NO MAN'S
SAMUEL GILZEAN
16
A
s I sit here gazing
wide-eyed at No
Man’s Sky’s impossibly
vast galactic overview,
resplendent with more
stars than I can comprehend, I can’t help
but draw distinct similarities between it and
the game as a whole.
Radiant points of
awe-inspiring light dot
the cosmos, instilling
feelings of profound
amazement,
yet
between them looms a
5.0
NO MAN'S SKY
Developer: Hello Games
Price: £39.99
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4
Release date: 9 August, 2016
Technical: 9
Gameplay: 5
Replayability: 3
Immersion: 3
soul-sucking darkness
utterly
devoid
of
inspiration. There are
moments in No Man’s
Sky where you can’t
help but feel it’s the
greatest game in the
entire universe, but they
are but fleeting flickers
of jubilation surrounded
by a darkened sea of
mundanity and poor
gameplay design.
The core selling point
of No Man’s Sky is its
unfathomable scale.
With 18 quintillion
planets available, it’s
almost impossible to
truly comprehend the
magnitude of Hello
Games’ universe. You
could spend your
every waking moment
exploring this infinite
cosmos and only see a
miniscule portion. The
feeling of grandeur is
almost mesmerising,
and Hello Games
should be applauded
for pulling off their feat
of technical brilliance.
Yet
while
it’s
unquestionably
enthralling to simply
regard
the
sheer
scale of No Man’s
Sky, exploring this
immeasurable galactic
playground is even
more so. Touching
down on a brand new
SKY
planet teeming with
alien life and untold
possibilities is one of
the most spectacular
and
memorable
experiences I have
ever seen in a game.
"You could
spend your
every waking
moment
exploring this
infinite cosmos
and only see
a miniscule
portion"
While not the most
visually
impressive
game, No Man’s Sky’s
colour pallet is a thing
of simplistic elegance,
with warm oranges
and
vivid
blues
combining
together
to create some utterly
spellbinding vistas. It is
a living watercolour of
galactic proportions.
Unfortunately,
that
feeling of amazement
soon wears off as
you peek under the
shimmering canvas to
discover a hollow and
lifeless core.
By the time you reach
your fourth or fifth star
system, the illusion
of discovery starts to
dissipate.
Touching
down on a brand new
planet, you’ll soon
realise that it essentially
looks
near-identical
to the last twenty you
visited.
The plants are a
pallet-swap of those
you
meticulously
scanned
light-years
away in an entirely
different solar system,
the animals a slight
variation of the beasts
you spent hours hunting
on the last planet you
visited. You’ll explore
the same outposts,
meet the same aliens
and do the same
things you have done