The "would I enjoy No Man's Sky" checklist
No Man's sky is a very curious game. In a way there isn't much game to it, and in another way, it has a staying power with me that rarely any game has ever had, bar Privateer (I was a 12 year old kid... different standards!) and Morrowind (because, it's like really one of the best games ever). I've played almost twice as much NMS in two months than I played Elite
angerous for the better part of a year. I've sunk about 150 hours into NMS by now, and it's not letting me go. Curiously, I like it more the more I play it.
But it is a game for a
very specific audience, an audience noone has tried to define more closely. Because defining it more closely is really, really tough. So I've made this checklist so people might at least have something to go on.
Basically, the more items on the list you can check, the higher are the chances that you'd like no man's sky. So here goes the...
Would I like No Man's Sky? checklist
I absolutely refuse to take any responsibility if you can check all of the below points and still don't like NMS. It would just go to show that there's even weirder people than me...
1. You like Starflight or games very similar to it, and have been playing them on and off over the years despite the veeeeery outdated graphics (seriously, Dwarf Fortress without tilesets has better graphics than Starflight. Also, the "have been playing them on and off"-part is important. Fond childhood memories are not a reliable indicator for whether you
still like something).
2. You like exploration-survival type games like Subnautica, but would give an arm and a leg if you could enjoy the exploration without being constantly on the edge because everything is trying to eat you. A bit of adversity for suspense is great, but let me breathe and look at things for crying out loud!
3. You still don't see a point in above mentioned games having a "creative mode", because it takes all the reward out of the exploration, and building stuff doesn't do it for you.
4. When you first played Morrowind, you promptly ignored all the sage advice about teleportation and stylt striders and without hesitation took the scenic route from Seyda Neen to Balmora. Lots of bonus points if you left Seyda Neen heading for the unknown wilderness and let Balmora take care of itself.
5. When you modded out fast-travel in all subsequent elder scrolls games, because
where is the point?
6. When driving the Mako around on unknown planets was one of your favourite things in Mass Effect 1.
7. When the spacial constraints of the Mass Effect Mako maps was a much more annoying issue than the makos driving model.
8. When you think it really,
really sucked that there was no Mako driving on unknown planets in Mass Effect 2&3. Like, you can forgive the ending, but not
that!
9. When playing Mass Effect, what you really wanted to do all the time was ditch the Normandy, let somebody else deal with the reapers, buy a junky spaceship and just go see places and do stuff in this cool universe.
10. You like games from the "walking simulator" genre like Dear Esther just for the atmosphere they are able to create.
11. When you were playing Noctis for the last decade and by now have named a gazillion stars (no, not me, that one. Not at all in fact. I suck at naming things and find it a waste of time mostly).
12. You like the golden age of scifi as known from publications like "Amazing Stories" with all its art, its pseudo-philosophical and at times pretentious high-concept ideas, its scientific misconceptions and the crazy worlds that resulted from the combination of all those things.
13. When you like games that reward exploration with more exploration instead of narrative payoffs or l00t. NMS features a bit of both, but not in a significant enough way to keep you playing if that is the motivation for your exploration. More like a neat side effect.
14. You like to find things in a game that everybody is claiming aren't there. Not all of those things, but a lot. Bloody hell, the devs must be crazy to make some of that stuff so rare...
