These few hours were those of discovery and even, let's be honest, of wonder. These few hours is actually the time that the concept of No Man's Sky can take. Dropped on a random planet, we are forced to collect – already – different ores and oxides to repair our ship and go on an adventure. The goal ? It would rather be to reach the center of the galaxy, but nothing obliges you there. You can just wander between systems, discover new planets, species of animals and plants still unknown, alien races or learn their languages. This is where the strength of No Man's Sky lies, at least during these first hours. In this exhilarating freedom, in this idea of having these millions of different planets within flight range (or almost), in this feeling of being a pioneer on each new ground trodden, like a Xenoblade Chronicles X for example . We play explorer, and it's cool. No Man's Sky plays this trump card thoroughly by offering you, for example, to name each of your discoveries (system, planet, locality, plant or animal species). The algorithm that procedurally generates each planet is capable of creating worlds that are both exotic and of a rather astonishing visual coherence, by mixing colors, varying the topography, weather conditions and vegetation. Some panoramas are stunning and sometimes you would like to be able to build a small shack to simply enjoy life in your little valley on Tartoflan-197. Despite a clipping of rare violence, a framerate at 30 fps and textures that often make the mouth, the first hours of play on No Man's Sky are bewitching.
THE SMELL OF CRAFT
And then, the title of Hello Games suffered a first setback, that of crafting. Getting out of the very first solar system requires specific technology, which must first be obtained, created and then powered. The player then lifts the veil on the heart of the game, disconcerting: a grinding of all the devils. Indeed, your progress, whether you follow the route of the center of the galaxy or not, will be punctuated by the incessant harvest of resources. First, to power your suit's life support systems or your ship's engines. But also to haggle and ultimately create new technologies that will make your journey easier. Mining to be able to increase the range of his scanner, recover more resources to mine and thus improve another part of his equipment. And so on. Past the astonishment at the importance of this particular aspect of the gameplay, we restart and the recipe becomes almost addictive. On each planet, the various alien outposts become gift packages, housing new technologies, coordinates to unknown destinations or shipwrecks. In the same way, it's hard not to feel a certain satisfaction when you finally understand the sentence of a xeno, after having gleaned words from his language on the totems scattered everywhere. We then feel the room for improvement that we are nibbling away at and the feeling is pleasant.VICIOUS CIRCLE
Then everything jams again and in a much more significant way. The pretty varnish is chipping off everywhere. Some annoying issues are popping up. This is the case, for example, of the management of inventories, divided into boxes intended to accommodate an item/resource or a technological improvement. The basic idea was probably to force the player to make a choice between carrying capacity and tech level. But the poor balance of progression (price of additional boxes, price of new ships in relation to the quantities of resources required to progress) as well as the constant need to supply his suit and his ship force the player to spend his life in menus badly made, juggling between the ship and the suit to find space or running after the points of sale to evacuate the overflow of objects. Parts of Tetris tedious and above all downright inevitable given the place given to grinding in No Man's Sky. Even the latter begins to stick out its tongue after a few hours of play, once the prospect of progression is more and more distant, when nine out of ten technologies that you find already belong to you. We then realize that this little merry-go-round – harvesting, improving to harvest more and further improving and harvesting even more – can go on for ages without having anything interesting to eat. Because of narrative structure, there is not really any question in No Man's Sky. There is indeed an ersatz intrigue in discovering the mystical ruins, the messages they carry regarding each of the xenos races, and the mysterious deity who seems to have carved out a path for you through space. This, however, is very light motivation to encourage you to travel millions of light-years, to grind like a pig for hours and to multiply the round trips on planets that are losing their appeal. A BEAUTIFUL FACADE?
Indeed, the repetitiveness of the software even succeeds in revealing flaws in what was a strong point of the game at the base, exploration. We told you a little earlier that the game's algorithm was capable of producing coherent and exotic planets? Should we still fall on it and not on the countless dry and uninteresting pebbles that populate the systems by the dozens (often toxic or radioactive pebbles, just to do things right). And even if we come across the rare pearl, we have to face the facts: each planet only offers the illusion of life and variety over a few square kilometres. They are actually empty sets on which precise mixtures of textures and vegetation have been pasted. To infinity. So no need to try to discover different regions on each of the spheres, they have only one and the same coating, no matter where you land. The same goes for the buildings, cloned from one end of the galaxy to the other inside and out, and the NPCs, always immobile and as numerous as the fingers on a Ninja Turtle's hand. This does not really encourage discovery. What about fauna and flora then? Yes, the idea of the encyclopedia was great. But all species behave the same, appear the same. None have particular habitats or habits. None of them live in the basement, for example. We are far from the xenomorph safari that we were promised, especially when we see the atrocities of which the game's algorithm is capable when it comes to creating animal species.We will have to accept that No Man's Sky is definitely not this ultimate exploration title, any more than it is a formidable space-opera
So of course, not everything is to be thrown away, far from it, and we can very well let ourselves be sucked in by a certain aspect of No Man's Sky. Discover more and more strange new planets, even for a few minutes, before going back ever further, lulled by the brilliant atmospheric music of 65daysofstatic. Trying to take advantage of a lax economic system (there is gold everywhere and each discovery, even the smallest, earns you credits) to buy an ever bigger ship and finally put inventory worries aside. Succeed in understanding a majority of the different languages of the game, clear your background and sink into the mystical. But it will be necessary to accept that No Man's Sky is definitely not this ultimate exploration title, any more than it is a formidable space-opera. It will be necessary to accept not being able to return to the systems already visited, because of an unreadable star map and cluttered with thousands of systems displayed. Accept not being able to travel quickly from one planet already discovered to another, not being able to take notes on the specificities of one or other of the stars (on the resources it shelters for example). We will have to do with failed, soft fights, which we hasten to dodge when possible. In short, we must above all expect a contemplative experience, whose attempt at gameplay fizzles after about ten hours (and even less for the most impatient).
