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No Man's Sky Orbital Update brings full ship customisation and a complete space station overhaul
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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That is pretty reductive. Like, it's a sim. You could describe just about any sim the same way. "You just do this thing to do that thing". How is this any different from any other game?
I'm not saying it's the best space game, but I had fun when I played it and it definitely didn't just feel like I was mining materials just to mine more materials.
The problem is that NMS is very repetitive and bland. Learning alien words takes for-fucking-ever, finding freighter upgrades is one of the worst time sinks in the game, combat feels more tedious and padded out than that of Everquest, looking for "that one cool ship" or "cool looking weapon" is pure RNG and lucking out on it not coming as a C class, upgrading inventory space is either a system jumping time sink or "planetary exploration" time sink.
Nearly nothing you do in the game gives you a sense of accomplishment and, after 4-8 hours or so after first starting playing, you're unlikely to look forward to any specific activity because "it's fun". There's a lot "to do" but very little motivation to, like why even bother being the mayor of a settlement?
Even on permadeath the game offers no real challenge once you're off the starting planet.
Isn't there a "journey to the centre" and interaction with other players?
Yes, though it's a cheap "new game plus", without even feeling like a "new game". Once you manage to get to the center, you're thrown in a new galaxy in a random planet and have to get back to your ship, only some upgrades you've installed on yourself and your ship might break. Yet you can immediately call your freighter and any exocraft.
There's also Artemis' questline, with an interesting concept but overall underwhelming delivery.
Story spoilers
Artemis is stuck in a simulation, just like you, player, are stuck in one. The whole universe is a failing simulation created by Atlas..
From my experience, which pretty much ended around 1 year ago with the game, player interaction could be summed up to:
Apparently there are guilds now? In any case, I never saw anyone looking for group, because the game has nothing that only a pair or trio can do, or do faster/better than a solo player, other than base building
From what I've found online, the "center" of your galaxy is just a portal that sends you to the edge of a different galaxy where it's different but more of the same.
Kinda like Starfield actually.
The irony is how much Starfield copies from NMS, often the bad things and as a worse copy, like scanning stuff on the planet surface, jump range limitation, space "exploration", shitty performance
If this isn't even remotely a sim.
Ok? I don't think that changes my argument very much.
Not even remotely? That's a bit hyperbolic. I don't think it's a sim either, but it has some qualities of one.
There's absolutely nothing in no man's sky that's meant to be a space sim in any way at all or even has any resemblance. It's not hyperbolic. The dev has always called it an imagination of the science fiction idea of the 80s which is supposed to capture the feel of something that would be in an arcade.
Not saying it's a bad game, but it's not a sim. At all.
It was marketed as a sim, so there's that.
I wouldn’t call it reductive as much as I would… accurate.