No Man's Sky - Review, First Impressions

I have been casually following the pre-release information about a upcoming game, No Man's Sky.  The game was being touted as a procedurally generated game universe similar to Elite:  Dangerous.  Basically you can explore in any directions and the game would have planets available to more fully explore on top of flying a spaceship around the galaxy.

The game is developed by Hello Games and initially scheduled for release on PS4 and PC on August 9th, 2016.  I don't own a PS4 so I was forced to wait until Friday August 12th since the PC version of the game was delayed.  I purchased my copy on Steam and have been waiting for it to be available to download and play on Friday.

The game is a action survival game.  You begin all alone on your own private world where your space ship has crashed and you must gather supplies to repair your ship and keep yourself alive.  When the game finally loaded and I was greeted with the sweeping view of the area around my ship, I was impressed with how pretty the graphics are for the world.  Bright vibrant colors with the light appearing to change depending on where I moved and how much shadow was being cast by the flora around me.

I struggled with the user interface at first and had to reference the controls section of the menu to remind myself what keys to what.  I also completely missed the part about holding down the key or mouse button for a couple of seconds to fully select the option I was trying to complete.  I was also a bit overwhelmed at first about where to start, so I just started walking around and around shooting things with my mining laser.

Eventually I fixed my broken scanner and started scanning items to add them to my personal library.  Once you have scanned something you can then upload it to some central library and they pay you credits for your effort and you get to name that object forever more!  Including the planet you are walking around on.  I had a lot of "Weed-00X" named plants.

After wandering around for about an hour and half, I got back to the important job of fixing my spaceship.  Now I just need to find more fuel so I can get off this rock and check out space!  I will keep you all updated as I get a chance to play more.

Pros (Things I like)

• Beautiful Game
• The world is big and kept me moving farther and farther out just to see what was out there.
• You get to name things, including the world you start the game on!

Cons (Things I don't like)

• I struggled with the interface at first but eventually caught on
• how do you repair things??  Oh, you have to select an empty inventory slot and hold E to bring up the crafting menu, got it!
• I found the run key after about 30 minutes of agonizing walking