Blog:Danetheheroofworlds'deconstruction of the flaws of No Man's Sky

Okay, so, some time ago, I tried out No Man's Sky on my computer with my father. Fast forward to today, and I just read a comment by one of the game's so-called "defenders", and seeing things so wrong being said ticked me off and pushed me to write this blog to provide people an in-depth analysis of what makes the game so bad not only in my eyes, but in the eyes of many, many people out there.

NOTE: I'm leaving the Waking Titan campaign and NEXT update out of this discussion, as they feel more like different releases of the game than updates to me. For all that matters, I'm discussing the original, unpatched versions of the game.

Lack of Story
I'm a huge advocate for story-based games. A story is one of the main "gears" that make up a game. Without a story, even the most generic one, the game becomes nothing more than a time-sink. Which is exactly what No Man's Sky is. Don't get me wrong - it's perfectly possible to make a game fun even with little to no story (see the Mario platforming games), or a game the gameplay of which is tedious, but worth putting up with because of the story (Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War). What do these two cases have in common? It's simple: their positives are strong enough to compensate for the negatives. If the game has neither good gameplay nor a good story to keep the player interested, then it's simply boring (Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric). And this brings us back to No Man's Sky: the game has no plot to resolve, no story to experience, and most importantly, no definite goal to achieve. There isn't a setting that can be used to set up an interesting story, either; there are no characters with an actual personality (and thus no room for development) or a backstory for what little population the game has. Which aggravates another serious issue the game has...

Very Little Actual Gameplay
Many reviewers talked about this to no end, so I'll keep it brief. The first time you play No Man's Sky, the game at the very least stimulates you to see the galaxy around you. However, players need only reach the second star system to find out that most of the gameplay is comprised of going to a planet, searching for minerals that can be used to power your ship, taking off, going to another planet, rinse and repeat. What little variation is present in this vicious cycle is either so rare, it's not worth the hassle of looking for it, or its existence isn't even hinted at all. When I played the game, the most fun I had with the game was fooling around in Creative Mode, something Minecraft lets you do much better, and for one sixth the launch price of the game.

All is Exactly the Same
These two paragraphs make two things very clear: first, NMS is a game with no story and no visible goal to achieve, and second, NMS is a game where all the gameplay revolves around collecting Phlebotinum to do stuff. However, one thing I decided to tackle just now is the randomness factor of the game. As NMS is tagged as a "survival" and "exploration-based" game, there are many events the outcome of which is affected entirely by RNG. Given the extremely mundane and repetitive nature of the game, however, there is little RNG can directly affect besides the characteristics of the planet you decide to land on, and the items you can find lying around the game are nothing but different types of the aforementioned Phlebotinum. The algorhythm of this RNG basically boils down to:
 * 1) Do a task of any type;
 * 2) Wait for the RNG to give a result;
 * 3) Observe the outcome;
 * 4) Is the result equal to the outcome desired?
 * 5) Regardless of the outcome, the aftermath is always the same: keep doing the same task: if the answer to the previous question is yes, then the player moves on to another task of the same nature as the previous one (due to the game's repetitiveness); if the answer is no, then the player repeats the task endlessly until the outcome desired is returned.

Result=
So, to reiterate and recap what was said so far, NMS:


 * Is a game that has neither a story nor a goal to achieve (NOTE: this excludes the story campaign);
 * Has only one gameplay mechanic recycled to kingdom come with minimum variation;

Combining these two statements together, we can note that the natural conclusion is the following: NMS is a game where the player has little to no agency or otherwise capability of performing actions that leave a tangible and meaningful effect on the game world, since the outcome of every action is the same with very little variation, and due to its lack of a definite story in its original launch state, which results in an extremely boring game, due to its inability to keep the player interested beyond a temporary distraction.

I'd like to hear your opinions on the matter: what do you think about No Man's Sky? Do you think it's good, average or bad? Not to mention, do you have any criticism or observation about my arguments? Let me know in the comments. I am always available to talk about this, as long as you approach me in a polite way and back your opinions up with arguments where possible.

