figured hey, it’s a tutorial on how to craft stuff to fix my ship and get off this godforsaken rock I’m stuck on. I needed something called heridium so I could fix my ship’s engine and take off. I had an objective, hoorah fucker, let’s get to it.
So, I got a bit zap-happy with my mining laser and its charge ran out. You need the same stuff (carbon) to charge it as you use to charge your life support, so I made a snap choice, I'd use my carbon for life support and just smash stuff with my mining gun to harvest the materials. It was slower, yes, but I’m an incredibly patient person (I don’t read magazines or play with my phone while waiting in a doctor’s office, I just sit there and immerse myself in my own thoughts…my girlfriend says this is really unnerving), so I was happy hammering away at small rocks for iron and bashing little red teardrop-shaped flowers for carbon.
Then I found a massive deposit of heridium and decided it was time to spend a little carbon on my laser so I could get this damn objective over with and get the space exploration show on the road. I stacked my meagre inventory with enough heridium to fix my ship, and just enough carbon and iron to keep my exosuit A-okay for the short walk back to my ship. I set off, and found that what looked like a canyon was blocking my way. No problem, I’ll just use my trusty jet-pack to jump over it and voila, I’ll be on my way. Cue a Homer-Simpson-jumping-the-canyon-moment as halfway across my jetpack fizzled out of fuel and down I went. It was only at the very bottom, staring up at a pinprick of light, that I realised I wasn’t in a canyon. I was in a hole. A very, very deep and decidedly un-metaphorical hole. Attempts to scale the walls using my jetpack failed as each time I came within arm’s reach of the top and the damn jetpack charge ran out. After a few attempts I realised I was screwed so I sat there as my suit very kindly gave me frequent updates that I was slowly dying, and then true to its word, I was dead. I respawned at my damaged ship only to be informed that in order to retrieve my hard-gained heridium I’d need to trek back to my ‘grave’, and there my inventory would be given back to me. No sweat, right? But the problem was my 'grave' was at the bottom of that fucking hole. At this point I became convinced the game was just screwing with me. (Note: I’m still pretty sure it is because even now, hours into the game, it still keeps the ‘grave’ icon there on that first planet, as if taunting me with that rabbit-hole filled with precious, precious heridium).
Suffice it to say I found another heridium deposit, fixed my ship, and got underway. And by the way, that first blast off into space was a serious goosebumps moment. It’s one of those gaming moments that will stay with me forever.
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| Suddenly gettin' the urge to sing Moon over Rygell 7. Seriously, space geeks will find a lot to like in No Man's Sky. |
Anyway, after another couple hours of objective-chasing to build a hyperdrive I started to realise a different approach was needed. I’m a single-player gamer through-and-through because I almost exclusively play open-world games and I play them agonisingly slowly. I say agonising because that’s what it would be like to watch me play. I can spend hours doing very little and enjoy every moment of it. I knew that in order to really enjoy No Man’s Sky, I was going to have to slow down even further. This is far beyond an open-world game. It’s an open universe. So I threw away the notion of completing objectives and finding the centre of the universe and decided that I don’t care if I ever finish this game. As in life, and in this game more than any other I have ever encountered the old cliche applies: it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.
Since that decision, my experience with No Man’s Sky has gone from a borderline-frustrating on-the-verge-of-quitting-want-to-love-it-but-can’t-because-it’s-such-a-grind, to a sublime, almost transcendentally-meditative experience. I’ve seen a lot of complaints online about the inventory management being almost impossible. In my first three hours with No Man’s Sky I would have thoroughly agreed with that. Now, my inventory is never full. Never. Because I sit in my little red ship and make a list of exactly what I need and in what quantities, then I go get that stuff using my ship as a base-of-operations, then I craft my upgrade, then I head on up to a space station, sell an inventory slot’s worth of whatever valuable material I found while foraging for my actual supplies, then I just head out to the hanger and hang out (pun intended) for a while, watching the ships come and go, wondering what their pilots are doing and where they are all headed next.
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| We ain't in Mos Eisley anymore, R2... |
In a lot of ways this game is like some of the esoteric science fiction it’s inspired by. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey most obviously comes to mind. You don’t have to make sense of it. In fact, it’s more enjoyable if you don’t try to.
I’m ten hours in and I’ve only discovered two planets: the one I started on, and the one I flew to next. Those two worlds and a space station are the only things I’ve seen so far. But you know what? The planet Earth has about 510 million square kilometres of surface area. So assuming the two worlds are roughly the same size as Earth, that’s over a billion more square kilometres than I’ve visited in any other game I have ever played. That alone is pretty damned impressive.
I’ve upgraded my laser and my exosuit. I’ve upgraded to a new kick-ass scanner that has more range. I have built my hyperdrive, it’s fuelled and ready to go. But I’m in no hurry to go anywhere. I might go back down to the planet and talk to that alien again, or I might just get in my ship and fly around for a while. I love that this game will let me do that, that I’m not force-fed objectives and punished if I don’t complete them in time.
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| This guy occasionally stops playing Pokemon Go long enough to talk to you. |
This is a game I have been waiting to play without knowing I was waiting to play it. I feel something akin to what Richard Burton felt the first time he set out on his first expedition in Africa. The vast continent was at that time unmapped and unexplored by any Westerner. He wrote in his journal that he was both excited and saddened by the fact that because of its vastness he would never see it all in his brief lifetime.
I’ll never see all of No Man’s Sky and that doesn’t bother me one bit. Who knows how I’ll feel 30, 50, 100 hours in. But for now I’m amazed and transfixed by this game and the possibilities that lay ahead. Will I just be an explorer, a spacefaring Charles Darwin, cataloguing strange creatures on distant worlds, or will the lure of space-piracy become too much – the urge to become a Han Solo, threading my way through trade routes and conducting shady deals in space station hangers? Who knows? Who cares? It’s going to be one hell of a ride and so far I’m enjoying every damn second of it.
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