No Man's Sky is an action-adventure survival video game developed and published by the indie studio Hello Games for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. The game was released worldwide in August 2016.
No Man's Sky's gameplay is built on four pillars — exploration, survival, combat, and trading. Players are free to perform within the entirety of a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion (1.8×1019) planets, many with their own sets of flora and fauna. By exploring, players gain information about the planets that they can submit to the Atlas, a universal database that can be shared with other players of the game. Players get compensated in in-game currency every time new information is uploaded to The Atlas. Players also gain materials and blueprints to upgrade their character's equipment and purchase a variety of starships, allowing them to travel deeper into the center of the galaxy, survive on planets with hostile environments, interact in friendly or hostile manners with computer-controlled space-faring factions, or trade with other ships. Some activities, such as killing too many lifeforms or draining too many resources from planets, will draw the attention of patrolling robotic Sentinels that will attempt to kill the player character.
Players participate in a shared universe, with the ability to exchange planet coordinates with friends, though the game is also fully playable offline; this is enabled by the procedural generation system that assures players find the same planet with the same features, lifeforms, and other aspects once given the planet coordinates, requiring no further data to be stored or retrieved from game servers. Nearly all elements of the game are procedurally generated, including star systems, planets and their ecosystems, flora, fauna and their behavioral patterns, artificial structures, and alien factions and their spacecraft. The game's engine employs several deterministic algorithms such as parameterised mathematical equations that can mimic a wide range of geometry and structure found in nature. Art elements created by human artists are used and altered as well. The game's audio, including ambient sounds and its underlying soundtrack, also uses procedural generation methods from base samples created by Paul Weir and the musical group 65daysofstatic.
No Man's Sky represents Hello Games' vision of a broad, attention-getting game that they wanted to pursue while they secured their financial well being through the Joe Danger series of games. The game's original prototype was worked on by Hello Games' Sean Murray, and then expanded into a small four-person team prior to its first teaser in December 2013. About a dozen developers worked on the game leading up to its release, with Sony Interactive Entertainment providing promotional and marketing support. Sony formally announced the title during their press conference at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014, the first independently-developed game to be presented at the Expo's centrepiece events.
GAMEPLAY
No Man's Sky is a first-person, open world survival game. Players take the role of a planetary explorer in an uncharted universe. They start on a random planet at the edge of the universe, and are equipped with a survival spacesuit with a jetpack; a "multitool" that can be used to scan, mine and collect resources as well as to attack or defend oneself from creatures and other entities while on a planet; and a crashed spacecraft that, once repaired, allows them to land and take-off from planets and travel between them and engage in combat with other space-faring vessels. After performing enough resource collection to repair their spacecraft and leave the planet, the player is then free to engage in any of the four principal activities offered by the game: exploration, survival, combat, and trading.
The player-character can collect information on the planets and the lifeforms and other features of these planets to upload to The Atlas, a galactic database as depicted in the game's cover artwork, which they are paid for with units, the in-game currency. Units are used to purchase new survival gear, tools, and spacecraft with more powerful abilities and defenses, allowing the player to explore more of the universe and survive in more hostile environments. Such upgrades can work in synergistic effects; the scanning feature of the multitool initially starts as a short-ranged directed beam, but can be upgraded to have much longer range, spanning all directions, and locating minerals and other resources buried in the ground.
The player's ability to explore planets is only limited by the range of the hyperspace jump engines of their current spacecraft and how much fuel that the craft presently carries. The player is able to view a galactic map to plot courses between systems, which is updated as other players upload their findings to the Atlas. Numerous features in the space between planets exist, including ships and fleets belonging to various factions which may be hostile to the player or which the player may wish to engage in space combat. The player's actions influence how the faction treats them in future encounters; for example by helping a faction win a space battle against a rival one earlier, they may in turn help protect the players from a different faction later. The player can attempt communication with non-player characters (NPC) from these factions using a dialog tree interface, but this requires them to learn the aliens' language, for which a simple word-for-word translation exists, leaving the player to wildly guess at the start. By frequent communications with that faction, as well as finding monoliths scattered on planets that act as Rosetta stones, the player can better understand these languages, and can gain favour from the NPC and its faction for trading and combat. There are also various space bases where the player can engage in trading of resources and goods in a free market system, with one such base existing in every planetary system so that players always have the ability to buy fuel to make hyperspace jumps to other systems. The player is able to use resources they have collected to craft new goods, though they are required to determine the recipes for these on their own or to purchase from vendors. This can enable players to collect rare elements found in a remote part of the universe and craft them to make highly desirable goods that they can sell. Such stations also sell new equipment to the player with rotating stock.
Taking resources from a planet or harming the lifeforms on it causes the player to gain a "wanted level" similar to that of the Grand Theft Auto series, attracting the attention of self-replicating robot-like Sentinels that patrol the planets. Low wanted levels may cause small drones to appear which may be easily fought off, while giant walking machines can assault the player at higher wanted levels. Similarly, hostile actions towards the alien factions cause aggressive responses based on a comparable scale, ranging from being intercepted by one or two scout ships, to becoming the target of entire armadas. The player-character can die in a number of fashions, such as by sustained damage from a toxic or oxygen-less planetary environment or extreme temperatures, attacks from dangerous lifeforms or Sentinels, or being destroyed in space combat with the space-faring factions. If the player-character dies, they will respawn near their spacecraft if they died on the planet surface, or will respawn at a nearby spaceport if they died in space combat; in either situation, they lose all information that they have not yet uploaded to the Atlas and other resources collected since, but retain all of the gear they have already acquired, provided that they return to the point where they died to recover items they had been carrying.
Development
Concept and inspiration
The onset of development for No Man's Sky arose from Hello Games' co-founder Sean Murray sometime during the development of Joe Danger 2 (2012), which he compared to a mid-life crisis for himself.[33] Murray, a former developer at Criterion Games for the Burnout series, worried the studio would be falling into a rut of producing sequel after sequel as was the case at Criterion. When Hello Games had problems with an American publisher, Murray realized they had an opportunity to create a completely new title based on a concept he had since he was a child, when he had aspirations of being an astronaut, envisioning oneself as being the first human to step onto an alien planet.
No Man's Sky was an attention-getting concept that the studio had since inception. Murray described that in bringing on board Dave Ream, the team's creative director, that Murray described how there are skyscrapers in the world that are well visible but built on standard designs, and then there are smaller, minimalist architectural designs, which is the direction that Murray wanted to take the studio. Ream agreed, but insisted that the studio at some point would make the game equivalent of a skyscraper, a game they could develop without any limitations. This proverbial game, "Project Skyscraper" was kept in mind as the studio began to expand and acquire the necessary finances to pursue other titles besides Joe Danger.
Murray's concept for the game was influenced by science fiction works of the 1970s and 1980s. Murray attributes ideas from the "Big Three" science fiction authors—Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein—whose stories he considered "fantastical - it's vibrant, exciting and the unexplored". Murray also considered Frank Herbert's Dune influential as it "paints this picture of a world that’s so believable". Another avenue of influence was the state of current science fiction media, which Murray compared to similar commentary from Neal Stephenson on how most mainstream works focus on a dystopian story; for Murray, he wanted No Man's Sky to be much more optimistic and uplifting.
Murray was also inspired by the covers of these science fiction works from the period, which typically were done by freelance artists and bore little connection to the story within but made for visually alluring scenes. Duncan credits much of No Man's Sky' art influence from the work of Chris Foss, who drew covers for many science fiction books and magazines and had a significant influence in science fiction film and video games. Duncan noted that "he created this kind of art when everyone else was creating black starfields, grey dull monolithic spacecrafts". Other art influences included John Harris, another book and video game cover artist; Jean Giraud (aka Mœbius), a science-fiction and fantasy cartoonist; and Ralph McQuarrie, a concept artist for several major Hollywood films. Duncan also cited the films of Ray Harryhausen as an influence in terms of the exploration of the unknown. Murray noted an iconic shot from the original Star Wars film, which featured two suns rising on the planet Tatooine as the "perfect alien image" that captured the nature of science fiction.
Murray considered his own experience playing Elite, a similar open-world space exploration game, as part of No Man's Sky's inspiration. Murray wanted to craft a game that really focused on exploration, which, as he considered it, was "seeing something that no-one's seen before and for your experience to be unique", rather than pre-planned puzzles that one would need to explore to find and solve. The video game Journey was also influential with Murray hoping to integrate its "simplicity and elegance" into No Man's Sky.
Future
Murray has offered the potential to extend the game through downloadable content, though because of the procedural generation systems used, would likely be in the form of added features rather than new content. For example, with release of the day one patch, Hello Games has pointed to base building and the ability to purchase freighters as planned additions to the game. Murray anticipates all updates will be freely available.
The developers have stated they are looking at supporting virtual reality (VR) hardware, but as of June 2015 have not announced any plans. Murray stated in an April 2016 interview with IGN that VR "would be a really good fit" for No Man's Sky, as the immersive experience could create "really intense moments within a game". Murray also commented on the potential for a remastering of No Man's Sky for a system with more hardware capabilities, suggesting that they would be able both increase the texture resolution and the degree of complexity of the flora and fauna on the planets.
My Point Of View
After playing the game with the new day one patch I must say that it is a great exploration/action game. It is based on survival, crafting and research of new technology to be able to get to the centre of the Galaxy witch is the main story point.
I saw reviews that say it becomes boring after a while. If you want to learn the story and find satisfaction you need to get closer to the center of the Galaxy. It becomes more clearer after getting farther in the game.
After release it had problems and it still has on most computers and PS4. Frame drops are constant but on PC if you teak your settings in Graphics you're good. Textures look good, animals, stations, ships are random. However it has only 4 racer in terms of NPC - Aliens. You need to learn their language by finding monoliths. (faster way) and doing missions for them.
You will get in their good part meaning you'll get better deal in merchandising and low prices on ships.
I give this game a 8/10
+Gameplay
+Random animals and plants.
+Sound
+Graphics - for its 2.6 GB size.
-Needs better optimization
-AI somewhat weird sometimes.
System Requirements
CPU: Intel Core i3 or better
CPU Speed: Info
RAM: 8 GB
OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)
Video Card: nVidia GTX 480, AMD Radeon 7870 or better
Free Disk Space: 10 GB
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