****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
First off, I am rating this game five stars because I personally love it, not because it is objectively a five-star game. I think four stars would be a more appropriate objective rating, but I am going to make a case for why I chose five.I have a love-hate relationship with open-world games. Certain games seem perfect for me, where I will play for many hours doing whatever I feel like at the moment. Others, while still offering an open-world gameplay experience, rely still on completing questlines that do not have the open-world flexibility I prefer. I would lump recent Fallout and Elder Scrolls titles into this category, where you can do whatever you want, but if you don't follow the main questline, you end up feeling like you've wasted a lot of time doing nothing. It's a delicate balance to offer a main quest, but still provide so much fulfillment in the open-world shenanigans along with progression that you don't end up regretting time spent poking about. In addition, I like survival games quite a bit. So, somehow No Man's Sky hit all the right notes for me.I played quite a bit of the game, not day one, but once it hit a reasonable price during Steam sales a year or so ago. Most of my experience was pre-Atlas Rises-update, but it had obviously progressed a lot since the clunky initial offering. My video card being quite dated, I had to limit the visual quality of the experience quite a bit. Also, I'm primarily an Xbox gamer. Atlas Rises, when it came along, made the game struggle even more on my 750 Ti, so I stopped playing. All I really wanted all along was for the game to come to Xbox. Now, I eventually got the best of all possible worlds: Xbox platform, major update, X enhanced for 4K and HDR. Just what I'd hoped for, never expecting to get!This brings up another point: the tenacity of Hello Games in overcoming the negativity and vitriol leveled at them by the gaming community. I never expected whatever it is that the aforementioned gaming community apparently expected. Probably because I knew all along that the game foundation was being put together by a six-person (at the time) team. Indie titles are indie titles; you have to adjust your expectations. But, unfortunately, Sony's hype machine, along with overly exuberant developer updates, made people lose sight of the big picture. The original game should never have released at $60. I'm pleasantly surprised to see this version, even with years of aggressive updates and massive content overhauls, is priced at $50, which is actually a bargain (the original game should probably have been $29.99 with small upgrade prices for the major updates). I'm extremely happy to be paying sub-$60 for the best ever version of the game.So far I've only played on my opening home planet, being careful and slow since I decided to start on the permadeath option (possibly unwise). The visual overhaul is fantastic, however, and the game mechanics are so much different that it feels almost like a different game. Everything is much more smooth and streamlined. The tutorial and guide functions of the game are pleasantly understated, not overwhelming or annoying. I really appreciate how expansive the guide feature is, as well. While I wouldn't call this an easy game to get into, it quickly rewards effort with lots of flexibility.The Xbox version looks great. Maybe not as good as I'd hoped for, but I think there are limits to what the game engine is capable of creating, and I'm a bit spoiled by the looks of Sea of Thieves on the Xbox One X. It's not as good. But it is fascinating and just has so much style to it, it feels like pure 60's sci-fi paperback artwork, which is just so stylish and cool. It's been noted online in multiple places already that this is a wallpaper-generating machine with no equal now. I have yet to try the performance mode, which is 1440p and aims for 60 FPS on the X. The 4K option looks excellent. I'm excited to get out of my poisonous home planet and see what the amazing core feature of the game, the environment generator, can come up with! I will update with any future major observations. For now, know that it's a huge game, well worth your money if you like truly open worlds (and more worlds, and more worlds).Edit: I've been to a few planets now, and I can say the level of variation between planets is a lot better than it used to be. Space travel has always been good, but it feels so much more fluid now due to the way the game runs on the Xbox One X. I don't really see a reason to use performance mode on a 4K TV, since the full resolution runs just as well and looks a little better, but if you're playing on a 1080 device it's worth a slightly better topped-out frame rate.Edit 2: As you play, the game's gentle direction becomes very useful. It definitely nails the balance of presenting the player with a next step to follow in the questline, without seeming to force or manipulate the player. I've also been to a wide array of planets (including a "flourishing" planet that had such strict "Robocop" supervision that I would be attacked pretty much on sight - which didn't stop me from slinking around the planet mining its rich resources for a while before fleeing!) and seen a lot more of the visual and environmental improvements that have materialized in the game since older versions. There is a really pleasing and surprising level of refinement that has been done to this game!Edit 3: Admittedly this has nothing to do with the game, but a neat trick that I happened to learn as a result of being obsessed I mean playing the game: with Windows 10 and the Xbox app I am able to stream directly from the Xbox to my laptop over the same network, and play with a wired Xbox controller just like I could in front of the console. This is a very seamless way to be able to enjoy the game even when I'm not in the office/den in front of the TV, and has a similar level of flexibility as I enjoy with the Nintendo Switch (AKA playing on after I've gone to bed).
