No Man's Sky....a failure?

I've been reading reviews about NMS and most of them seem to have a common theme: there's lot of ideas and things it tries to do, but none of them are fully fleshed out. Exploration, procedural generation, mining, mystery, combat, space, crafting... It seems like all of these things exist, but none of them were done well. That could be a problem for NMS, because if other games do these things better, those other games will be preferred.

To quote Ars Technica: (quote from page 2)
"I'm tired of underwhelming systems in combat, flight, planet generation, crafting, and lore, all pushed at a snail's pace while I farm just enough resources to inch toward the galaxy's center."

So I wonder if it really is hype that doomed it or if the concept/execution was inherently flawed.

After reading darthmorf's post above, I checked price: $62. That's more than a new 3DS release. It's too high for the "give it a chance" price range. Is there a demo or something to try before you buy?
 
Sigma90 said:
I've been reading reviews about NMS and most of them seem to have a common theme: there's lot of ideas and things it tries to do, but none of them are fully fleshed out. Exploration, procedural generation, mining, mystery, combat, space, crafting... It seems like all of these things exist, but none of them were done well. That could be a problem for NMS, because if other games do these things better, those other games will be preferred.

To quote Ars Technica: (quote from page 2)
"I'm tired of underwhelming systems in combat, flight, planet generation, crafting, and lore, all pushed at a snail's pace while I farm just enough resources to inch toward the galaxy's center."

So I wonder if it really is hype that doomed it or if the concept/execution was inherently flawed.

After reading darthmorf's post above, I checked price: $62. That's more than a new 3DS release. It's too high for the "give it a chance" price range. Is there a demo or something to try before you buy?
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Nope. The only way to experience it without playing is to pirate it. Sadly, game demos have become a thing of the past.
 
I figured something like this was bound to happen. Damn shame so many suckers pre-ordered the game, at FULL PRICE even. People really need to stop pre-ordering.

Anyway, pity the game didn't turn out that great, but it was to be expected. Infinite worlds? Auto-generated content in games is usually very, very boring. You just can't keep things interesting if some script is doing the building. For something to be interesting it needs a human touch, not a random number generator.

I'm glad I kept my money in my pocket and hope Star Citizen will be the game that fixes my long overdue lack-of-space sickness.
 
Gotcha! said:
I figured something like this was bound to happen. Damn shame so many suckers pre-ordered the game, at FULL PRICE even. People really need to stop pre-ordering.
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What's funny to me is how confident people were that it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread. To be honest at one point in time I did have the game on reserve but one day I just had the urge to cancel and forget about the game entirely. So when I went into the store to cancel my reservation the employee looked at me like I had 3 heads. "What do you mean 'cancel'!? This is No Man's Sky we're talking about!" When I finally told him for the 3rd or 4th time that I am in fact serious about cancelling and that this was not a joke, he said something along the lines of "Are you sure? You sure that you're sure? Alright dude...If you say so!"

I call that hype-brainwashing.
 
leelustig said:
What's funny to me is how confident people were that it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
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It blows my mind. Whatever happened to "If something seems too good to be true, it usually is."? Aren't people learning their proverbs anymore these days?

People are ruining the industry with their brainless pre-ordering. Game developers show some nice screenshots, do a couple of empty promises and people start screaming "Take my money!".
I wish I could develop games. I'd make some empty promises, make a :red:ty game and be a millionaire in no time. People will buy any garbage without trying it out first anyway. (Although my own moral code would probably get in the way anyway. I'm pretty fond of the golden rule.)

I really don't get this "buy without having tried the product". Like I said before, people try out clothes before they buy them. Testdrive cars. You can listen to an artist's music in any decent record store before buying their cd's. But when it comes to games? They're all buying them wearing a blindfold. Software publishers are having an absolute ball.

At least Steam gives people their money back these days.
 
leelustig said:
What's funny to me is how confident people were that it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
Click to expand...

I feel like so many "Me Too" FPSs" get the same treatment and come out just as lackluster, yet people usually treat them like the greatest thing ever, anyway. Sometimes I wonder if people aren't just stricter toward non FPS games.
 
Gotcha! said:
I really don't get this "buy without having tried the product". Like I said before, people try out clothes before they buy them. Testdrive cars. You can listen to an artist's music in any decent record store before buying their cd's. But when it comes to games? They're all buying them wearing a blindfold. Software publishers are having an absolute ball.
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Agreed. I won't bother to add more examples, but software is rather unique in this regard. Demos, trials and shareware ("try before you buy") seem largely dead by now.

People talk about dropping $5 on a coffee but refusing to pay $5 for a video game. Well, at least with the coffee, I know what it is, what it tastes like and if it's not the coffee I want, I can return it and get my money back. But a video game nowadays? All I have is a marketing release, carefully curated videos/images and reviews that may or may not be legit.

The games I've bought that I've spent the most money on are those that have had a demo, shareware version or are part of a series. I.e. I've played them before. Anything else? I'm going to wait for a sale that drops the price to a few bucks. It's just not worth the risk otherwise.
 
I like the games approach to exploration, but since no Xbox release, plus bad reviews, why waste my time? When I have terraria?
 
I've played NMS for a decent amount of time and I can say that it has absolutely no depth whatsoever. It's fairly enjoyable for a couple of hours but after that it's just boring repetitive garbage. Also, the developer is a liar and I am never going to support any game that he is involved in ever again.
 
Developers are getting this nasty habit of promising a crapload of goodies and not delivering even the half of promised stuff.
 
I think it is a little a failure because it reminds of a starbound 3d clone with some enhancements made but anyway it is a game :)
 
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