No Man’s Sky (PlayStation 4) Review

No Man's Sky can easily be identified by its open, vivid landscapes, and generally stunning visuals. It's, undoubtedly, one of the most visually spectacular experiences available on current gen hardware, and it's definitely one of the strongest points in the overall design. Planets vary in flora and fauna, but they're all still bound by an underlying feeling of alien beauty. That part of the experience never changes across the dozens of hours spent in the reaches of this universe.

Planet side exploration takes a couple of forms. Whether harvesting organic and inorganic matter for valuable isotopes, or hunting for stations and way points, each one is full of hidden treasures to discover. It's noticeable quite early on that the starting inventories are woefully inadequate for managing the dozens of varieties of items obtainable, so scouring celestial bodies for those crucial upgrades is a valuable use of early time.

Personal inventory can also be managed in tandem with that of the ship used to navigate between planets and systems, but it is numerous hours into gameplay before those first ship upgrades become readily available. Juggling items in the two inventories gets a little bit annoying to deal with, especially while trying to refuel and upgrade various pieces of equipment. The system is adequate, but feels frustrating when there isn't a readily available vendor to dispose of extra items with.

It's around the point where those ship upgrades begin to become available, and that first taste of true interstellar freedom hits the palette, that No Man's Sky's greatest hurdle rears its head. While each planet has tons of animals, settlements, and resources to discover, there's very little that can be done with them, except being able to move on to further planets. Opening up new areas to explore is a reward of sorts, but it begins to feel stagnant after the many, many hours that will be spent combing the surface of each planet encountered for the necessary upgrades.

That isn't to say that there aren't more objectives, but that primary goal of reaching the centre of the universe begins to feel more than monotonous after perusing the dozens of planets required just to upgrade the ship to the next level. There are some fairly interesting side-quests worth some time investing into them, such as befriending the various races that inhabit the universe, but they still just feel like distractions from the central goal, and they don't really feel like they're adding to the overall experience and joy of exploration.

No Man's Sky doesn't seem to have all the tools in the right places for what it's trying to accomplish. It has too many roadblocks to really offer that feeling of unbridled freedom in space exploration. The environments, while stunning to behold, often lack the nuance and structure to really fuel the feeling of being an intrepid explorer in uncharted territory. Objectives often feel vague and uncertain, and there's enough technical issues that really inhibit the experience of play.

That said, even with all the different space exploration titles out there, there's something infinite about these worlds that creates an entirely different experience, one that keeps the engagement going. The potential of discovery, the chance that that next hill, or cave, or subterranean lake holds some sort of unfathomable treasure, the knowledge that no one else in the world has ever experienced this planet in the same way, even the mere notion of being the first to witness something that no other player has seen? There's something truly magical about that experience.

Cold, harsh reality does eventually become realised, and No Man's Sky doesn't show up any better for it. At first, each new system, every new planet, every discovery is new and exciting. Each step forward in what feels like infinity, each step towards a new discovery, all eventually come together in an experience that tries to reach for the stars, only to discover that despite some superficial differences, stars all look alike.