No Man's Sky
Probably, in the childhood of every person there was a moment when he dreamed of becoming an astronaut. This is how many interesting things are hidden in the world outside our planet! Black holes, mysterious distant stars, strange alien races and mysterious artifacts of extinct ancient civilizations.
Then, of course, it goes away. A very real reality appears, it turns out that outside the Earth there are mostly lifeless stones of all shapes, colors and sizes, and astronauts earn much less than top bloggers who unpack smartphones.
But not everyone has this cynicism outweighs the desire to see the beauty of space. And for people who still dream of becoming astronauts and wear hoodies with the NASA (or Roscosmos) logo, the game No Man's Sky is intended.
And we do not dream of the roar of the cosmodrome ...
No Man's Sky is not trying to be a hardcore space simulator in the spirit of the Kerbal Space Program, which requires real engineering skills in order to build a rocket that can even get off the ground. No, this is a fun, in some places pretty childish open world adventure simulator. But the universe is really huge, diverse and fraught with various dangers.
The game begins with the main character waking up on a planet. It is initially unfriendly - either icy, poisonous, or too hot. In any case, it will be necessary to deal with unfavorable external conditions: the game thus gently teaches the gamer the mechanics of crafting. You chop up local stones and plants with a universal splitter, extract elemental hydrogen and oxygen from them, happily spend these elements on a poisonous gas filter, a stove or an air conditioner built into your spacesuit. And your ship is also nearby, a little broken and in need of repair. To do this, it should be equipped with parts that can be obtained through the same crafting from elementary substances.
The initial gameplay is simple. It's just crafting and exploration - the game subtly teaches you how to collect minerals, hide from storms in caves, use various splitters and generators. And in the future, everything is not too complicated. There are more tools available - you can not only modify a spacesuit with a splitter, but, for example, build full-fledged space bases.
After the ship is repaired, you can break away from the dangerous planet and go into outer space. But even before that moment, the game will gently push you towards the plot - most likely, the gamer will find an abandoned base, where he will receive a couple of new knowledge and a tiny plot of the story. So we boldly fly to the nearest planet, from which a signal from an unknown source is heard, and forward - to explore the many secrets of space.
No Man's Sky is a game not only about crafting
At first glance, No Man's Sky is a typical sandbox. We arrive on the planet, we pick up local resources with a splitter, make a special modification of them for the splitter, with which you can collect more new resources, we fly to the next planet.
Crafting is a very important, but not the centerpiece of No Man's Sky gameplay. Just ... imagine yourself traveling through space alone. You move from planet to planet, admire the sunsets of yellow, white, red, double, triple suns, meet humanoid and non-humanoid inhabitants, and then step on a sharp stone - and your spacesuit is torn. It’s good if the civilization we faced had already invented duct tape! Otherwise, either die or craft something.
So craft is a vital activity for any space explorer. You can also build a base to rest on it.
In No Man's Sky, you can also meet with various civilizations and try to understand their socio-political structure; fight in space with enemies using different weapons; just travel from planet to planet, admiring the landscapes and species of life; find story quests and complete them; and much, much more.
Planets in No Man's Sky
The main source of pride for the developers is the procedural mechanism for generating planets. That is, the world is not constant, and with each new session it will change. Traveling through the galaxy, you can visit several dozen planets - and at the same time, none of them will be similar to the previous ones. Neither climate, nor landscape, nor even vegetation.
Of course, planetary travel is purely for collecting - an occupation only for the most ardent space romantics. Therefore, No Man's Sky has a storyline and side quests.
But even admiring fantastic animals and unusual plants can be “killed” for more than one hour. Some creatures look quite familiar, they look like some kind of dinosaurs, others - generally seem to come from the nightmare of Salvador Dali.
