You should be playing No Man’s Sky! Here’s why
In No Man’s Sky, the sky is not the limit!
If you’re like me, you probably fantasized has a kid to explore and travel to space. To make contact with alien species, with weird and gigantic flora and have your own starship. When No Man’s Sky launched a year ago, all these fantasies virtually came to life. Developer Hello Games raised the bar high and as most of you know, the game faced serious challenges upon release. A lot of criticism came along, with plenty of people complaining about fake promises that were not met. Until now!
To close this chapter, the result right after launch was what we might consider catastrophic, with most players simply abandoning the game (myself included, but not because I hated it, I don’t use that word in my vocabulary, only because I felt lost in what to do and found plenty of repetitive tasks to be able to progress further).
Along the way, Hello Games even had to deal with a law suit (I know, it’s crazy! If only people would invest their time in being productive and positive, the world (of video games too) would be a better place! Personally, I think all these challenges only made Hello Games and Sean Murray even stronger.
What most developers would do if faced with such absurdities and criticism, prosecution and bashing would be simply abandoning the project. But they are a strong breed, fighters, doers and even if the thought passed through their heads plenty of times, they just kept going. Looking back now, they must feel even prouder for what they have accomplished. And there’s so much more to come… Thank you guys, you’ve set a great example in the world of video games!
So what’s with the fuss again?
Hello Games nailed it again, whether you like it or not. With the celebration of No Man’s Sky 1st anniversary, they successfully launched update 1.3. As of today, patch 1.34 was released to polish the game even further and address some bugs (you can find some funny ones I encountered myself). The improvements were massive (you can read all about it here)! To begin with, when you start a new game you have proper guidance. A year ago when I tried NMS for the first time, I struggled a lot. I was stranded on a planet, my ship in need of serious repair and my exosuit completely messed up.
Now, when you start No Man’s Sky, you’ll be faced with the same situation. The big difference is that you now have instructions to follow, so you know what to do and which steps to take to quickly fix your starship + exosuit, fly off planet and taste what space flight feels like. This changes everything, believe me!
Then there’s something that completely baffled me, the level of detail in planet textures and graphics are stunning! Take a look at these pics here and see for yourself:
It’s easy to feel the improvements as you roam around on planet soil, looking at the ground, water and what you see underneath it, as well as in flora and alien species. Even when you’re about to approach a planet’s atmosphere (one of my favorite aspects of the game) you’ll have a hard time not to take a few shots using photo mode. The level of detail improved substantially (even if for me, it was already great).
As soon as you travel off planet, you can head straight to a space station (every system has its own). Before, these were mere trading posts where you could buy/sell stuff, acquire blueprints to build new technology and teletransport yourself to your home base planet (as soon as you got one) and the space station you visited in the previous star system. With update 1.3, not only can you travel to more than one previously visited space station, you now also have access to a new feature, missions! This is a great addition because it allows you to learn the game basics faster and get rewards in the form of nanite clusters (a sort of currency that you can switch for technological blueprints), credits and new recipes to craft products and consumables.
Space flight, low flight, and dogfights! What’s your No Man’s Sky favorite?
Space flight just got nicer to handle! The spaceship responds easier to commands and dodging stuff just got smoother. As a result, mining materials is sharper and when confronted in a dogfight with enemy ships, the target lock responds a bit faster and locks more easily (sometimes at least). This said you’ll be vaporizing pirates much faster and more stylishly!
Now let’s talk low flight. Oh man!, low flight is soooooo awesome! In No Man’s Sky 1.2 it was considerably annoying not to be able to descend until a certain level of altitude. Sometimes I just wanted my starship to touch the grass, feel the water splashes or go through a canyon… Now all this is a reality!
Sadly, I couldn’t experience in-atmosphere dogfights yet. They were announced with update 1.3, but I didn’t get the chance to test them yet. Soon, hopefully…
I can only imagine how cool it must be to chase another starship on a planet, flying low, and blasting stuff around like crazy! From my experience, slender ships are easier to handle, spin and curve, so if you got one of those, you’ll probably be in advantage. But firepower is key too. If you were lucky enough to grab a decent blueprint to upgrade your ship’s technology, a few blasts and your enemies will be joining planetary dust.
Pimp that Map up!
Like most things in No Man’s Sky, the Galaxy Map has been overhauled. Which translates into a more intuitive, clear and visually appealing way for interstellar traveling. Not that I felt lost before, it’s just that now you have much more information available. This allows you to comfortably chose if you want to follow the Atlas path, to jump into a Black Hole (if you find one) or simply freestyle.
A newly added feature lets you quickly understand the levels of wealth, economy, and conflict in star systems. If you’re in doubt where to go next, this might be really helpful.
Portals are on sale!
I can’t say that I play No Man’s Sky for that long, but I do know that even more veteran and experienced players had a hard time finding a portal in the previous versions of the game. It would only show itself to you close to your journey’s end.
In contrast, you can now find them almost on every system. But there’s a catch. You’ll need to gather a few resources to activate each one of its glyphs. Still, that won’t be enough. Why? Because you need to learn the glyphs first. You can draw letters, but if you don’t know how to read them, they’ll just be letters hanging together without any form of sense. The way to learn these glyphs is to keep traveling, exploring and getting closer to the Galaxy’s center.
Along the way, you’ll find the tombs of dead explorers. Interlopers, like you and me, that before us, took the path to discover all star systems they could find. Whenever you about a former traveler’s location, haste to the spot, communicate with the former entity and you’ll be rewarded with a new glyph.
As soon as you gather all 16 glyphs, the portal will be activated and you’ll be able to travel through it. For example, this pic here has a unique combination of 16 glyphs, so that any No Man’s Sky player can use it and travel to the planet where this portal is. Isn’t that amazing? The only thing you need to do is to share with the community. You can do it by visiting our Twitter account and tag us there so we can share it and reach even more No Man’s Sky players. For a bunch will pay you a visit!
There’s only so much we can say about No Man’s Sky
Remember this, No Man’s Sky is a different game today from what it was a year ago at launch. At its core, it remains the same. You should know this in case you ever questioned the game’s purpose and the developer’s dedication.
Here’s what changed with update 1.3 (besides everything that was stated before):
- the graphics – the level of detail in textures, planet soil, star systems, spaceships, creatures & NPCs.
- missions were added as well as a new story to guide you through the game since the beginning
- the scanning ability improved substantially, it now gives you more detail about everything that passes through your lenses.
- you can now explore new worlds, more exotic and pretty different from the ones you encountered before.
- terrain manipulation is now available in your multitool. No matter what planet you’re in, just feel free to manifest your creative skills.
- joint exploration (not multiplayer) is now a reality. It’s something closer to co-op in No Man’s Sky, allowing very limited interaction with other players.
- new class S ships are now available, with neat designs. Another addition is the possibility to find crashed freighters, with all its treasure to loot at will (although you need improvements on your multitool to be able to grab it all).
Changing is good. It might sometimes feel hard, but it makes you grow. No Man’s Sky has grown a lot since its launch! A LOT! And too few developers are willing to put in the work in a game the way Hello Games did. For that, for their vision, for their commitment, to be willing to keep pushing further and going with most people against them… WOW! You guys have my eternal gratitude.
No other game made me feel the things No Man’s Sky did. The thrill of discovering new worlds, new species, to travel through space, to have your own cool starship, I mean, come on! It’s a sci-fi enthusiast’s dream! I can’t even imagine what this game would be like in another year. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll be there to play it. I hope you will too.
Final note: I took all pictures on this post while playing No Man’s Sky, with the amazing photo mode!
Now it´s your turn, Space Traveler! Let us know your thoughts and your experience with version 1.3 of No Man’s Sky. Have you tried to go on some missions? Did you already arrive at the center of the Galaxy? We would love to hear from you and launch a discussion thread right here, in the comments section.
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