No Man’s Sky, available now for PS4 and PC, is a very unusual game. It caught the world’s attention by storm when it was first announced and its release came with a huge array of unmatchable expectations that were not met because they couldn’t have been. The game is cool, despite its problems and despite its many missing features. No Man’s Sky is, in many ways, ahead of its time. And that’s why I’d like to propose a new way of interacting with the game: Treat it like a toy—or like an NES game. Use you imagination.
How To Fix No Man’s Sky: Imagination
No Man’s Sky didn’t deliver on everything it promised. A lot of features stayed on the drawing board, and others seem to have disappeared within the last few months. Without those things, we’re left with a game with incredible beauty and not a ton of gameplay depth. This may come in a future patch, but even now, No Man’s Sky has a ton of potential—it just doesn’t totally click.
Here’s how to make up the difference: Use your imagination. I really mean this in the least condescending way possible. Remember playing outside as a kid, and projecting complex stories and fully envisioned worlds onto mundane objects? Remember playing games from the NES era and earlier, where the graphics depicted just a small fraction of the world of the game in your head? The advent of HD realism in games has ended the need for such mental acrobatics, but No Man’s Sky is our chance to embrace them once again.
Use No Man’s Sky as a canvas, a substrate for the ideas in your head—for what you want the game to be. Who says your planet is barren and lifeless, without much variety? Maybe that’s because the Helskas devastated the world with their Radnox beams. Maybe the space stations aren’t so barren, but are filled with invisible secrets you can’t access without arcane knowledge.
Long ago, it took work to turn the reality of a game—blocky, pixelated, with little complexity—into the vision conveyed by the front cover of the instruction manual. It’s rarely the case anymore, but it was lots of fun at the time. Do the same with No Man’s Sky. Imagine more than what’s really there, embrace that sense of childlike wonder, and hope that will at least tide you over until we get a feature patch.
