Much has been made of No Man’s Sky, one of the PS4’s top upcoming exclusives of 2016. The game is no doubt one of the most ambitious console titles in ages, and features space exploration and combat, trading and first-person action, not unlike Chris Robert’s hotly anticipated space sim Star Citizen.
And now Hello Games has announced the game’s release date, with No Man’s Sky being slated for launch on June 21 this year after a long time in development. And one of the biggest draws of developer’s Hello Games upcoming game is that it literally offers millions of planets to explore, each with their own native wildlife. These planets will be “procedurally generated”, meaning that players will encounter completely different worlds to visit in each playthrough.
But will the gameplay in No Man’s Sky keep players engaged, and will each planet feel different enough to be worth exploring? After all, randomly generated worlds are very unlikely to have the personality of those a human designer could come up with, and unless Hello Game’s procedural generation is really ace, these planets are likely to end up feeling a bit too similar too each other sooner or later.
No Man’s Sky worlds have their own fauna and flora, and players can even encounter extraterrestrial dinos…
The lack of a good narrative could also be an issue here, though. While the game’s official website teases that players will be able to “find ancient artefacts that could reveal the secrets behind the universe”, players could end up missing a good story to give context to their actions in the game soon enough. And while a teaser trailer for the game showcased its first-person combat last year, it remains to be seen whether the action has a better feel or is more fun than that seen in other sci-fi games like Destiny of Halo 5: Guardians.
But still, No Man’s Sky is still a bold experiment and no doubt a very ambitious game, and it might yet turn out to be a success. And although it remains to be seen whether PS4 owners take to the game’s large-scale, epic space sim gameplay, perhaps No Man’s Sky will surprise everyone and end up being one of the year’s video game hits.
Note: No Man’s Sky will be released on June 21, 2016. Available on PS4 and PC.