"technology recharged" - No Man's Sky annoying catchphrase

This is something you'll hear a lot when playing No Man's Sky.

My girlfriend and I have been playing a fair bit of No Man's Sky between us over the last week. On the whole we've been really enjoying it, but I keep pointing out to her that a lot of the things we've been enjoying about the game weren't in it at launch and, in some cases, until very recently.

The story lines we've been exploring and which have been guiding us through the experience, to a certain extent, are recent additions to the game. I can understand why people were so scathing of the game in the beginning. I'm not sure just constantly surviving and moving around the galaxy would have been enough to keep me entertained.

However, the game being as it is, it's really captured my imagination. The visuals, the thing that has always drawn me to the game since I first saw it, are amazing; they have a beautiful retro sci-fi style, using vibrant colours and basic geometric shapes to create space stations and outposts.

I wouldn't recommend this game to a gamer who lacks time or demands constant stimulation. It has a meditative feel to it that requires the player to buy into the feel of the game and enjoy it's subtle story telling. The game is essentially a big grind - you gather resources so you can sell them to afford a big ship so you can gather more resources etc.

The title to this post quotes the computer voice that is constantly telling you when you need to top up your fuel or life supports about the fail. It's really quite an annoyingly persist part of the game that I'm not sure was totally necessary. I guess without it the game would be too easy and lose any sense of challenge.

There is still a lot to discover and we've only just started building a base. We'll see how it goes and how I feel in a week or two.

ARG! It's been ages!

I can't believe it's been over 8 months since I last wrote on my blog. This year hasn't flown by, but a lot of stuff's been going on and every time I think about posting something here I've not been somewhere to be able to do so and now I've taken a random afternoon off it turns out to be almost September...

So what's happened?!

Well, good question. I've moved home, into a house I actually own, which is super scary! For the first few months of owning our house we were fighting off neighbours who were trying to use our backyard for their rubbish. Bastards (we won in the end. Our backyard is ok). And there's been some family stuff going on and my new job's been fairly busy.

The other truth is that I just haven't been playing many computer games, and what I have been playing hasn't been new games.

But I have been playing some games and recently just starting brewing some beer again! I bottled up our first all-grain brew, which I'm excited about. I'm a little apprehensive about how the beer will turn out but we learnt loads of lessons and next time will definitely be better. That's not to say it won't be good this time, I just know some of the steps in the brewing process were a bit hashed up, so we'll see.

I bought No Man's Sky for PS4! It was on sale for a tenner and has received numerous big (free) updates and is really quite good. My partner and I sit down and play it together, swapping the controller between us while we bumble about the galaxy trying to figure out what the heck we're doing in the game. It has a very subtle story sprinkled over everything you do, which I find very compelling. I should take some time to write a proper review maybe, how does that sound?

Anyway, I better get back to having a quiet afternoon.