It feels unreal to finally be playing No Man’s Sky, a game that’s seemed like a weird pipe dream in the manner of something like Morrowind or GTA III did before release. Here it is though, and now the journey truly begins.
After the initial loading screen that saw a staggering flyby of star systems akin to a tour bus driver on the last run of the day, I was awakened on a strange planet with no recollection of how I got there except for the very obvious crashed ship that sits just meters from me. The local area is all dark orange skies and vibrant purple flora. This is my starting planet, each player gets their own, with different atmospheres, flora, fauna, and mysterious discoveries to be made. This of course, is because there are over 18 quintillion planets and thus, a mind-boggling amount of possible spawn points, so even if everyone on Earth bought No Man’s Sky, we’d all be, relatively speaking, very distant neighbours.
I see no other signs of life beyond a weird rock that looks a bit like Willem Dafoe. My immediate concern appears to be to fix my ship and generally survive, but I’m teased by the promise of some great mystery on what is called ‘The Path of Atlas’ as well, so I take on that quest too because who knows how things are gonna go from here?
The next few hours have an ethereal, dreamlike quality to them, the actual feeling of being alien to something. In this case it’s not just the planet, but the game itself. No Man’s Sky is only young in my mind currently, but it just has that something that makes it stand out from a sizeable chunk of modern games.
So I went off looking for the necessary materials for my ship (the Rasamama), being careful not to stray too far from it as my knowledge of what lay beyond the general starting area. Behind me were cliff faces I can feasibly boost up with my handy jetpack, but my first attempt sees me ignore the rapidly-depleting meter in the right hand corner of the screen, and I plummet painfully to the ground, a tiny bit embarrassed by the rookie mistake.
I decide to turn round and carefully make my way down into the valley that sprawls beneath me, rolling purple hills that D12 would kill to be seeing. I use my scanner with a click of L3 and the HUD displays the various resources in the current vicinity, of which there is plenty. I then use my multi-tool to mine for some of the minerals relevant to my mission, blasting rocks, plants and deposits with the bright green laser until the juicy materials get sucked towards me like I’m roleplaying as a sentient Henry Hoover.
It’s soon after that I see my first Scout Sentinel, a small drone-like bot that hovers around planets making sure nobody is BP-ing up the place by delivering swift laser-based justice to ne’er do wells who go about mining as excessively as a little boy with his finger jammed up his nose. I’m being as gentle as possible on this occasion, so it scans me and simply moves on.
I now have most of the resources needed to get my ship moving, as well as some for my exosuit and multi-tool. Trying to understand the inventory so far has been a little confusing at first, perhaps a tad clunky, if necessary for trying to streamline crafting and item management, but it does feel like it will be easy enough to understand in time as it’s basically a variation of many survival game’s systems.
I head back to the ship to fix it up, ready for travel into the stars, but forgot to sort out one last material, which is of course nowhere in the nearby area, so I trudge off beyond the place I’d been gathering the rest of my resources. I’m properly exploring now, and this is what I’ve been most anticipating since the game’s initial reveal, a journey into the unknown, both of the planets themselves and out into the insane amount of stars beyond. I was wary of exploring so soon, mainly out of a fear I’d get terribly distracted from my first, very necessary, objective. From what I’d seen of the planet so far I should have no trouble finding the resource I need and heading on my merry way to explore all of space (heat death of the universe and my own limited mortality notwithstanding).
Cut to an hour later, and I’m a fair distance from my ship after I’d got sucked into one discovery after another. Firstly was a mysterious marker that when activated granted me with the translation of a word in the alien language of a race known as the Gek. I know at this point that I’m due to meet some kind of alien race in space stations and the like for things such as trading, and that by finding markers like this around the universe, I can gain a better understanding of what they wish to convey, meaning less guesswork and less disgruntled alien races.
Another showed up on my scanner roughly a couple of minutes away so I thought I’d go to it. Once I did, consuming another morsel of knowledge, I finally spotted something moving a few feet away before it moved behind a large pillar of rock that just so happened to contain the very resource I’d been scouring for. It looked a bit like a bipedal dinosaur, which, given how many dino-like creatures I’ve seen in trailers, was a tad disappointing for my first animal encounter, yet when I rounded the pillar and saw it’s face, I chuckled to myself and stared at the creature for a minute or so, fascinated by its brilliantly ridiculous appearance. You see, its body did indeed resemble that of a bipedal dino, but the head was that of some bloated slug-like being. From that initial disappointment grew joy as I reveled in the weirdness of this seven foot tall beast.
I collected the resources I needed and, inspired by that previous chain of discovery, decided to soak myself in the juices of exploration by taking the scenic route back to my ship. I soon discovered more creatures, this time it was tiny lizard/mouse-like beasts that had large heads and bizarre antlers on their noses. I fed one of them some carbon deposits and it squealed happily at me, with a smiley face emoticon appearing above its odd head. I didn’t yet have the upgrade to my visor that lets me scan flora and fauna, so naming these magnificently strange beasts would have to wait for now.
I was starting to regret my scenic route trip a little bit now. You can only sprint for a limited time you see (though it’s upgradeable in time), and I was a way out from returning to my ship. The exploring was all well and good, but I knew I needed to get back to my esteemed vessel soon or end up wandering even further afield. The perfect motivator appeared soon enough. I spotted some materials I hadn’t seen much of so far in a strangely flat, bare area, and decided to stockpile while I had the chance. It was then that several aggressive-looking creatures that shall be known as ‘Spider Bastards’ pounced on me. I fired wildly with the multi-tool, not knowing if I could actually damage the horrors with the mining beam, and feeling like I’d be fortunate to hit the things regardless.
The situation was escalating quickly as there were now six of these skittering nightmares that looked like shrivelled apples with spindly legs advancing on me at an alarmingly swift speed, so I turned tail and headed straight for the ship, trying to gain some elevation with bursts of the jetpack to escape the nipping, needling teeth of the Spider Bastards. I eventually gained enough height and distance that the chitin-legged buggers lost interest and went back to being bastards somewhere else. I wonder aloud, and to nobody in particular, if I will loathe the limited nature of the sprint button in the coming hours, days, and weeks any more than I did in this encounter. Probably not.
By this point I’m mere minutes from my ship and when I finally jet-jump upwards to the large outcrop it crashed on, it’s a feeling of relief and excitement. I hop in the cockpit, fuel the craft, and hold down R2 to take off. In a moment that still replays in my head a day later with crystal-clear clarity, I survey the landscape from my newly-elevated position in the burnt orange sky before tilting the ship upwards and firing off into the vastness of space for the first time.
There will be another installment of this review diary soon, in the meantime, check out some of our guides to No Man’s Sky including Atlas Stone locations, ways of earning money, handy tips for starting up, and exosuit and ship inventory upgrades.