Video: Just How Beautiful Is No Man's Sky on PS4?

Think i've been playing this game for about 8 hours now and still in my first plannet!

Yet I still keep finding new areas to explore and really enjoying it. Just wish i could find the last animal i'm missing from scan list! As part me wants to go see all the other planets now

Its very pretty, but the FOV seems tiny and I'm struggling with it. I might dump the PS4 copy and get the PC version, which is confirmed to have a FOV slider

Music is sublime. This game would be a perfect fit for VR... after work, kick off the shoes, crash on sofa, munch on pot noodles, slap VR mask on and off we go. Bye bye mother Earth 😴

Personally I think the game looks 'poor'. Yes its nice and bright, reminiscent of some 70's prog rock album cover or sci-fi dust jacket (I would prefer to spend my time in a Roger Dean or Rodney Matthews universe) but when you actually look at it on a big 55"+ screen, the visuals are poor. Very basic, low textures etc - funny how you didn't include any pictures of 'water' - especially from above in your space ship. Its a step up from Minecraft and its procedurally generated worlds but its hardly on a par with games of this (or even last) gen for the money - even Fallout 3's open wastelands look 'visually' more impressive even of they don't have the bright kiddy-colours.

This isn't a criticism at all - but as the topic was purely about its 'visuals' then that is why I have said this. I know that using Voxels instead of Polygons has its limitations and its not as if the developers hand-crafted or drew everything - just gave a computer some basic rules and let it do the work.

I would give my right nut for a Rover

Walking/dashing takes forever
Getting the ship also takes time/resources (get to it, launch animation, travel, land and then hike to objective)

If walking around was a little faster i would be so happy

I just got the game this day and I think the game is great, it's like skrym plus minecraft in space. I hope the neo version is better, if the game framerate is 60 fps it will be perfect.

Also I hope next patch will give us faster walking, land vehicles, and using mining tool depleted less resource.

@johncalmc The visuals of any game - particularly those going for a specific artstyle - are purely subjective. I don't disagree with the fact you have a different opinion to mine but my opinion is equally as valid.

For me that the lack of any real technical proficiency and polish is far more obvious than the impact of the overall look. I think the vegetation looks very basic - something that games like Uncharted and Last of Us do very well in their worlds. The animals too look basic as well and that's before I see the cracks in the way the worlds are created - the cut and paste of it all, the lack of physics - most of which tend to become far more apparent when actual playing the game.

As I said, I understand why this game 'looks' the way it does from a technical point of view. I guess my many years of a graphical designer also play a part - its possible that my eye for detail was why I excelled at Graphic Design or maybe that made me see these issues far more clearly - either way, I don't see at as 'beautiful' - colourful yes but beautiful it certainly isn't. Looking at the vistas in games like Uncharted for example has the 'Wow' factor for me and this just can't compare. Even last gen's Bioshock - looking out the window at the sealife for example and Rapture or open the doors to Locust underground city in Gears of War 2 is more impressive to me let alone the games of this gen - Killzone:SF, Uncharted 4 - even Venus on Destiny...

The only thing that I have any issue with visually is the FOV, but it doesn't get int he way enough to spoil my overall enjoyment of the game. Hoping that the Neo will mean we get the slider, that would be pretty cool. Or VR support, of course!

I think its looks really cool and I'm still on the first planet. The animals can look a little ropey but but the enviroments are cool.

I'd argue that the wow factor comes from the discovery of new things (environment, creatures etc) rather than the detail per se.

Graphically its nice, rather than stupendous and the visual imagery of going from planet surface to space is more about the "doing" than what it looks like.

I remember the first time I watched my Uncle play Elite on his BBC computer, i was in awe as at that time as i'd never seen anything like it, I'm the same to a lesser extent with NMS, that transition from planet surface to space isn't mindblowingly beautiful, but from a sense of scale, it is amazing.

Alas like everything, the more you repeat something, the less impressive it becomes...

I've read the impressions, frowned at the bad news stories and consulted the divided mess on Metacritic. Just been out and bought it from the store. I don't know what's wrong with me. I understand it's distinctly average (compared to the hype) and caved regardless. I'm just intrigued and hopeful for the future updates.

@BAMozzy it's not low textures, it's no textures. The game is akin to a game like FFVII in that the polygons have no textures. It's a bad match for PS4 really since the console's great strength is its large amount of VRAM which allows really high quality textures. This game is very CPU intensive and thats the weakest link know the PS4's chain. It's basically the exact wrong way around for PS4.

@Shellcore If you want a game where you can walk (or fly) forever across space and subtly varying landscapes (lets not kid ourselves--none of the worlds in that video are dramatically different from the others. Some have more water, some have more trees, some have less of both), then this is the game for you. And it does being a game like that better than any other game I've ever played... but I'm not sure at this point how long it'll hold my attention.

@Shellcore That's why I'm waiting for the PC version so it can, hopefully, be modded and have some depth added to the crafting and other gameplay elements.

well, I am enjoying the experience. That is what I am viewing this game as, an experience. Not necessarily a ground breaking game in some ways, but in other ways it a game that should be experienced. It's a journey!

WHENS THE REVIEW??????????

I think for me it comes down to tapping into childhood dreams. When I was a kid, i loved space. I was lucky enough to go to Florida in 85, and they had a ride in the Epcot Center where you took off on a space rocket and saw the earth zoom away from detail of ground until it was a planet in the distance. It was magical for me!

Everytime I take off in No Man's Sky, it takes me back to a tiny extent to that experience. I'll never get tired of it. And just flying from planet to planet, taking a look around, analysing wild life, taking off, trading etc etc. Marvellous! I always read about this stuff in Asimov novels, and watched in Star Trek, and can finally be that person in this game.

I guess if you were never that interested in space, this would probably be quite a dull game. But this is the reason I think many of us are so captivated by it.

Its no Voxel Astra that's for sure.

Meanwhile....im loving every second of NMS, its everything i hoped it would be and i think what sean and the others at HG have accomplished is nothing short of remarkable, even more so given that they are such a small company and that they had a HUGE setback during the development of NMS

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally i think it looks stunning especially on moons when its planet looms over it or when a storm lashes the surroundings as you look on in safety from inside a sheltered fluorescent plant lit cave. I'm always stopping to just stare in wonder at the views.

@TeslaChippie I spent some time with it last night. I like the small meta goals within the game, such as learning the words and meeting new aliens. I've been on three planets and only resolved to filling out the encyclopaedia on planets which aren't trying their best to kill me. I can see the game as a whole being grindy and repetitive, but the feedback loop (for now) is quite addictive. It's Friday and I won't be going to the pub tonight. With eyes open to what this game really is, I think this game fills a certain niche I haven't explored before.

Two 8 hour sessions, love it. Learning words and making money!