Half price + content patch = curiosity.

I think the best way to explain NMS is that’s it’s a prettier version than Minecraft.  An a scale larger that cannot adequately be represented with words.

I started off on an inhospitable planet, with breadcrumbs to tell me what I needed to do to get off said planet.  The controls are simple enough.  WASD to move.  Mouse to interact.  Z/X for menu access.  The rest sort of works itself out.  There’s a sort of suspension of belief that sodium from 1 plant is enough to keep your hyper-complicated hazard suit working… but hey – I can make anti-matter with rocks.  Don’t argue with it.

Planets are fun to explore, though not in the sense of “an entire planet”.  After about 10 minutes you’ve seen all there is to see and can go to the next.  Or skip that one entirely if it doesn’t have resources that interest you, or a climate that won’t kill you.  Space movement feels a bit slow in terms of turns, but fast in terms of distance traveled.  It is really hard to represent 3D space in computer games, when the background is all black. For a long time I was wonder “is this it?”. Then I went to the Galactic Map.

Good golly miss molly.

You can visit those dots.  Nearly all of them.  Not just the ones connected by lines.

That’s pretty much when the whole thing sort of came crashing down upon me.  In a few hours I had explored a half dozen planets and 2 space stations.  If the numbers check, there are actually close to 18 billion planets to explore.  The math makes my head hurt.

I just keep moving on, one small step at a time.  Trying to learn some of the local (Gek for me) language, one word at a time. Mine a planet, explore the local fauna, see if there’s secrets to be found, move to the next.  I am purposefully avoiding wikis or reading about the game outside of playing.  It’s a game based entirely on exploration, so why spoil it?

It is a tremendous technical achievement.  It’s rare enough to see a high concept game come out, but to see this one come out, take a severe beating, then this “super patch” is on another level.

I’ll hold off a larger opinion for later in the game.  For now, I consider myself highly interested in what this onion has to show below the layers.  Even if it only ever becomes a mining simulator with lots of customization, it’s a damn fine looking one.