After paying $1,250 for a leaked advance copy of No Man’s Sky, one player has made his journey to the center of Hello Games’ universe within a matter of hours.
Redditor “Daymeeuhn” thinks that “the idea of secrets and puzzles that lack google-able answers” is “super thrilling” and worth more than twenty times the price of upcoming open-universe adventure No Man’s Sky. As of 3:23AM Friday, July 29th, he’d forked out that — plus another 52.95 in shipping — to be one of the first people to take on the virtual frontier.
What he found was disheartening. After about 30 hours of play, Daymeeuhn has already reached the fabled center of No Man’s Sky universe. Shortly after, he posted videos of his playtime to DailyMotion. Mirrors of the content popped up on YouTube, among other video sharing sites, but were quickly taken down. Hello Games founder Sean Murray publicly asked players to avoid watching the content.
We’ve spent years filling No Man’s Sky with surprises. You've spent years waiting. Please don't spoil it for yourself :(
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) July 29, 2016
Take a break from reading about it, and picking vids apart. You can experience for yourself so soon.
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) July 29, 2016
In what seems to be quickly becoming a standard response, the video almost immediately appeared on Pornhub, because of course it did. Aside from avoiding all but the most elementary gameplay spoilers, the video footage doesn’t address the most crucial issue with Hello Games’ magnum opus.
Despite astronomical hype, this very real question remains: What exactly do you do? The 25+ minutes of available footage is almost mind-numbing. It seems to channel Minecraft’s survival mode, sans the creative ability. Planets will outright ignore any but the most sweeping changes made to the world as soon as you leave them, making this feel more and more like a space tourism simulator than a game with any sense of purpose. Seeing yet another random combination of terrain mapping and some Spore-esque body part swapped creatures will get old pretty fast, unless there is a crucial piece of information about the game that we’re missing.
It’s not hard to see why Murray would want people to avoid watching the leaked content, and it’s not because of any spoilers therein. Still, Daymeeuhn has suggested there are, in fact, quite a few surprises to be had. Sailing among the estimated 18 quintillion possible planets, he’s already found some moments poetically described as “F*** YEAH.”
He has also uncovered some pretty serious bugs. Virtually all of the aquatic life he discovered was spawned face down and trapped in the floor of their subaquatic environments, for instance. Nevertheless, he has decided to comply with Murray and Hello Games’ wishes, reducing his description of the game to text alone.
On August 9th, we’ll finally get to form our own opinions about the game, and you can expect a review on Breitbart Tech following our own voyage. Will exploration and environmental hazards prove to be enough to hold player interested outside more directed experiences? You’ll know as soon as we do. For now, we’re all looking at the digital horizon through one man’s eyes.
Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.
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