I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky again this last few weeks. Reviewed harshly upon release way back in the halcyon days of August 2016, there was no way it could live up to the hype that had built up and a lot of the disappointment was caused by Hello Games themselves.

It was still a competent enough game, fun even, but it wasn’t really what we’d been sold by the PR. I myself gave it a 6/10 for GameGrin.

Hello Games deserve credit for sticking in there and providing solid updates to the game in the year and change since launch. Going back to it a few weeks ago it felt very alien and confusing! Major systems have been added since I last played around a month after launch, Base Building, Vehicles, Farming and Portals enabling basic multiplayer are all substantial elements and change up the game drastically.

Some of these are often at odds with the core design of the game which initially pushes you to get to the centre of the galaxy it soon starts to feel “right”. The new additions basically slow your progression but in a good way, you now have reasons to explore and gather resources as there are now things that only appear on certain planet types. The addition of procedural missions along with an improved quest and subquests really help to give structure and purpose for your journey.

I’ll definitely have more to say about NMS in the future, but it’s definitely in a better spot now than it was at launch even if the combat and trading elements are still weak.

…and Going Retro

Other than going back to the infinite universe of NMS I’ve also been streaming a little. I’m a so called “variety” streamer, in that I pretty much stream whatever takes my fancy rather than a particular game. Recent streams have included No Man’s Sky and Paper Mario, the latter of which I started early last year and let lapse repeatedly.

I’m determined to get Paper Mario out the way though and fully intend to stream that more frequently so I can start another long-ish game. There are a lot of DOS games I played/saw growing up that I either liked the look of but never got into properly or that I just never grasped that I’d love to go back and see.

I’m currently thinking about playing Ultima 7 - The Black Gate next as whilst I’m aware of Ultima in general and played a lot of Ultima Online back in the day, I don’t recall ever getting anywhere in U6-8. Ultima 6 is a little quirky, having speaker sound with soundcard audio so I think the seventh instalment would make a better option. As much as I’d like to play the earlier games they might be a little impenetrable without the nostalgia of having played them back then…

Smaller streams showing off quirky old 8-bit stuff I loved form my childhood might be a fun thing to do too. So a mix of modern and retro with a focus on the older stuff. Now I just need time to schedule these things…