I never really got the hype about No Man’s Sky when it was being previewed, I remember saying to my friends that I didn’t think it would be good in any way and then smugly rubbing it in their faces when the game came out to huge controversy and hatred.
I was a bitter man back then.
I missed the game when Beyond came out as well, telling myself (and anyone who would listen) that I simply wasn’t interested in the title and I would never get around to playing such an open-ended game.
Then it came to Gamepass and offered up Cross platform playability, a few friends convinced me to finally download the game and we set aside some time to play the game on survival mode in Coop and explore the expanses of space and I have to say: I LOVE No Man’s Sky.
Firstly, Survival Mode is solid. By the time I had done the tutorial level by myself, I had already killed off 13 generations of my characters lineage in a number of ways including running out of life support or I had frozen to death. It was in these early stages of playing that I didn’t understand why my friends were loving it so much and waxing lyrical about the game to me.
Then it happened… On the horizon I spotted my friends (Zeke from here on out) ship jump out of warp above my planet and making it’s way towards me bringing supplies of Oxygen and various ship parts I needed to finally get off the god forsaken ice world I found myself stuck on.
It was in this camaraderie that I found “the point” to No Mans Sky and in this time, I lost 6 hours in what felt like one hour as myself and Zeke explored the planets close to us hunting down the materials for a warp drive for my ship so we could explore some different systems.
Both of us would run out of launch fuel, life support and our plethora of supplies on the regular and it was the teamwork aspect of surviving these harsh wastes that really dug it’s claws into me with No Man’s Sky. One of us would always have the supplies the other needed, or enough life support to go and collect them whilst the other sheltered from the storms, acid rain or killer robots (Most of the time they went Killer it was my fault) whilst the other scoured the planet to fuel the others ship or help us survive.
In survival mode, I also felt a pang of Dark Souls-ness to it as well (shock horror Luke somehow manages to mention Dark Souls again) in that everytime we died we would lose everything we were carrying on us at that time with no way to get it back. I am aware this is more Minecraft than Dark Souls but this is my article and I can do whatever I want.
No Man’s Sky has done what Sea of Thieves failed to do and made the simple act of exploration enough for me to keep coming back to the game and I admit that the survival aspect of this game is definitely the key motivator for me, however I have jumped into the easier modes as well and I still have absolute bundles of fun.
For more on No Man’s Sky – keep an eye on our YouTube channel (youtube.com/c/respawninguk) as Me, Zeke and Javier try to survive for as long as we can and explore galaxies to our hearts content.