Hey all I’m back with another “controversial” topic for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! It’s all about What No Man’s Sky Isn’t!
What isn’t it?: Multiplayer, An Amazing Space Combat Simulator, or Perfect. These are all things that No Man’s Sky is not.
Multiplayer?: Like most players I really was looking forward to the multiplayer aspect of the game, and while I don’t really mind not being able to interact with other players all that much now that I’ve gotten to play the game, I do wish we knew why it isn’t part of the game anymore. It was a confirmed feature for years, and suddenly it wasn’t in the game. It’s not been confirmed that it’s been cut permanently, but it’s fairly obvious that Multiplayer isn’t a part of the game any more. You can visit other player’s discovered places, but you can’t see them. In fact you can’t even see yourself, which is a huge point in it not being part of the game. There is no player model, which is kind of a bummer. I’m not too upset, but I do wish Sean Murray would just say “we didn’t have the time or it wasn’t working well enough.” Was it a lie? Not really, it could still be an upcoming feature, but we just don’t know at this point.
Space Combat?: It’s fairly boring, and there are no space battles you can really just jump into, you don’t see huge spaceships fighting against each other, it’s just fighter sized ships versus carrier sized ones. It definitely has a lack of depth, but again I’m not too upset. Could it be improved? Hell yes it could, lots of things can be, but that’s getting ahead of myself…
Perfect?: Almost no game is released in a perfect state, very few don’t launch with at least one game breaking bug or something that could be improved upon later. I can only think of one game that was perfect at time of launch in terms of gameplay and that is Ocarina of Time. There have been improvements in later Zelda games, but at time of launch Ocarina of Time was a perfect game. No Man’s Sky was developed with an incredibly small team, and while there are many things that can be improved, we got a pretty amazing game anyways. I’d love to be able to fly without feeling like I’m flying through pudding around space stations or various things on planets, but we can’t get everything. Maybe some parts of the game will be improved later. I don’t know.
That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!