10 Things I want from No Mans Sky: Achievable download features
Reviewing No Mans Sky was a painful process. I understood why groups of people were upset with the results and empathise with the pressures of releasing a game without all the hyped features. It would have been wise to have a friendly sit-down chat with the world, explaining what didn’t make it into the game. That might have defused the situation, even if a few pre-orders might have been cancelled.
No Mans Sky is a game few people would adore and (I suspect) a larger majority might find slightly boring. At least after the initial wonder had worn off. I happen to be one of the people that find pleasure in wandering the galaxy without much focus. This is not a game for everyone. Unfortunately marketing teams don’t care about such things.
So patches will come and new features will be added. Here’s an agreeable list of what I would love to see added to No Mans Sky in the coming months.
- The ability to skim the surface of a planet. Auto-enabling safety features whilst entering a planets atmosphere makes sense, but lets live life a little! Let’s allow for high-speed drunken-style canyon dodging! At a click of the button you can disable “safe mode” to take the training wheels off! The ship has shields right? So let’s make high speed planet contact none-fatal, bounce-ba-doing, shields go down! Hooray, fun timed for all. Wait… what if the ability to skim a planets surface had been disabled for a reason? Rendering a fancy-pants planet and collision detection at top speed might not possible? I bet in the games current state you could fly through mountains, or even clip through the centre of a planet. Hmm… Fair enough, forget it. Stupid technology, mumble, mumble. Sexy update – A clever mod has appeared with enabling “low flight”. So it was a tedious, safety first design decision! Hazzah! Well done modders!
- Sentinels don’t need to be on every bloody planet, I don’t care for tedious story points, it’s a disappointment to see the same robot wankers on every planet. Is it called No Mans Sky because of the sentinel robot empire stopping mans fun time? Just a wild guess, but if I’m right, I don’t care, we don’t need them everywhere. Sentinels on every planet takes away some of the mystery as you say, “oh, them again”. Why not change them up with pirate aliens. Yes, pirate aliens that move, chase and lovingly attempt to shoot you in the head. Pirate aliens please. What do you mean the Ai can’t handle caves and malleable terrain, or get in a ship to chase you off world? Ok, fine, stick the lazy sods in chairs… Forget this excellent idea. Ok, the next ones definitely do-able!
- Stackable inventory items. Got a Shielding shard? Got more then one? We’ll you’re fucked aren’t ya, as they eat into your precious cargo space. Let such items stack in one space, I mean it’s only a bloody shard, how much room is it taking up? Why not have the shards and energy pack things (which are utterly redundant as they barely power an ant) automatically recharge the required systems? Or if you insist on player interaction, have the option of linking them to the D-Pad for quick use. Wouldn’t that be handy? Take such devices out of the cargo system altogether and have them as independent usable items. Now this is something you can patch in! Like tomorrow! Do it now developers, dammit!
Welcome to the U-Rex
- More interesting wildlife. I mean, apart from looking different, they really don’t do much else. At least let them wind each other up. Imagine the sight of a majestic space hawk swooping down to grab a depressed space rat. Exciting right! Wildlife’s currently lacking the wild part of the word.
- Ships with different characteristics! A slow boring space trading vessel Vs an attack X-Wing. No contest right? The boring space trading vessel wins every time, as it has more inventory space. The most important attribute in the whole game.
The wibble-wobble head-Rex
- A better universe map with reasons to visit different sections of the galaxy. maybe a warp gate to travel to important points you’ve already explored? Wouldn’t it be incredible to find “known space” with actual alien realms. What do you mean creating an entire society is an unattainable DLC goal? Can’t you just bodge it together with those existing structures and same lazy-ass sitting aliens. Give them a faction flag and colour, an area on the space-map and ta-dah! A none-impressive Space empire. Actually, if such a thing did come to the game, with three space civilisations, warring and making peace, I’d buy that as DLC.
- Mentioned in my review, include the entire storyline and mission from 1980’s hit film Flash Gordon.
flash ahhhh
- Better bloody Jetpack by default! Forget upgrading the thing. Just have it fully upgraded and impressive!
- I’m not to bothered about landing on asteroids. I mean, you land on one, so what. Woop-de-do. Put a flag on it? I wouldn’t mind being able to get out the ship itself in space. Maybe washing my spaceship, like in Red Dwarf. Or walking atop a space station. Of ejecting out your ship as it explodes, calling for help and getting a space taxi to base. Nah, that would be a right pain in the arse. Forget that. Getting out to repair the headlights would be pretty cool, although mostly irrelevant.
- Forget any online interaction, no-one needs to meet real life people in game, stinking up the place, calling you a noob for taking an interest in a space flower. No, what we want is dynamic local missions within the star system. Go hunt down that ship, deliver this dodgy package, but avoid local scans. Maybe give us the ability to go “dark” for scan avoidance. We’ve got all these fancy buttons and no ship abilities or commands. Tie this to the alien realm idea and you’ve got a 10 out of 10 game.
Oh Hai!
Good luck coding in all these amazing ideas clever-dick game developers. C’mon, chop chop, get on with it! See you in two years.