Do you remember that time one E3 where a video made us lose our collective shit? We try and deny at a subconscious level that the videos you see at E3 are anything but canned animations and scripted set-pieces. Hell, just try working on one of those and you'll soon realise it's a futile endeavour. It's all lies. All of it. Designed to send you into a spiral of glee and have you shaking out your pre-order coins from those over-stuffed pockets. One video though seemed to feel more real than anything - less a lie and more of an incredible concept played out with the space-rock soundtrack of 65daysofstatic. Alien vistas flickered through retinas and tickled jaded neurons. Could this be a bonafide emotion to behold? I was certainly stoked by it and lo - No Man's Sky instantly loomed onto the horizon and we all got whipped up into a frenzy.

Before I continue, dear reader - be warned that there may be spoilers to No Man's Sky ahead.

Even though the game's PC release was marred with all manner of technical woes and angry Steam reviews, I still put down the cash and downloaded the game. For a start - and in this glorious time of massive downloads - the modest download size was appreciated. "How can you fit so much onto so little, Hello Games?" we all cried out. Aha. Procedural. That's the rub. I remember playing Elite on the BBC B in a glorious 32k of size - Elite is basically what No Man's Sky was in the past along with the trading and space pirates to shoot down and avoid. It's universe was also created from a seed although it's mind-blowing to see how that has exponentially grown to where we are today; a game with billions of systems to traverse.

My adventure began on a hellish environment where many creatures were trying to kill me as I recreated my shattered spaceship. I gaze upon its ugly exterior and wonder if I purposefully crashed into the planet to try and get some kind of insurance units out of it for a better model. Nevertheless, the survival aspect of the game soon became apparent and I got stuck in. First thing you notice is the terrible inventory space and management. The game hides a lot of useful information among all those billions of planets - like how you can store more minerals on a single space on your starship than on your exosuit. Maybe it's all part of that emergent gameplay?

Speaking of that emergent gameplay, you could miss the glowing, throbing red orb - the invitation to follow the path of Atlas. Like a stupid idiot, I accepted and it felt like my universe suddenly shrunk a little. I had a mission to achieve. I soon manage to tweak and prod until the ship was ready - except it wasn't. Fuel is a big deal in No Man's Sky - everything needs to be refilled and charged. After a while it soon becomes second nature and you soon fill up those meters with very little brain use required. All the while I was thinking about the vastness of my situation only heightened more by monstrous crab/mantis alien hybrids chittering at me as I cowered in my cockpit. Getting off that hellhole was a delight, I can tell you.

It took four more hell planets before I came to my first moon. It's a relief to not only land on a barren rock with zero lifeforms after me, but also to take in the cosmos while looking up from the dusty ground. Moons are beautiful things to behold in No Man's Sky. I also experienced the polar opposite - a Scorched Moon with so much wildlife, it almost minded me of that E3 reveal.

Atlas soon became the focal point - traversing the almost-infinite galaxy map to find those mysterious Atlas Interfaces. The game felt a lot more spiritual in that regard; galactic religious overtones honed my senses and it felt like I was becoming immersed in the lore the game hides so well. My first Atlas Interface visit heightened the senses and made me feel glad to bask in the warm, red glow of that immense pulsating spheroid. A gift from Atlas? An Atlas Stone! I gaze upon it along with the added gifts of warp cells to aid my journey to Atlas Interface 2. I study my miniscule exosuit inventory and sigh. That Atlas Stone. I know it was a gift from a higher presence, but the value of that thing can aid me in creating more antimatter to follow the path to more Interfaces.

More Atlas Stones drift in and out of my possession - the values of selling them on also added my expansion of the aforementioned miniscule exosuit inventory. I get lost in the numerous blueprints as I thank Atlas for giving me the monetary requirements to better my suit and ship. It was perfect.

Here's the thing about No Man's Sky which gets me - it equally delights and frustrates. A cosmic ying and yang, if you will. You will sell stuff from your inventory which turned out to be extremely rare resources and you will kick yourself for selling so prematurely. You craft protection for your exosuit for certain planetary conditions and thank yourself, only to realise you have one less slot in your suit for stuff - and you have another gauge to refuel.

The Atlas Stones though. Those fucking stones. I recently chanced upon a forum post on this very site with the advice of "Don't sell the Atlas Stones!" as a warning to be heeded. I had already sold my first seven stones, so it felt like a good idea to keep hold of any more. At this point my suit had an impressively large increase in slots, so I could carry some stones with relative ease among all the rarities and good stuff. So I did. I had three stones before entering the final interface. A message on the previous interface led me to believe that I had finally reached my goal of following the path of Atlas. The pulsating giant red orb was back to congratulate me before hitting me with a dialog box which made me realise I had completely screwed up my time in the game.

It wanted 10 Atlas Stones to birth a star. It sounded mysteriously vague but also exciting in its possibilities. Giving birth to a star? The space hippy in me celebrated internally wh-

I only have 3 Atlas Stones. Not 10. 3. Option two in that dialog basically read as "get your greedy, sorry ass out of this magnificient construct of the ancients and think about what you've done". I did. I felt cheated but weirdly hopeful. Surely I could hit a planet and live there for a bit? Earn some money to buy some Atlas Stones from traders? Well, maybe. Each Atlas Stone costs around 5 million units. That's a lot of units, right? Too many. My celestial journey in No Man's Sky came to a crashing halt and a realisation that you could have the most incredible universe to mess about in, but it'll always be undone by some kind of game design dickmove. There are planets with shinier things that could give me millions, but it's finding those planets first. Plus I feel tied to this one special Atlas Interface so roaming a far distance might not be a great strategy.

Other people have made the same mistake I made. The lack of proper stacking of items like Atlas Stones meant you had to consider a growing inventory of dead space filled up with Atlas Stones and not with shiny materials to make cool shit with. Buying seven Atlas Stones seems like a grind - and the only other thing I could realistically do is upgrade warp and head out to the centre of the universe - even though forums have hinted the Atlas stuff should really be done first before doing this. The only other alternative option is to restart from scratch. I get a new experience but not the initial experience, so it's hard to work out how to feel about that.

So a cautionary tale for you, dear reader. Some advice?

Thanks for the tip

Speaking as some one who actually held on to all my Atlas Stones and saw the end of the path....sell them. You do the same thing 10 times, lose a ton of inventory space, only to get to yet another dialog that leaves you feeling profoundly ripped off. You're better off buying a better ship. Or y'know realizing how futile all pursuits in No Man's Sky are and playing something else until they add features.

Everyone should just look up what's at the center of the universe its not worth your time i felt cheated. And made this game even worse / lazyer then it was before i really hate no man's sky because of these dumb choices and it being pushed out way to soon IMO. They might as well put a JPEG with a big middle finger in the center of the Galaxy...

@soulcake: Or at the very least a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy reference.

I was done after an hour.

@soulcake: That would at least have been funny.

What is currently at the center is... well, really crappy.

@pickassoreborn: Your story reminds me a lot of when Willy Wonka goes off on one at Charlie and yells "YOU GET NOTHING!!".

I've a question for you though. You opening makes you sound very jaded towards pre-release hype so what was different about NMS? What made you think it's bullshot wasn't bullshot?

I'm getting close to being done with is myself. I was finally abut to put some substantial time into it yesterday and while I did enjoy my time with it the inventory management aspect of this game is really getting to me. I don't, for the life of me, know why I can't stack shield plates or Gek Charms but not being able to really gets to me.

Eh reaching the center has to be one of the most disappointing things in gaming anyway.

Oh my god it's full of disappointment.

You and 79% of day one players.

I think this game is the Desert Bus of our time, considering the ending.

That's a shame. I really think it's something special. That would bother me too though if I didn't know the atlas stones were important.

I still have yet to complete the Atlas path or the journey to the center. Probably going to do the atlas path and then just roam and look for black holes. I seriously can't stop playing. It's a big bummer for me to see so many people really bent out of shape about this game when I'm enjoying it so much. I know, poor me, but I just mean I wish others could enjoy it too.

No Mans Sky owners on suicide watch.

But seriously though, I have never seen such a hard swing in such a short amount of time. People were losing their minds over hype for this game before it came out, and about a week after launch everyone is done with it and almost universally saying that it was a disappointment and one of the worst games they've ever played. Did people really think that this was going to be some amazing, groundbreaking game from a studio of ~15 people, or are expectations just crazy out of whack? This whole NMS business has been weird and kinda scary from the get-go. Am I missing something here?

I'm one planet away from the centre and I can't get there: It says I need to upgrade my warp drive, but I have all 3 upgrades installed. How does the game think I got to that point? I need to feel the immense disappointment waiting for me at the centre since I've thrown so many hours into the game and have already been disappointed by completing the Atlas path with my 10 stones in-tact. I had learned painfully that you are far better off avoiding black holes and upgrading to max warp instead since you don't damage systems that way. Is there some upgrade I missed during my huge crawl of self-loathing towards the unreachable centre?

tdlr: fuck this game

Such a shame, people would still have been going nuts for it (even with all the lies) had it only been an early access release. The power of Sony really fucked with this game. I'll probably check it out in a year if / when the mods fix it.

The end really is pathetic.

I never even got on the Atlas Path so I'm curious what will happen to me if/when I ever decide to go to the centre.

Does the Atlas path end before the center of the universe? Or is that final interaction what rolls the credits?

I plan to hit every interface as I gradually play this game slowly over a couple years. I'm a few stones in and am curious if I can just freely explore shortly after finding 10.

The clunky, floaty interface just caused me to sell my first atlas stone on accident and now I have no option to buy it back.

yeah, I'm done with this game

@jesus_phish: I think I was fooled by Sean Murray's Irish lilt. Foolishly thought there was some genuine feeling they wanted to create the experience they were showing. It's more obvious with the AAA-types and I've actually been involved in that bullshot AAA stuff and felt horrible for doing so.

@csl316: The Atlas path seems to end with Interface 11 (First 10 are stones you acquire on the way). I couldn't continue due to the lack of extra Atlas stones though it still remains as a waypoint to travel back to when you get them.

Considering what I've heard on here involving the disappointment when you actually do have all 10 stones, seem like I won't actually bother. Saying that, I got back to playing but treating the game purely as a wandering sim to upgrade stuff and see new planets and wildlife. Feels a bit like Space Animal Crossing? I still dip into New Leaf after years of owning it, so might just treat it like that too.

This story gave me a good laugh because I had almost the same experience and I feel your pain. My reaction was all the more disbelieving because I had actually held onto several of the early the stones for quite a while. I deliberated about selling them, but they were causing havoc in my inventory.

"What to do?" I thought. "I know! I've played Dark Souls – surely if the stones have any greater purpose then the item description will contain a tantalisingly vague allusion to it... nope, nothing there. It must be safe to sell them."

Upon reaching Atlas interface 11 my reaction was: deep sigh, quit game, eject disc.

Bye bye, No Man's Sky. It was fun for a while.

Honestly, the only thing keeping me going is knowing that the only thing between me and a platinum trophy is warping a bunch more times

@nux said:

What's really fun to find out is that if you disassemble a module that returns crafted parts like microfibre or plates, for some reason those ones will stack to 100 but only with other returned parts. I didn't even notice for ages... I thought it was just a bug with the UI when I was recycling and rebuilding and could only see 1 plate in inventory when the next thing I was building claimed there were already 3.

I did a big old grind to max out my ship and exosuit inventory, but even while doing it I already knew it was pretty much pointless... once you have enough slots for all the suit and ship upgrades you want, plus one stack of all the materials you regularly need, there's nothing else you'd need space for... except maybe for collecting those unstackable rare things if you need to grind cash for stones I suppose...

My main issues with the game -

1. "It's a super chill game". - Inventory management and constant item / suit refueling. So, no. It's not chill.

2. "EXPLORATION!!" - No. The planets are way too similar or just plain uninteresting to just rely on exploration as a goal.

3. Controls - Nothing about this feels satisfying to control. It's functional at best.

just got a refund through PSN customer service chat. Too many crashes and it became apparent that the game that was sold was not the same one that was shown off/talked about for years prior.

Once you finish the Atlas path and get to the center your reward is nothing. You get nothing. It really is the most Ovaltine moment I've ever had in a game. A trophy would've been better than nothing.

So if you feel burned by the purchase I would suggest trying to get a refund through PSN customer service chat. They just asked me for PSN ID and email address. Told me they don't normally issue refunds but did anyways in the form of PSN wallet funds. If you got it through digital download.

still having fun with it, 45 year old gamer, and I'm fed with the ultra competitive Dark Souls, FPS multiplayer where I'm killed 5 times by guys who play the game 8 hours a day everyday, I play to relax and get into another world, so I go around, mine a bit, watch species, search for crashed ships ... I'll never go to the center of the universe, I don't care

@victordeleon: I hear you! This game is at least something else. But I still wish there was more to it, gameplay wise. I love the basics of landing on a planet and taking off to space afterwards, but if there was more exclusive things to find on such planets or in space then it would be much more awesome.

Now I'm basically waiting for a big content patch to get back to it.

(it's also pretty playable on a PS Vita via remote play!)

There's a plethora of much better "Relaxation" games or even just non-competitive games though.

I know, I played Submerged, Everibody's gone to the rapture, but Science fiction is more about discovery, being in "strange new worlds" than killing things

Unless this is your first E3 or you've never seen a Ubisoft trailer/bought a Ubisoft game, you should know by now that publishers will do anything to sell you games. There's also certain expectations for E3. You don't want to go out and show off No Man's Sky as it is, right?

I think No Man's Sky is actually pretty close to what they've showed. Yes, there are some minor things that aren't in the game that were shown, but pretty much everything else is about what we expected.

I love No Man's Sky. It really sucks to see people beating it like a dead horse. Also, the character assassination of Sean Murray is atrocious. Video game culture really needs to get past our habit of vicious backlash against any sort of slight.

After watching Alex play and what I've known about the game beforehand I think its right up my alley. Just want it a bit cheaper before I go all in on it.

I do wonder if it'll get PS Plus treatment at some point. If they need to bolster player count or whatever. I guess that depends on whether Hello Games always saw this as a long-term adventure.

@spraynardtatum: I have to agree on all points. To me the biggest disappointment I have in the game is just its performance on the ps4. But that's sadly becoming the norm these days. But I don't think it was misrepresented, espically not by hello games.

Not worth the full price tag but having had no expectations before the game released and having played it for a few hours I can say that I'm enjoying it.

Here's a thing. I sold my Atlas stones because the "reward" for going through that path was not great. Man, if only this game had more time to have a more fleshed out campaign with better rewards :(