No Man's Sky first impressions

 

   

     I wasn't going to pick up No Man's Sky; I've gotten back into WOW and we all know what a time suck that is.  Between that and trying to finish Witcher 3 I haven't had a lot of free time, as you can tell by my lack of blog content.  But I decided to squeeze it in, as everything I've heard has been mostly positive.  Luckily No Man's Sky is a game that is best played in short spurts, at least for me.
     It definitely doesn't hold your hand.  Once you get your ship fixed you're free to leave the starting planet, never to return.  That's probably not the wisest course of action, but the game leaves it completely up to you how you want to play.  I decided to hop to a different planet, one that was prettier to look at it.  My goal was to discover all the species and waypoints, as that would give me 300,00 credits.  Two hours later I gave it up and moved on to a different planet.  I thought there was too much to see, to spend that much time on one planet.
     So far I've visited two galaxies, with 8 planets total.  There's not a lot of difference in how they look, which is a little disappointing.  Most of the planets were rock, two were forest planets and one was covered with glaciers.  The two forest planets were very similar, and the rocky ones are basically the same.  I actually took to naming them after the most abundant resource they had, in order to tell which one was which.  Even the plants and animals, while not identical, have a sameness to them from planet to planet.  I'm hoping once I get further into the game there will be more diversity.  The planets are so much alike that unless I need resources to craft I don't really bother exploring them.  That doesn't bode well for a game that is supposed to be all about space exploration.
     It's incredibly easy to make money in the game, or perhaps I just got lucky.  I've found that gold and Heridium are both plentiful, and they both sell for a good amount.  I found one planet that had so much gold I named it Midas so I could come back to it, as I got bored mining all the gold.  That's actually one of the biggest downfalls of the game; you will mine and mine and mine some more, which can get old.  I've heard that there will be updates later that will include building bases, so perhaps the developer will add some much needed depth to the game.  I'll put out an update in a week or two to let you know my final thoughts.  As of right now I'm on the fence with this one.