Well this one was a bit ironic... But non the less why might be pc gaming be not great anymore (partly related to nms): - you pay 60 eur / 40 pounds to get an unfinished product; patches roll out differently for steam, gog, etc. - you rarely get sphisticated controls these days like we have with mouse, keyboard and the option to use flight sticks etc. We often just get console port or cross plattform controler ports - not funny! - go away wih half baken design decisions eg nms is about collecting but you cant store stuff eg objects not stackable with just a few slots. Or no Map/Map marker/waypoints available (also big minus in Emp!) Seems good old charteography is out and overrated these days. Give me boring Waypoints like in Wing Commander! - cost effectivenes leads to procedural generated boringness. In nms for instance the buildings look the same, animals, gras is the same just with another colour. So how about good old hand made level/world design? Elite (new version) has the same issues. - Even ships are the same eg components - same slots. And i have to leave one back if i find a new one. - Also gameplay is the same you do everything again on every planet - why not using some standards eg even Bethesda implemented base building in fallout 4 (curse you for not doing propper pc controls). These few examples are not the problem of single games its part of the way the gaming industry throws **** at pc gamers. p.s. doesnt meand everything is crap with nms but the nice alien linguistics and the drive for exploration dont justify a buy imo or will overcome the current probs.
I like NMS. Everyone to their own, but I am 7+ hours in now and still not bored... Have not even left the system I started in yet... Just bought a new ship to get an extra few slots and I find that it handles different than my starter ship. One of the planets I stay on, mostly, has a trading post that I can find right away no matter where I am on the planet..has a marker on my hud. The 2 planets visited with life so far had very different animals. Won't be able to give a good report on that till I move to the next system. The controls are dumbed down to console level.... After years of flying helis, planes, and space craft with my HOTAS setup, this feels like a LOT of hand holding for flight. But it's understood they are trying to reach a wide audience and simple controls means more people can handle it. Having this as an option would be nice though. I've noticed with most games that get a lot of "hate" when they come out, it's cause those that like it are playing it and not getting on to comment on it. That's why I'm on here letting you all know how it's going for me. But I'll say this: If I had to choose between NMS and Empyrion... Empyrion wins flat out. I would feel bad to loose the experience I'm having in NMS but Eleon has proven for over a full year that they are a dedicated team that listens to us and work hard to give us a fun and engaging game to play.
Looks like resource gathering can be a very time consuming activity. So I wouldn't think first time flyers should have full control of flying the ships. Because they would be doing lots of repairs. But a option would relieve the devs of consul type controls. Love the exploring for resources and all the tech upgrades available. Something EGS is so badly in need of. Also really like all the real cool interfaces used in NMS. Gives you a chance to walk around instead of being tied to a constructor like a sink full of dishes lol... Dont see any building but maybe down the road or maybe not. Lots of other things to do. Graphics and sound affects are fantastic. Not been looking for the monkey in a tree.
I played a few hours this weekend. Got off planet, to a different system, went to about 4 different planets and a space station. So far every planet is the same. Sure, the mushrooms on this planet are slightly different color and size from the mushrooms on that other planet, but really they're all still just mushrooms and way too similar. Also all the POIs are the same. And the terrain I've seen all feels the same and doesn't look or feel like anything that would have been produced by geological processes. (It pretty much seems like it was made by a white noise generator.) I ended up grinding already to try to get a better ship... with 10 Fe + 10 Pt, which are abundant, you can craft a $3500 part to sell, rinse repeat. You can also just shoot up a bunch of asteroids near the space station to sell the Thaumium. I don't see this game being very interesting for much longer. It was pretty neat for the first couple hours though. I don't think it was a $60 game. Maybe $20.
Perfectly playable over here on my rig. Smooth as silk, with an occasional hitch due to a known 'cache' issue they are fixing.
For those who are still undecided - check some critical reviews and compare to some positive vids of your choice - its 60 bucks so be sure you really like what you get: Spoiler
Thats a bold non factual statement right there ! You have no idea how massive Empyrion will become. In the long run this game being modeled similar to MC stands a much better chance of making more over the long term, say 10 years. Where will NMS even be in 10 years, who knows.... Slow and steady wins the race champ.
Whether or not it was trolling, I find it to be a true statement and very well-founded. Look at the planets in Empyrion, the terrain itself is different from one planet to the next. For example if you switched the textures between Akua/Omicron you'd still recognize the features from each planet. I've been to many planets now in NMS and there's nothing distinctive about any of them. I haven't even seen a proper mountain or crater. Best I can tell the terrain is white noise and they just switch palettes around for the textures. I'm a big fan of procedural generation, but I'm disappointed with how NMS implemented it. Not just the planets, but the flora/fauna as well. I've already seen what are essentially foxes and vultures and crabs multiple times, and don't get me started on the mushrooms. (Too bad there's no badgers, LOL.)
I 100% disagree here. EGS and No Man's Sky is very much in the same arena. I do not know how many times I was playing NMS, and thought this is just like EGS but worse. First off, excluding the hype and promotion of NMS, this is really just a small indie dev (11 developers) making a procedurally generated game about finding answers at the "final destination". EGS is also about exploring a procedurally generated game about finding Empyrion. The animal creations while cool in theory are not very well implemented in NMS. Creature that would anatomically never exist by any stretch of imagination. Go look at how creatures evolved on earth, and even the weirdest stuff looks plausible. I discovered species in NMS that had the front legs of an elephant, but had the back legs of an Emu, and that was immersion breaking because it was totally ridiculous. The flight controls are terrible if you are on a planet with wildly uneven terrain. You're locked to a set height above ground, but if the terrain changes too rapidly, you're stuck at the higher elevation and cannot see what is down below. On one planet it was so bad, I even hit the re-entry animation because of a mountain that was butted up against an ocean, and dropping back down required going into orbit to fix. I understand why the altitude lock is in place, but it is not executed very well. Every single planet in NMS feels dead. I will say this again for emphasis. Not a single planet feels remotely alive in NMS. Sure there's the sentinels (Passive Aggressive Drones from EGS), but the NPC interactions are so lacking. They don't wander, never leave their ships/stations, and pretty much are animated backgrounds. Even the animals have less personality, and rarely interact as most rarely even spawn close enough to one another to even check. There are so many things that take you out of the game. Milestones interrupt combat, collecting, gathering, and are really jarring. How in the world am I supposed to be immersed in a world that is dead set on taking me out of it to congratulate me for walking some random distance. It is one of the worst achievement systems I have ever encountered bar none. Now, I am not saying NMS is a "bad" game. It had some moments that were certainly very cool, but I found it boring in comparison to other space exploration games. Eleon Studios is taking their time in crafting planets, so each has a personality and feels alive. Having seen the evolution of the planets from the very beginning, I can only imagine what the "final" versions are going to be like but they are on track to exceed anything NMS has to offer in planetary variation. Procedural generation is not always the best option, and while it might seem cool to have an infinite combination of animal parts, it really does not do well if there are no rules at all about how they fit together. I have seem some cool combos in NMS, only to be ruined by one part that makes zero sense. Starbound actually did a better job here with the same system. Certain biomes have creatures that are common, but it also added the Dr. Frankenstein varieties to fill in the gaps, which makes is far less jarring. Both games could take a page from Planetary Nomad's book about making a planet truly unique, however since they are focusing on one planet per playthrough (for now) they can afford to spend that time there. Would be cool to see implemented in EGS and NMS either way. NMS is adding base building, so how that is going to be implemented will remain to be seen. Multiplayer is a hot debate, but NMS would be markedly better with MP, as it would make the universe more lively. EGS is still in Early Access, something that needs to be taken into account. Some systems are not yet in place, so while the "universe" is much smaller in EGS, it won't stay that way which is important. While NMS is now out as a "full release" many things cannot be undone or properly tweaked without breaking the whole system they have for exploring since it would likely require a wipe to fix how things are generated. In the end, if you're sitting the fence I would say hold onto your money. With the technical problems (for some PC players the game is still unplayable) to boot, it just doesn't seem to stack up. I never bought into the hype, but as a guy that mostly reviews and plays these types of games (hundreds, if not thousands of hours per title) the price point just does not justify it. If you're dead set for or against playing NMS, I say this. Strictly as a game, it is not a bad game as it is a decent adventure through space. However, when it comes to space exploration and survival, NMS is not up to par. NOTE: I'd comment on SE vs EGS, but I already made a massive post about that as well. I don't plan on doing one for Starbound vs EGS (unless someone asks me to), but I will likely be doing one of Planetary Nomad's vs EGS when I feel it is appropriate to do so.
Nice to see you back. Great review. I was reading on NMS website Sony has just helped out by doubling the team of devs and have released a experimental patch to there testers. I personally don't own the game yet. On hold for the Aug 25 backer release of Planet Nomads. BTW way i heard you did a review of the Editor for PN. How did that go because they stopped supporting it and just built a slightly different in game version of the editor. I built and posted a few bases on there website using the downloadable editor. The PN editor was a beast to work with. Hated it lol. Anyways back on topic. Great review. Hope to see your PN review in a few weeks. Thank you.
Well I scored a copy of NMS by swapping a copy of Empyrion for it so thats a bonus now I can at least check it out first hand and not feel like I was ripped off so bad !
Agreed, it feels more like an early access game to me. I've had several times where I am on planet and hold W to take off and suddenly I'm in orbit. I've run into the same "blue flower that gives platinum and is found right next to the same tan flower that gives zinc" on two different planets. I get some stutters, and/or permanent massive framerate drop while flying over the planet sometimes and have to reboot the computer to get rid of it. The stuttering comes in groups. If I alt-tab out of the window or it loses focus, the game will keep going but the window won't come back. So I can't save, and have to end task to get rid of it. I had a milestone come up as a sentinel was about to attack me so I couldn't defend myself.
