Nothing new to provide compared to others.

I heard about it when it was released in 2016, then of course followed how it had been receiving massive updates. I was on the fence about when to buy it. My brother made the decision for me and got it for my birthday.

I have a Valve Index so of course I played it in VR.

…. This game… is perfect in VR. As in, it works perfectly for a wide number of play styles. Motion controls work great so you could stand up while going through the game. And the motions controls are just perfect when walking across a planet collecting resources, when building a base… it just gives complete immersion, and they didn’t go the easy route with this. It’s as if they actually collected feedback from VR players to make it good.

It works great for a sitdown experience or a hybrid thereof, because you can constantly recalibrate the view.

Plug in and plug out using multiple inputs are supported, so if you’re like me and can’t really pilot the ship that well using the motion controllers, you can switch to a regular controller at any time.

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And… what an experience that is flying a ship in full 3d turning your head to look around as you’re entering orbit, or flying along the surface of a planet…. I have NEVER seen anything like this.

About the actual game:

-I cannot believe how seamless the game switches space, going into orbit, or going to the surface without ANY loading screens. entering a space station, similar… This adds more than one can possibly imagine to the experience.

-I didn’t realise how big a planet was in NMS. Seeing videos, I assumed they were much smaller. But no, you can fly to the other side of a planet from the waypoint you need, and find you would need over an hour to get there with boost on.

I look at this and imagine one day setting up a base somewhere on a planet I like, and just staying there, exploring things to do, building tall, building up resources… taking a break…. (curious if other players have done this and think its doable

-variety of planets so far: poisonous, another covered by mostly water (and you can go underwater, crazy), desolate world…. curious what others have in store

-the universe, never mind the planets, looks huge. One feels so small playing it, while learning the ropes, deciding what resources to gather

I’ve barely done anything past the tutorial and am currently at the point after you gain fuel for the warp drive and the game tells you to just explore what you want in the Awakenings questline. I assume I can break away from it whenever.

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I’m a big fan of NMS. I’ve spent well over 100 hours playing it.

Currently I’m really enjoying playing Starfield. Even though it’s a space exploration and survival game sort of like NMS, they are 2 very different games.

How have other people found it?

Hello Gammers, HelloGames … oh well.

Don’t worry, this is constructive. I have over 500h on Permadeath and countless others in other modes and I am soon restarting all over again, I love this game.

These days I was wondering what made me want to actualy play another “open world survival” game that is so much smaller, and I noticed something. That game has somethings very small, easy to implement, but that ends up creating a strange sense of novelty every time you replay. That game is Subnautica.

You see, in Subnautica you have a small dread of the unknown, of finding something … dangerous. Lurking around. So even when you are an experienced player who literally knows where every dangerous area/creature is, it is still thrilling to get near those areas, to enter and dare the big challenge.

I miss that on NMS. The game has none of that, the most danger you get is tame compared to that. And lets face it, in the vastness of the universe, you are just as likelly to find cute rideable unicorn-bears, as something that will eat you – whole.

So why not do this tiny bit change. Some planets can have something powerful, something sinister, either on the depths of the oceans or the high mountains. And they don’t need to be that big, but should be respectable, visible, loud.

The idea is not to put something that will scare users, that will make someone rage quit they lost their progress. The idea is to put something that has fair warning, that tells you “dude, you shouldn’t be here, I hope you know what you are doing”. And if you are up to it, you don’t need rewards, you only need the thrill of slaying that thing, of putting your foot down (because if you add unique rewards to very hard encounters, the more casual players won’t really like it a bit).

Something that I miss in Subnautica (and NMS), is the possibility of large creatures to actually damage your base. Sure, 99.99% of people wouldn’t build a base nowhere near these dangerous creatures, but what if I wanted? what if I want to dare? Build a base with redudancies and extra layers of protection to stand that sandwork, that winged demon? the treachearous boss abomination?

And same in space. From time to time you should bump into something that will scare you. The random encounters right now are silly, you chuckle and go away, mark down one more encounter you hadn’t experienced yet. But what if you encounter something that tells you …. no, not even going to scan it, I’m out of here.

So, a little sense of awe, of dread, not necessarily always leading to death and loss, but to get out of there, or maybe, let’s face this thing!

And its not even hard to do it. Get some big assets, put huge HP, some good damage (but not one-hit kill), and some rules on where it can spawn (planet type, star system type). Maybe even just tweak the already existing random encounters, and then add some 5 new mobs that could even look the same everywhere, but for that reason … you know what it is, and its time to run.