No Man’s Sky

Take Me to Space

KluwesLeave a comment

This weekend, I found myself with an intense desire to play a space game. Maybe it’s because I just finished Ghost Song and wanted to continue with the scif-fi theme. Or maybe it’s because I’ve finished two very long games over the past couple months and wanted to play something different. Maybe it’s just a whim of interest that my brain has latched on to. Either way, I wanted to play something in space! I have a fair few games in my library that fit that bill and so I set out trying out different ones to see what peaked my interest the most.

First up was Empyrion – Galactic Survival, a game I got from last year’s Yogcast Jingle Jam bundle and have been meaning to try out. Prior to the bundle, I had been eying the game for a number of years but never pulled the trigger as it seemed to be in a state of perpetual early access. Since I’ve been into 7 Days to Die lately, a sci-fi survival game sounded right up my ally.

I appreciate a game that let’s me shoot dinosaurs with laser guns

I had some difficulty getting it to run and actually load in to a game but eventually I was able to go through the tutorial. Unfortunately, Empyrion seems to be more of a sci-fi building game with some survival elements instead of a survival game with some building elements. It was also giving me some Entropia Universe vibes. I don’t know if it’s the look of the game world or the UI but I couldn’t help thinking about my time in EU while I was going through the tutorial. This wasn’t scratching the itch so I loaded up the next game.

No Man’s Sky is always good for some interesting screenshots.

No Man’s Sky is one of those games I’ve always wanted to get in to but after 10 hours or so I’m over it. It could be because I always start over when I come back to it. There’s usually months in between play sessions and I don’t remember all of the controls so a restart always seems best. This means doing the tutorial and retreading the same ground again and again.

I thought this time for sure I was in a place where I would stick with it. I jet packed around hoovering up all the materials to fix my equipment, started building a base, gathered all the materials to launch the ship, and took off for the nearest space port. As I was flying, I knew this was not the time I was going to get hooked on No Man’s Sky.I knew exactly what I wanted to play and this wasn’t it.

Elite: Dangerous was calling my name. The rest of the weekend was spent installing and updating the game, rebinding keys on my HOTAS, setting up VoiceAttack, and figuring out if the other third party tools I used to use were still relevant. I’ll admit, I did very little playing but now that everything is set up, I’m excited to get back in to it.

NMS: The Journey Begins

KluwesLeave a comment

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There was a blinding light as my life support came back online. As my eyes adjusted, the world around me slowly faded into focus. It was lush, green, with towering trees and endless rolling planes. In a galaxy of nearly infinite possibilities, this was not the worst place to find myself stranded. I looked at my surroundings trying to remember how I got here. Behind me a ship sat smoking. Was it mine? It had to be mine. My life exosuit gently reminded me I needed to fix the ship and I needed to leave the planet. Thank god my exosuit has all the information I need to complete the repairs, I’m no ship mechanic.

The first thing I need is Iron which is in abundance here. My mining laser cuts through the rocks with ease extracting the elements I need. With every use the power slowly decreases, the batteries dying I don’t know how to recharge it. I collect my iron and make the part needed to fix the launch thrusters. My multi-tool is out of power but the exosuit tells me it can be charged with an isotope like carbon. The only sources of carbon around were tiny plants, I  broke them up manually by hitting them with my useless multi-tool. Over the course of 15 minutes I managed to scrape up enough carbon to charge the mining beam to 50%. I needed to find a better source of carbon, maybe the strange looking trees in the distance. I started walk.

When I reached the grove I chopped at the tree until I had extracted all of it’s carbon. It was enough to fully charge the beam and i had some still left. I quickly harvested the remaining trees so that I would have extra when I needed it. I harvested some more iron, some zinc, I even found some plutonium. All of this was enough to completely repair my other multi-tool features, a scanner to illuminate points of interest and a bio scanner to identify and discover creatures. It wasn’t long after repairing when I encountered the first life form on this alien world.

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The Scuttle Bug is quick, it’s vicious, and is easily provoked. They appear to be solitary creatures and will attack on sight. I ran into these far more than I would have liked. Each time barely escaping as I tried to scare them off with my mining beam.

My exosuit informed me that I needed another ore to repair the pulse engine. I walked nearly a half hour across the plains and plateaus to find the giant hunk of ore reaching toward the sky. On the return trek back to the ship, the scanner picked up a point of inteest not too far off the beaten path. The need to repair my ship warred with my curiosity of this place. I trudged on across the plains toward the tiny question mark.

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When I arrived I found an abandoned outpost, I could find no signs of life. I raided the containers for materials, a scrap of cloth, some plutonium, and a health station. As I traveled inside the outpost the whir of a functioning trade terminal caught my attention. I offloaded some of the carbon I had as it had grown to excess but I was reluctant to sell anything else for fear that I might need it in the future.  I left the outpost walking quickly to my ship.

Following the instructions I repaired the last malfunctioning pieces of the ship. Luckily all the thermite9 I’d been collecting along the way was used to fuel the thrusters. I was going to leave this planet. I had no inking of where I would go next, but I would listen to the exosuit, it had not lead me astray yet. as I climbed into the cockpit, I hear a rumbling, something was approaching fast and low. I looked up and saw another ship, I was not alone.

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I engaged the launch sequence and took flight hoping to follow the alien ship. It was too quick, and I lost it over a mountain. The exosuit gently reminded me to leave the planet. I pulled the ship up, and left the atmosphere. With the pulse drive functioning, I could explore the vast expanses of space. I didn’t know where to go, where home was, who I was but I knew I had to push forward.

The exosuit picked up a beacon on a distant planet. I was instructed to go there and investigate. Pulse drive engages, I set a course for Kokhayskoy Oske, hoping to find something that would jog my memory.

 

No Man’s Hype!

Kluwes1 Comment

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We are just a few hours away from the release of No Man’s Sky. I haven’t been this excited about a video game since Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Its been a while. With all the buzz about it one question remains, will it live up to the hype*? Maybe,  it’s really hard not to feel like it might when there are day one patch notes like these.

I found out about No Man’s Sky about 2 years ago from a friend. It was around the same time that I was itching for a space game of some sort. I wanted to fly ships and trade things around the galaxy. I ended up buying X: Albion Prelude and it satisfied me for a while. But No Man’s Sky sounded so cool, randomly generated planets and animals…like a 3D Starbound. I couldn’t wait for it to come out…and then he told me it was projected to launch sometime in 2016. Over time I kind of forgot it was coming out, every once and a while a site would have an article about it but nothing we hadn’t already seen before. It wasn’t until this April that I realized it was going to launch in June. I even pre-ordered it and I never pre-order anything, of course it was  the day before it got delayed.

I don’t think hype is all that bad of a thing. It’s fun to be excited about a game release. Often times I’ll see a game trailer or hear about a game and say “ok that looks cool” and then promptly forget about it. But I realize that I have to keep my expectations in check. I bought Destiny on the day of its release. I was expecting a space shooter made by Bungie that might sort of be like and MMO. What I got was well…Destiny. I actually really enjoyed Destiny for what it was and I stuck around through the first two DLC. Probably put a good hundred hours or so into it, I even enjoyed the PVP and I’m not much of a PVPer. But I know a ton of other people who were let down hard by the game. It seemed as if the whole internet was against it after the hype tain fell off the rails.

For No Man’s Sky really all I’m expecting is a resource collecting game with some pretty visuals, upgradable spaceships, and naming animals and planets. I’m not expecting a deep and complex game, I’m expecting to have to grind a bit and to explore a lot and of course become the galaxies best space trucker. It downloaded onto my PS4 this morning where it sits  taunting me with it’s timer. If all goes well I’ll be exploring the stars today/tomorrow at midnight!

*This word was probably used more times than is acceptable in this post…..HYPE!