No Man's Sky review

No Man's Sky might be the most divisive game of this console generation.

Nay, in video game history.

Few games in the history of the industry have promised as much as Hello Game's No Man's Sky. Early gameplay trailers for the open-world, universe sandbox, exploration game showcased massive space battles featuring large freighter ships, warring and varied factions, planets teeming with life and space ships that complement varying play styles.

Fast forward to August 2016, and not much of that is in the game's final retail release, leading to widespread internet backlash.

To understand No Man's Sky and what exactly it does and doesn't do well must start with understanding the good that is here. And, yes, despite what the internet would have you believe, there is some good here.

Hello Games has created a universe. Claims that you can go anywhere that you see on your map are technically true. The claim that every planet is procedurally generated is also true. Indeed, No Man's Sky is a fascinating look at what the future could hold for massive, open world exploration games. The universe is incredibly vast and everyone's experiences will vary.

Everything works in No Man's Sky. Nothing is broken or unplayable. Rather, there just never seems to be much of a purpose. The game is all about exploration and "survival"-- the latter of which essentially boils down to recharging your basic survival tools with the most basic materials found on every planet.

Explore planets, mine a myriad of materials and discover natural creations and work your way toward the center of the universe. I get it, I do. The point is that the game is about the experience of exploring. It's not built on a strong narrative, and, that's fine. The trouble is, the exploration in No Man's Sky isn't particularly good. For a game with so much randomized life, No Man's Sky is largely lifeless and lonely, like a black hole in space.

After repairing your ship on your randomized starting planet, No Man's Sky sends you off into the abyss to begin exploration on your own. The first few hours of the game are novel but the trouble with No Man's Sky is that this loop never really changes. Mining materials and discovering things quickly turns from innovative to tedious. Visiting space stations across the universe that are all laid out identically and filled with identical rooms is maddening.

To make the loop even more excruciating, all of your interactions with NPC's boil down to simple, binary conversations. The alien life in No Man's Sky can be found sitting around in space stations, sitting around in facilities on planets or hiding in their ships.

Yes, that's it.

Contrary to what pre-release hype would have us believe, NPC's do not freely fly around, engage in dogfights of their own or ultimately do anything other than stand around and stare blankly. No Man's Sky's NPC's miss the mark badly and the game suffers a lot because of it.

Pre-release hype also had us believe that unique factions would exist in the universe. Some factions would favor traders, others would be "more combative" but when it comes down to it, there are subtle differences in each faction, but they don't really matter. There's no backstory, no interaction that makes the aliens feel any different from a talking vending machine holding materials.

NPC's often pose questions to you and as you painstakingly learn alien words word-by-word by reading.. ancient pillars or something, your chances of understanding and answering them increase. The trouble is, what they give you in return, just doesn't matter.

Aliens and other NPC's will occasionally give you new blueprints for tools or other items, but I never felt like crafting them mattered all that much. Truthfully, they don't. The only thing I cared about upgrading in No Man's Sky were my inventory slots. The game deliberately encumbers you early on with few slots for materials and items. As you obtain new multi-tools, ships and suits, your number of slots increase, but that's really the only stat the matters. Ships look cosmetically different, but control exactly the same. Their behaviors are identical with the only difference being the size of their respective cargo holds.

Minute-to-minute gameplay in No Man's Sky just feels pointless. With no real motivation from factions or any sort of universal quest or bounty log, the gameplay loop becomes routine quickly-- fly to a new planet that is especially devoid of life when compared to planets we saw in pre-release footage, grind materials, discover a few new forms of life, take off, sell items at a space station to an NPC with the personality of a hot glue gun and do it over and over again until you reach the center of the galaxy.

I admire what Hello Games has done here, believe it or not. Indeed, No Man's Sky might be gaming's most divisive product ever but it also may be gaming's best and most ambitious bad game. Make no mistake about it, No Man's Sky is, at this moment in time, simply not up to par with other $60 video games. Hello Games has promised content updates, and while those may make the experience more palpable in the long run, the game, like everything in life, had one shot to make a good impression and it tripped and fell flat on its face.

I don't doubt that the game sold well, nor do I doubt that some hold it with high regard, even in the face of criticism. And for those folks, that's fine, as they are part of the niche audience that Hello Games will serve for months to come.

For the rest of us, wondering what happened, No Man's Sky is difficult to recommend as a full retail priced product. The game feels like a tech demo-- an alpha test for something that could one day feel great. It feels half-finished. And after being delayed for three months earlier this year, that's simply not OK.

If No Man's Sky had launched as a $15-20 early access game, I would hazard a guess that most of us would be praising the game's ambition and wondering what could be next for the studio and the game.

Instead, copies will continue to find homes on the GameStop preowned racks and that's not especially shocking. Like a deranged, mad scientist, No Man's Sky is brilliant inside, but its delivery and ultimately, its execution at launch will forever be the merit by which it is judged and remembered and for Hello Games and gamers, that's a universal tragedy.