Eurogamer
What is it you actually do in this game?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Maybe you want a better ship with a little more range, or more fuel to help you get that little bit further. Best venture over to one of the many trading posts, and see if you can barter with one of the civilised alien races that populate the universe - though, first, you're going to have to learn to speak their language, your understanding enhanced by interacting with monoliths that are scattered across planets.
There are races and factions, traders and pirates and organisations with which allegiances can be formed. Find yourself in the depths of space riding alongside a flotilla of freighter ships when a pirate attacks, and you'll find that convoy comes to your aid - or, alternatively, you could open fire yourself on the cargo holds that bulge out until they explode, gathering up some of that loot for yourself. An ally lost, a hold full of carbon gained; it's a vast space that No Man's Sky offers, but it's underpinned by a framework that's sturdy, perhaps even familiar.
This is a universe with its own lore, and a deeper sense of purpose for the player that's slowly revealed through exploration. It's perhaps the biggest revelation of this latest round of media previews (perhaps the last before No Man's Sky's release in June) that this universe of some 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets is bound together by a fiction and governed by a narrative logic. It seems like a smart way to impose some of the structure that so many players crave.
Gamespot
* Each race has its own technologies, such as different types of ships and suits. The only creature I encountered appeared to be an android, and my guess is that it was in awe of my presence.
* When conversing, choosing the right option can make races happy. Frequent interactions can raise your reputation within each faction. Friendly factions can open up trading options, and even offer items such as upgraded weapons. The races who you befriend will help you in their own specialised field--one could be skilled in the sciences, for example, meaning your bond will increase some of your tech skills.
* Players have a standing with each of the races, who have their own relationships and rivalries with each other, much like in Civilization.
IGN
My criminally brief 30-minute hands-on is already two-thirds gone, and I have a hankering to get to outer space.
To do so, I’m going to have to hack the landing pad since I didn’t have the cash to outright buy the impressive ship that docked (and soon left) a few moments ago. But I need plutonium in order to do craft the bypass chip. And so off I go, overheating my gun while trying to blast and collect as much plutonium as possible.
Unfortunately, it seems I angered some of the native wildlife; a tiger-like animal comes bounding after me, chomping me from behind and forcing me to engage it. I get a few laser blasts in before turning to run. The beast fells me, and I have to respawn from the last spot I saved at, far away.
The Verge
I found inner peace playing No Man’s Sky
I may exaggerate, but only slightly. No Man’s Sky is the long-awaited title from Hello Games that will be landing on PCs and the PlayStation 4 on June 21st. It’s essentially a space-exploration sandbox: players are dropped into a universe filled with roughly 18 quintillion worlds, each filled with their own specific landscapes, attributes, and indigenous creatures. The object of the game is largely undefined: you can hang out and mine crystals from massive underground caverns, or you can build up your spaceship, sit on space trade routes, and blow passing ships to pieces. It’s all up for grabs, and what’s clear after playing the game for a half-hour is that no amount of hands-on or preview time can ever convey the full experience of the game; No Man’s Sky is a life simulation.
Push Square
Speaking of the NPCs, the studio's really eager to stress that the game is packed with lore, though it's something that we're unable to really sample in our agonisingly short hands-on. One neat touch, however, is that they'll all speak different languages, and you'll gradually pick up on the meaning of words by exploring their planets; fail to take the time to pick up on the local lingo, however, and you'll find communication more difficult. This can be particularly problematic in trading scenarios, where picking the wrong option due to a misunderstanding may find you on the receiving end of a blaster to the rear.
It remains to be seen just how meaningful these interactions will turn out to be, but all of the user interface elements are beautifully implemented using a system that, honestly, has been straight-up lifted out of Destiny. That's no bad thing, though, as Bungie's cursor-driven mechanic remains as elegant as it's ever been, and it really works here. Similarly, the presentation across the board is just sublime; one planet that we visited tested our suit's anti-freeze capabilities due to its sub-zero temperatures, while another – positioned closer to a star – had a scorching surface that drained our energy if we failed to manage our cooling systems effectively.
PS Nation
The reason one would want to interact with the NPCs is so they can help you find missions and upgrades. How you start to learn their language outside of guessing your way through a dialogue option is by exploring. You will learn by finding things in the world, specifically through monolith ruins.
Once discovered, the monoliths will help translate some words until you find enough of them to speak the language completely. So ideally you can interact with an alien race while only knowing a few words, but things would be easier the more words that are understood. NPC characters have not been talked about until this point and this is a major aspect of the game and a real surprise to learn about this late in the development cycle.
VG247
During the hands-on I found myself frequently bored, even while those around me seemed rapturous with delight. The shooting felt floaty, and, while there’s some cool tech that lets you blow holes in the ground with grenades, there doesn’t appear to be anything on the ground to actually fight beyond the droids you anger by destroying the worlds you visit.
A big argument against No Man’s Sky is going to hinge on the $60 price point and I think in terms of the work that’s gone into it, it’s absolutely worth that price. Aesthetically and technically it’s a massive achievement, and if you like the idea of exploring an infinite galaxy at your own pace then I couldn’t recommend it enough. If you were expecting an actual game under all of that framework though, you might, like me, be entirely disappointed.
Ars Technica
After my 30 minutes in No Man's Sky had run out, I truly felt ripped out of the game—robbed, even, of my chance to keep exploring. Once my game was over, I began walking around the trippy demonstration room, where TVs were placed in a circle in front of massive, egg-shaped chairs. Each TV had a different player—and a different planet. One was drenched in acid rain. On another, a woman was blasting grenades into the side of a mountain so that she could essentially walk through it. To her right was a guy piloting his spaceship just above a planet's atmosphere and engaging in a battle with a floating fortress.
This feeling of watching just a few people play the game felt exhilarating. I can't even imagine how intense an entire Twitch world's worth of No Man's Sky streams will feel in comparison. The only thing more intense, honestly, is Murray's admission of an existential crisis only his kind of creation could instill in its creator: the reality that almost all of No Man's Sky truly will be no man's sky.
"The cool thing about the game—or maybe the sad thing—is that all of these stars, each with their planets, NPCs, buildings, and languages to learn... 99.9 percent of them will never be visited. That scale is really important to our game. But it’s a really hard game to demo in half an hour."
Rock Paper Shotgun
The thing is, I got lost while exploring an ice planet. I would probably be a bit less cold but about eight minutes into my play time I also destroyed my spacesuit’s thermal shield while experimenting with the menus. Rebuilding that shield so I can survive the kilometer walk back to my ship is one option, building an EMP module which lets me summon my ship directly to a nearby landing pad and then flying somewhere warmer is another. But both will require resources in the form of different elements and the lack of silicon in my vicinity is proving quite the hindrance.
Giant Bomb
Although playing No Man's Sky for 30 minutes was just enough time to figure out that I wanted to play a lot more No Man's Sky, it's at least nice to know at this point how the game is designed with respect to recognizable video game genres. Hearing Murray mention The Long Dark, Stranded Deep and Terraria as personal favorites and inspirations made it clear that giving the player the freedom to explore, gather, craft, buy, sell, fight, flee, learn, and survive in this endless galaxy is what the game is all about. Previously, I haven't found a game of this type that's gotten me personally invested, but No Man's Sky is the first one with the breadth and the setting to make me very, very anxious to spend a much longer amount of time with it.
But what do you do in this game!? I look forward to finding inner peace.
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