No Man's Sky, the latest failure

[switch]

So you all remember when Will Wright made Sim Earth 2 (aka, Spore) and we were all blown away by how much the game absolutely failed after the "civilization" stage. The "space phase", which was supposed to develop into some kind of super-galactic civilization simulator like Alpha Centauri, or Escape Velocity, instead became insanely boring and repetitive after about half an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqHM9U4rS0Q

No Man's Sky is this all over again. You're basically playing Pokemon Snapz 2.0. The game has no depth, there are no civilizations, there is no real conflict, or purpose besides open ended exploration on planets and systems that don't even make sense. The designers really had no excuse here: the game cannot even generate a basic lifeless wasteland like, say, Mars, successfully. The planets, although there can be some interesting geological formations and water interfaces that reminded me of stuff I used to make in the early 90s with Bryce 3D, 3DSMAX and Infini-D, is still essentially a bland jumble of components that don't make sense. There is no Sim Earth-like food chains, logical evolution of fauna, or developing intelligence on the planets. Every planet is basically a composite of random stuff pieced together from a pretty clear assortment of composite parts. The planet's do not feel real, nor is there much to learn about evolution, biology or geology from this game. Birds and flying creatures just float around. They don't interact with the ground, let alone each-other. The lifeforms walk around, they don't seem to do anything else of any consequence. What happened the living planet concept?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2qr4N-24js

It amazes me that 23 years after the Russians made El-Fish, the entire game industry has not improved upon it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n30MIrcgxU8

It's pretty clear that what people want is a galactic space simulator, with robust depth and variable gameplay. But also realism: coherent lifeforms, original and reasonable planetary evolution, not just an interactive screensaver. Sure this game looks amazing (if you can get past the annoying and ridiculously intrusive interface and radiation, air, thermal warnings, and need for constant mining, that completely ruin immersion in an open-ended environment), and would be pretty cool on a VR setup, but again, you're basically playing a nice looking diorama; not a galaxy simulator.

Check out the group rendering project Planetary Traveler from 1997, made with a beta version of Bryce 3D. It actually looks better than No Man's Sky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puy2cnREf4w

[par73]

They promised multiplayer

No delivery

Game is worth 20$ now and another 40$ after another year or two of public testing and development

the hype for this game was crazy, this title isn't myth 3 status but something closer to the newest addition of Call of Duty

[wwo]

[DBSeeker]

They are issuing refunds for this game.

[wwo]

They are issuing refunds for this game.

You left out the significant part: after more than 2 hours of play, which is usually the cutoff.

[DBSeeker]

From what I understand, Steam is still refunding you after that cutoff point.

[wwo]

Wait, that's what I thought I was clarifying. Add my statement to the end of what I quoted.

[DBSeeker]

Ok, makes sense. Noted.

It's good that Steam is stepping up to ensure that people aren't paying for what's pretty much FRAUD.

[wwo]

Agreed. The funny thing is, their main argument against refunds used to be that it would fuck over the smaller, indie devs who tend to make short games, at a time when AAAs can barely muster a 10-hour solo/offline campaign. Once they did implement refunds, the indie scene is awash in Patreon/Kickstarter scam artists. Then you've got the resting-on-laurels devs like Bethesda who cram 500% of the detail into the first few stages of a game, tricking the player into thinking that the rest of the game is going to be just as content-rich.

[switch]