No Man's Sky - PS4 - Revisited

[Ohio Joe]

So... One of the advantages of having a nephew with a legal grow is that I get a crap ton of weed for free I rarely smoke it, preferring to use a vaporizer (not one that uses oil but one that heats the material to the point where the THC vaporizes but the material never burns), yet I still was finding myself with a lot... I mean a LOT sitting around. Talking about it with my nephew, he told me he had a guy working for him that could fix me up something like a Volcano Vaporizer:

https://www.storz-bickel.com/en-us/catalog/product/view/id/251

What is cool though is that it has a little bag that collects what is going to get you insanely stoned and then uses a little fan to blow it out into the room. A few minutes of pre-heating, plop in 4-5 healthy joints worth of weed, set the timer to turn it off in 20 minutes or so and go about your business... Anyone in the room will be stoned out of their gourd very shortly. Yes, yes, very wasteful... Like really wasteful... It's nice

OK, No Man's Sky... Why am I here talking about an almost five year old game? Because it has become freakin awesome. I got it the night of release and was amazed, I loved it - https://www.democraticunderground.com/12114517 - It had some issues but the initial impression was one of awe. Then... I kept playing... And looking for things to do... And wondering where a lot of promised features were... Then I saw something shiny, got distracted and the game fell into my PS4 library and got forgotten. Make no mistake, I was really disappointed... I'd been looking forward to it and it simply did not even come close but as a gamer since the late 70's (Telengard on the Atari 800xl was the shit back in the day) I've grown used to disappointment in games. Hello Games (the maker) went silent and the only news you saw about them was what a scam they had released on the public... Everyone hated them... And on to other games I went...

Then something funny happened... Around the beginning of this year, I had a video pop up on youtube that was titles something like 'Why you should play No Man's Sky in 2021' and I decided to watch it. I am glad I did.

Turns out Hello Games has been releasing patches on a steady basis for the last five years and slowly bringing the game to where it should have been on day 1... Now, it is one hell on an amazing game. It still does not have everything promised but all of the big items and most of the small items, plus a lot of shit never talked about is in there.

The game is a bit tough to start... There is so much you want to do but it kind of forces you to stay alive instead. It also has what at first seems to be some tough controls... Not movement but navigating the menus (and they don't pause the game) and figuring out how to do a lot of things but once you get the hang of it, it is much more intuitive then you will think at the start. It still has a lot of pop-up on the PS4 and I suspect that will never get fixed, just go slow when approaching crashed ships while in your ship and it's no biggie. Also, follow the missions until you get to the Anomaly no matter how much you just want to go off and 'do stuff'... It serves as a sort of tutorial and then you are free to roam the galaxy as you see fit... Follow the various story lines... upgrade your multi-tool and ships... Find new and better multi-tools and ships to collect... Build a badass base or build ten of them... Get pets and raise them for generations, manipulating their DNA to make them as you see fit... Enter the Expeditions mini-events for unique rewards... Grow a pair and try to get to the center of the galaxy in perma-death mode... Talk your friends into buying a five year old game to play co-op together... Bake jelly donuts and sell them for profit (really)... Set up freighter routes and be a space mogul... Play in multi-player and be a space pirate... Hunt space pirates... Find a living ship... And... Craft, craft, craft, explore, explore, explore and then throw in some fighting

If you are looking for an action packed game, this is not it. To describe it in a word, it would be 'chill' (As the kids say today... Or was that ten years ago? I forget). Turn out the lights, smoke up or sip some good Tequila and just let the hours slip by. This game has become something really special. It would have been better if this was the game released on day 1 but I'll take it.