I decided to give No Man's Sky another try, now that the huge NEXT patch has come out and they claim the game is drastically improved and finally what was promised. Also because even though I refunded the game two years ago, Steam never bothered to remove it from my library.
The Good:
The game is drastically different, as in it's not even the same game that launched. It's still, at its core, a pretty standard survival game, but all the systems that you use for that end have been highly altered. Even the names of most things have been changed.
There's now multiplayer.
Third person view, now that they've had to actually create character models for multiplayer. I gotta say, the traveler is much more realistically humanoid than I invisioned, I always thought you'd be a cute little chibi based on the cutesy art.
Base building, lots of different vehicles, from starships to ground vehicles to giant cargo ships that you can store your other ships in.
There's actually a story now if you want to follow along and do that.
The Bad:
The controls are terrible and there's really no reason they should be. I'm playing the PC version using an xbox one-s controller, which I might add is the most common controller used on PC. No Man's Sky, which is a CONSOLE PORT built for controllers, will show the xbox button prompts when using a controller, but it's apparently a crapshoot as to whether those prompts are correct, because half the time the button is bound to something different, even though I'm using the default configuration.
Sometimes this isn't as bad, for example in the tutorial it tells me to craft a material I need by going into my inventory and pressing X on an empty inventory slot. Pressing X, however, is the default button for installing technology. Confused as to why I can't craft, I look at the prompts on the bottom, see that A is actually the button to craft, and manage to craft the metal plate I need. A little wonky, but not game breaking.
Later on, however, it tells me to build a refinery, and when I'm done using it, it reminds me to pick it up and take it with me. Looking at the refinery tells me X will use it (which is correct) and B will pick it up. B does absolutely nothing. Going into control configurations I try to bind pickup to be, only to discover that pick up is not a bindable ability. Eventually I go to reddit to see if anyone else has this problem, and discover that pick up is bound to middle mouse click even when you are using a controller, and there is no way to rebind it. The fix for this is going into steam settings and setting a custom control actuator to make the B button input a middle mouse click.
The other major flaw I find this early in the game is that while the third person perspective is pretty, the game is in no way built for it. Camera controls with analog sticks is way too sensitive, and it seems that going into settings and reducing the sensitivity only reduces mouse sensitivity and not controller sensitivity. It makes aiming at even completely still rocks that you want to shoot difficult and tiresome. When exploring buildings and the like, in first person mode you would look at something and it would pop up to tell you if it was interactable. Now, with a third person camera, this only happens if you bother to point your offcenter aiming reticule at the object.
I'll just change it back to first person. I hit escape, and... hrm, it's not in game options. It's not in control options. It's not in graphics options. Ok, let's go into my select menu. Hrm, not there either. How about my start menu, where it shows my goals. No, no, it's not in there either.
Back to reddit... oh, of course, it's in a hidden utilities menu. I press down on the d-pad, which is the quick key for recharging my various systems, and then I can press right all the way over to utilities, and open another menu that has the option to toggle first and third person camera. That could be a little more intuitive...
Also, the game still runs like ass, even on my incredibly beefy machine.
*Andy has joined your game*
Andy: NMS launch was an inside job. Sean Murray can't melt steel beams.
*Andy has left your game*
Well... at least multiplayer works. And yes, that really happened.
It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I didn't think you'd be available with no advance notice.
)
