Author Archives: sandrian

Motivation: Zero

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It’s kind of funny how you can forget about things that you used to make time for.  Blogging has been the main victim of my laziness lately, with me not feeling the need to write at all. I’ve been lazy and boring and didn’t feel like telling about my adventures in online games anymore. I guess I feel like one of the many gaming blogs out there, that struggle to get a blog post going because whatever can I write to stay original?
Most of the things are said and done by the time I get around to writing and post 9000 about Blizzcon and someone’s thoughts about the event and games there isn’t very attractive reader material. I had planned to write about the US elections, it’s result and the impact it had on me and my life, but honestly? Living here in Europe I’m so far removed from what is happening over there that I can only sympathize with the people who have been devastated by the results… And that’s it. Ofcourse I am shocked like the rest of the world at this. But I refuse to join the “white oppresive males have won the elections” crap that is being thrown around the internet. Trumps’ victory has been one that has been coming for a long time. A combination of poor midwestern US, Hillary being vastly impopular in her own country, people not showing to vote at all (45% did not participate!) and many other factors contributed to Trump winning presidency, and the Republicans winning the elections overall. Do I sympathize with Trump? No. I think he’s a sexist, racist, mysogynistic bigot. But people have made a statement against the ruling parties and I think the US as a nation has a lot of ear scratching to do to see where exactly this went wrong for them.

If I have to go on a bit of a rant about this I think humanity as a whole has a lot of ear scratching to do. We are a world divided by culture, religion and government. Censorship has become so normal in everyday life that we don’t even think about it anymore. We may not censor our news the way some countries do, but we are censoring society, sheltering everyone and creating a world where people need “safe spaces” and get offended by everything. Instead of keeping a dialogue going we take away freedom of speech and label people whatever we want to justify our own perspective at the world. The world is not a matter of white versus black, man versus woman, gay versus straight. Treating someone like shit because of their worldviews has become normal and a nation throwing a tantrum because people didn’t get their way was impossible to think of 20 years ago.
I refuse to take a side in a world like this. I can’t be outraged at the US elections because it’s what they apparently wanted. I can’t get mad at the Brexit because it was a majority vote. And even though people are fighting very hard to show that they don’t agree with this, at some point you will have to accept your losses and move on. Don’t look at what divides us, but look at what makes us the same. I can’t imagine people want to willingly see society burn, just because of different political, social, cultural and religious views. If we could just learn to accept eachother the way we are, and yes this includes people whose worldviews are different than yours, and keep the dialogue going I’m sure society would be a much better place.

Learn to agree to disagree, accept that even though we are of equal value we are not the same and build a better world for the future. Because right now I shudder at the thought of how the world may look 20 years from now.

I Fucked Up

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Sunday evening as I was frantically running around Eorzea trying to get my Yo-Kai medals I realized I had fucked up. And not just a small fuck up. No a big one. Huge one. A fuck up that hasn’t happened to me in a very, very long time.
What am I talking about you mean? Well, I’m talking about the fact that I cannot, for the life of me, manage my time correctly.

I was super excited about the Yo-Kai event. Even though I’ve not played the games themselves (I tried, but felt too much like a Pokémon ripoff), I think the pets and the weapons that you could get were very cute. Being the collector that I am I set my mind to get all the pets, weapons and both the mounts on not one but two characters.
Boy did that turn out wrong.
I made a decent start with farming. I had gotten my first three weapons on Sandrian really fast. I was working on my second weapon on Sarella and everything seemed to be going fine. But then Legion launched and I completely lost track of anything else I was doing. In the back of my mind I knew the Yo-Kai event needed to be done at some point, but Legion has been all-consuming for the past month so I kept postponing it, like I do with almost everything in my life. Untill last weekend panic struck. I only had three days left to farm 9 weapons on Sandrian. I had given up on the notion of getting more than the two weapons I had obtained on Sarella.
In truth I was slowly getting back into FFXIV earlier. I had farmed a bit here and there and played with the idea to log a few nights, farm medals and breeze through the event in the last week. It should have been easily doable, were it not for the fact that I chose to sleep or play WoW instead.

I fucked up and I have no one to blame but myself. I finished the Yo-Kai event with 11 weapons on Sandrian and 2/3rds of the way to number 12. If only I had gotten started sooner, if only I could have sat down to farm. If only my head wasn’t this chaotic mess that completely lacks any commitment to plans I make.
It sucks but it’s a learning experience. With all the ingame events going in WoW, FFXIV and others I will really need to learn to plan, prioritize, schedule and stick to it. I may let some things go because I’m not that invested into a game but FFXIV is special to me and I’m heartbroken that I let WoW take over my life completely.
It’s hard to manage so many things next to having a fulltime job. It’s hard being an adult. But I guess I’ll have to suck up and learn. The days where I could carelessly do what I want because I had seas of time are over. I work with way less hours than I’m used to and I’m letting everything slip because of it. Even my blog has been completely unused for the past month. I’ve just not had the time or inclination to sit down and write up untill now. I guess I’ll have to make some sort of schedule for that aswell seeing as raiding has started up on WoW again which leaves me unable to do anything but play that on certain nights after I get home from work. I have been trying to schedule more things in my agenda and installed the Wunderlist app to make sure I get certain tasks done on certain days. It has been a bit helpful, but for me the problem isn’t really scheduling my time, it’s actually sticking to that schedule…

The Good News
I haven’t been idle over this past month. As I said Legion has sucked me in completely. I think this is probably the best expansion Launch WoW has had in a while. We are now over 6 weeks in and there is still plenty to do. I’m finally able to start considering leveling an alt to max level (I picked my Hunter who is comfortably sitting at level 105 right now) next to keeping up with everything on my Warrior. I’m almost exalted with the Nightfallen, only 2.5k off actually, and then I can turn my attention to the other factions. Seeing however that I’m currently enjoying the first week of a two week holiday and the first weekly event in WoW happens to be increased faction rep I hope I can make quite some strides in getting my rep up with all the factions, but mostly Highmountain and Valarjar. Since they have the rank 3 Blacksmithing recipes I want. Next to that I’m still lacking all the level 3 mining recipes so I’ll be working my way through that aswell as trying to level up my Cooking, First Aid and Fishing AND getting that elusive Fishing artifact. Enough to do for now!

I have also changed my blog a bit. The purple was starting to hurt my eyes so I reversed it to plain black. I’ve also adjusted my sidebar to give an accurate view of what I’m playing right now. As you can see it’s only three games. WoW is sucking up the biggest chunk of my time, but I’m also planning to reserve atleast one evening a week to play some FFXIV. I really miss that game and I haven’t seen any of the 3.4 content yet so I feel like I should make some time for that.
As for other games.. I want to focus on completing one game at a time next to my MMO’s. I have so many games that I’ve started and never finished because I started another game halfway through. The only game I finished in one go lately has been Kirby: Planet Robobot and that’s probably because I actually didn’t let myself play anything else on my 3DS while I was playing that. It paid off though since I completed the main story + all the cubes in about 20 hours. I still think the final bossfight in that game was epic and I do plan to 100% it at some point… But not now. Seeing as Pokemon Sun/Moon are coming out somewhere in November I feel like I have to finish up the previous gen games atleast. I’m about 6 badges into Alpha Sapphire and 5 badges into X. I really didn’t care which one of the two I wanted to tackle first, but considering I know the story of ORAS, I own all the original GBA games from that gen, I decided to go with X and complete that story instead. After that I will probably pick up AS where I left off and finish that, including the Delta episode. From there I’m not sure what I want to play, but I’ll tackle that when the day arrives.

As you can see I’m full of plans again. I’m just hoping that I can stick to them this time.

Hello from the Other Side

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September is in full swing and I realize I haven’t blogged in a while at all. I really wanted to post every day during August, but I really was an uninspired mess and I didn’t want to write subpar blogposts just for the sake of blogging.
My work has been an exercise in frustration. It’s been busy, more busy than before, and now you notice that some of your coworkers are just not dependable. We have a few around who do about half the work I do in a days time, while the other half they are looking at their phones, Facebook or even watch Netflix while “working”. It’s sucky and it’s making me very grumpy. Not that I’m not happy working there, the job is fine and I get along with most people. It’s just those few that suck all my energy out. Oh well.

In gaming terms I’ve been spending a lot of time in Azeroth. Legion launched a little over a week ago and I’ve barely picked up anything else. Now with the mobile companion app I’m even more invested in the game than I’ve been since Wrath of the Lich King days. It’s nice having a “fresh start” of sorts and I’ve been happily whacking away on my Warrior, Sandrian. I think it took me about 4-5 days to get to max level. My personal favourite zones were Val’Sharah and Highmountain, mostly due to the plot twists in the stories there, good and bad. Val’Sharah broke my heart, Highmountain made my jaw drop. Only Stormheim I didn’t really enjoy, with the Horde vs Alliance conflict saving atleast a bit of the zone for me.

I’ve also stuck my nose into the Rising Event on FFXIV today and took a few screens that I want to share here.

First off the amazing dressup of Ul’dah. I really love all the shinyness and banners and everything. Square Enix did a great job.

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I got to play out the Calamity on stage…

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And then ran into an old friend who I watched the fireworks with.

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Followed by a huge SE wink to a very familiar character.

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All in all it makes me happy to see SE put so much effort into their anniversary celebration. It’s nice that we as players get appreciation (and ingame goodies!) and I always find the whole thing charming. Ofcourse it wasn’t the same magnitude as the celebration last year, but still.

I’ll try to blog a bit more again. I’m still a very uninspired mess, but I do want to share some of my ingame adventures with you guys! Plus I still need to review my August goals, so that is a post that will definately come along.

 

An Ode to Nintendo

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It’s been unbearably hot where I live for the past 3-4 days. I’m happy my company has a really big airconditioned office, since that is mostly keeping me sane. However at home I’ve not been so lucky with the temperature in my room rocketing up to 30 degrees Celsius during the day. I’ve not really made use of my PC or my PS4 because of this. It’s way too warm for these machines to be on, plus they help push up the temperature even more. So it’s really not for me.
However during this time I’ve rekindled my love for my 3DS a lot. So much that I want to write an entire post dedicated to just Nintendo, in the form of a letter.

Dear Nintendo,
Thank you for being the amazing publisher that you are. Over the years your handhelds have given me a lot of joy, from the Gameboy Pocket to the New Nintendo 3DS XL, I grew up with your consoles, games and amazing community. I was sceptical when you announced your latest handheld, one with built in 3D. So I held off and held off untill I had to buy one to experience the new Pokémon game. I’ll be honest. The first generation 3DS didn’t really capture me. The 3D was decent but wonky and it would sometimes give me headaches. I didn’t buy too many games and didn’t use it too much, to my shame. Some time went by and then you annoucned your New 3DS. It had super stable 3D, a new colour scheme and was an upgrade over the old one.
I doubted, I twisted, I turned. Eventually you gave me the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer bundle to pick up. Being a big Animal Crossing fan (New Leaf actually had me entertained for a very long time) I decided to bite the bullet and buy the New 3DS XL.
I haven’t looked back since.
The screens are amazing. The buttons are good. The content is even better. I can pick my console up and take it with me wherever I go. When it’s warm I can still game. When I’m travelling I can still game. It’s past, present and future all mixed into one.

Dear Nintendo,
I don’t know what you plan with your NX. I don’t know if you plan to replace the 3DS altogether or if you will still support it for a while to come. You still have me excited about all the games I can look forward to and all the games I can still finish. You gave me Kirby: Planet Robobot. You gave me Fire Emblem. You gave me Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire and you will continue to give me many more amazing titles to come. Even though I know I’m miles away from obtaining all the amazing games you’ve released I know I’ll be buying more in the months and years to come. There’s so much still to discover and so much to revisit. Your 3DS has been my stalwart buddy for the last year. It travelled with me to Portugal. I take it with me to work. I’m addicted and I don’t care. You caught me in your net and I’m not planning to struggle to get out anytime soon. You satisfy my inner child. You cater to the gamer that is me. I love my 3DS till death do us part. Which I hope will never be.

Dear Nintendo,
Please don’t change your ways. Be your amazing self and give a new generation the chance to explore the amazing worlds you have created. You may not be the console king but in handheld territory you’re still number one. Keep improving what you do. Stay the best and cater to your fans (and maybe polish up the My Nintendo program a bit, please?).
Sony and Microsoft may have taken the crown in sales. But you are still the king of many gamers’ hearts.
Me and my 3DS will be around supporting you for a long while yet. So shine bright like the diamond you are and create an amazing future for many years to come.

Lots of love,
A stalwart fan.

Events Galore?

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About two weeks ago I made a post about all the events that are going on in August in the games I play. There’s an Overwatch Olympic event, the Legion pre-patch stuff on WoW, Moonfire Faire and Yo-Kai event on FFXIV. And then I haven’t even looked at Wildstar or Guild Wars 2 yet.
Although I very enthusiastically tried to participate in all of them, I have to admit defeat and say it’s just too much. I’ve had a very unlucky streak in Overwatch with opening boxes and even winning games so I didn’t get near as much loot as I hoped I would. This is a real shame because some of the Olympic skins are seriously amazing and I’m sad I didn’t actually get more than two of them so far. I got footballer Lúcio and Track&Field Tracer but that’s it. It’s a shame Blizzard won’t let you buy the skins with currency either, so if you don’t obtain them now, you’ll never obtain these things again. I did get some stuff obviously, victory poses, sprays, icons, the same damn Tracer Highlight 3 times (really Blizz?). But by far not enough. I guess you really need to have Overwatch as your maingame and spam it everyday to even get close to obtaining everything there is to have. Alas. I’ll have tomorrow during daytime and Monday evening to obtain a few more levels and hopefully a few more event chests. I really really hope I can get the Mercy skin since she’s one of my most played champions, together with Lúcio and Soldier 76. I guess we’ll see.

In WoW I’ve been using and abusing the shit out of the invasions. It’s gotten my Shaman to level 100 and fully geared (ilvl 704!) and I’ve gotten a few transmog items. I’m still chasing the Bow on my Hunter, so I’ll probably be focussing mostly on her for the invasions untill the actual Legion launch.
I’ve really been struggling to pick a “main” for Legion. I thought it would be my Warrior first and foremost and although I’m still on that train of thought I’ve been really into my Shammy again. I love the Elemental specc and the damage output right now is just insane. Maybe I should just let the whole idea of  “main” fade and just play what I enjoy at that moment. I mean I do the same on FFXIV, so why not do it on WoW? I know that I’ll spread out my achievements and everything but well. Achievements are account bound and it doesn’t really matter which character earns it, aslong as it’s earned. So far the classes I enjoy playing are Warrior, Shaman, Hunter and my newbie Demon Hunter. I’ve not really looked at anything else yet. I’ve burned out on Priest play over the last expansion and although I love Paladin gear, I’m just not really digging the class right now. Warlock, Rogue and Death Knight are all classes I’m not even looking at right now which leaves me with Mage, Monk and Druid. I have all of these characters at level 100 but honestly I just really can’t be arsed to log them right now. I might change my mind later on and level up another batch of alts over Legion, but I’m starting with two cool Alliance characters and two cool Horde characters first and foremost.

As for FFXIV… I’ve not really done much of the Yo-Kai event anymore. I know I’m close to getting my fourth weapon on Sandrian but that’s it. I’ve been mostly focussed on upgrading my relic and this weekend on running PotD. I’m really close to getting my first weapon (+22/+23) and I think I’ve decided to use it on my Astrologian. I really love healing on that class and she’ll be the only one without a decent weapon otherwise, so that’s more or less settled too. I know most people already have a few weapons but my time on FFXIV is being replaced with WoW and OW for the past weeks so I’m just taking it nice and slow. I don’t think I’ll max out my stats from the 41-50 run that my Ninja is currently on, but I hope I can get as close as I possibly can and then not have to run that godawful place for a while.

All in all it’s been quite busy gaming wise. Having so many events going on at once is seriously sucky when you already have limited gaming time and when you’re feeling a bit meh about gaming in general. I hope my mood improves soon. Not sure why I’m feeling like this. Maybe it’s just the weather.

The Familiar Itch

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With Legion fast approaching (only 11 more days!) I’ve been getting the familiar WoW itch again. I’ve mostly neglected WoW, except logging for my Garrison gold stuff. On occassion when I wanted to play a game that didn’t require me to think too much I would log into Azeroth, kill some bosses for mounts, do some Archeology or just dailies for even more mounts, pets, toys.
This all changed with the start of the Legion pre-patch. I’ve been enjoying the invasions thoroughly on multiple characters. My warrior has gotten some awesome transmog weapons, my Shaman is gaining loads of XP as I use the invasions to level her up and I’ve been grinding out gear on my Hunter. All in all a very positive experience. It also helps that with this event the servers everywhere have more or less come back to life again. It’s nice to see a lot of people participating and just being around.

Today is also the day I caved and bought the Digital Collectors edition of Legion. I want the crossgame goodies and I desperately wanted to try out Demon Hunter, now that the big wave of them has mostly died down. Honestly I was so consumed with the Demon Hunter starter experience, the lore tied to it and the gameplay of the class itself that I completely forgot to take screenshots along the way. I’m pretty sure I’ll be making another Demon Hunter later on in the expansion though (an Alliance one this time) so I will probably take it a bit more slow and screenshot the amazing starter experience Blizzard made for Demon Hunters.
So far I do feel like the class has this huge potential to be absolutely overpowered. I love the gameplay and mobility. I love the looks. I love the lore. And yet I probably won’t abandon my Warrior for one. I’m attached to my little Night Elf berserker way too much to give her up, but I might replace my Hunter with the Demon Hunter as character to roll with on the Horde side. I’ve always loved to play Melee classes and the Demon Hunter itself is a class I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time. Ever since I saw them up on the Black Temple wielding their glaives, instructing their pupils and generally looking badass I’d always hoped they would become a playable class. Lo and behold, Blizzard made my long “player fantasy” come through. And not only with the Illidari, but also with having Illidan play another role in an expansion again. I absolutely love the character to bits and pieces and I hope we get to see more of him as Legion unfolds.

Writing
Like more bloggers I’ve been failing my Blaugust schedule. Although I really really wanted to be able to write a blogpost every single day, I just didn’t have the inspiration to do so. There’s only so much I can talk about and when you’re staring at a blank screen for over half an hour it’s time to do something else instead. I’m still struggling to find my way on this blog. I want to include some more pictures of what I’m up to in games and I want to make it a bit more informative, but I’m just not sure how. For now though I’ll stick to posting as much as I possibly can.

Kannagi Upgraded!

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After 5 weeks of running Crystal Tower my pair of Kannagi has finally gotten to their Hyperconductive state!
Go me!

I’m super happy with the glow on these weapons. I finally feel like I’m wielding something badass again. The upgrade to the weapon also boosted my overall ilevel to 228. It also means that I have a relatively “easy” step for the relic out of the way. Really, just farming the Crystal tower for five weeks straight wasn’t too bad and I already knew this was mostly a “catch up” step to get the relic up to date with the other weapons that were available in the game. Now another big grind begins with having to obtain 80 Umbrites and 80 Crystal Sands, give or take. Ofcourse if I just start doing roulettes again and just focus on more general gameplay I’m sure this won’t take as long as I think it would (I say this now, but the whopping 24k tomestones of Esoterics needed for this upgrade is a really steep requirement). If I manage to finish off this stage of the relic before the next major patch hits I’ll be on track and on the “current” step for the relic for the first time since… 2014? I think the last time was when I was still raiding Coil and had to upgrade my Bard relic because we were not killing turn 9 yet. Oh well.

My little anima friend appears to be getting stronger aswell. I can’t even remember if I picked it to be male or female for my Ninja relic. I guess I’ll find out later? Although I don’t think the story for this relic is as strong and/or interesting as the 2.0 relic, or as elaborate and diverse, I’m still having a blast upgrading it. It gives me an overarching goal in the game next to grinding lore and unlocking content in general. I like working towards something and the relic weapon fulfills that need right now. I’m sure that once Legion hits in two weeks, and I get an Artifact weapon, I’ll probably be online less on FFXIV and thus will devote less time to my relic aswell.

For now though I’m super happy with my glowy daggers and I can focus a bit more on doing some other things, like level my Astrologist to 60, get a Palace of the Dead weapon and run some Weeping City/Void Ark so I can upgrade my Lore gear.

Socializing

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This weekend I’ve not played anything. Not a single game. And I loved it.
Instead I got to see a friend who I hadn’t seen in well over a year and I got to be Aunty Sandy again to my adorable godchildren. It makes me super happy to do this kind of stuff so I had an amazingly positive weekend. Unfortunately it doesn’t really give me much interesting stuff to blog about so I apologize for not putting anything online over the entire weekend. I will resume blogging as normal again tomorrow, and hope that I’ll be able to do all three Crystal Tower raids tomorrow evening aswell. Since you know, I normally do that over the weekend

So yeah just a tiny post about why I didn’t blog yesterday and I’m not really blogging today. Being gone for two full days. I feel reinvigorated though and ready to take on the world this week.
What a little socializing can’t do huh?

The Sky is Burning!

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With Legion coming up and the pre-expansion madness being fully underway I decided to stick my nose back into WoW again for a bit to see what all the fuss is about. I think Blizzard did a really good job with how they are handling the special invasions, although the server lag is seriously dumb. I mostly just want to share some screenies I took as I was slaughtering demons in various zones.

The whole event looks impressive and gives me serious Starcraft vibes. Well done Blizzard. The only thing I’m kind of sour about is the fact you can only get the special looking weapons as you do the invasions and they are very rare to boot. I got myself a pair of 2H Warmaces on my Warrior, but that’s it. I really hope it’s not tied to what you can and cannot wield otherwise I’ll have to take out more characters to “collect them all”. I did already splurged my Nethershards on the Leather set appearance and the pet. Since I’m doing the invasions on both my Warrior and Hunter I’m hoping I don’t have to buy those appearances since I’ll be collecting the actual gear

Seeing all the Demon Hunters run around has been great aswell! Unfortunately since I don’t have my game pre-ordered with Blizzard I will have to wait for that experience untill the actual launch of the game. Oh well. It’s not that big of a deal. Atleast Blizzard has managed to pull me back into atleast two of their games for now. With the new Kharazan Adventure releasing aswell I might even try to open up a wing or two of that. Enough to do anyway!

As for all the other games… I finished up the Moonfire Faire on both my characters in FFXIV. I got all the stuff I wanted except for the Firefly Lamp since I don’t have my own estate anyway and I’m not huge on the furniture collecting. The armor, poses and the orchestion scrolls were a must have though. Luckily for me since the event has been going for a few days it has gotten quiet, which means I could easily get gold rating in the fates tied to the event. Thus “finishing” it on both my characters in <1 hour. Now I just need to get back to farming Yo-Kai weapons…

No Man’s Sky: First Impressions

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Before I get to the point of this post I feel the need to share a bit about my day yesterday, why it was seriously horrible and why it made me not want to write a blog post, thus breaking my Blaugust challenge yet again.
Basically I shook Mr. Murphy’s hand yesterday. I’ve known about his law for a long time, but I never got to experience the full extent of it untill yesterday. Where my day started off with having to unexpectedly bike to the train station in the rain, it ended with me being stuck on Amsterdam Central Station, with no service on my phone (provider had outage) waiting desperately for some sort of bus to arrive to take me home. At home people were waiting for me with dinner aswell, making it even more frustrating not being able to reach them. So yeah, by the time I was finally home I was so tired and pissy that I decided to just play some Overwatch and go to bed.

Now that we have this out of the way, I can start about the actual post I’ve been wanting to write today: My first impressions of No Man’s Sky. I picked up my copy yesterday, which came as a surprise to me since the game was supposed to be released a day later. So after work I hurried along and picked up my copy, hoping to be able to play a lot.
The install procedure took relatively short. The game is actually very small compared to a lot of the other games out there so that’s nice. My PS4 only has a 500GB hard disk so I’m constantly uninstalling games that I don’t play in risk of it becoming too full.
Now be wary, I’ll be discussing the first hour or two of gameplay here so if you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now!

After the initial installation I got propelled into space and had to do an initialization that would put me on a random planet. I had hoped my first planet would be lush with forests and clear skies but alas, I spawned somewhere on a toxic planet that has acid rains and a very harsh environment. Bummer. It’s still pretty in it’s own way, as you can see above, but still. Also yes my game is in Dutch.
First thing I noticed after I spawned is that the tutorial is very very limited. You basically get pointers that it’s a smart idea to repair your ship and that’s it. It’s a very smart idea to take a good look at your controls from the options menu so you can figure out what all your buttons do. Immediatly as you spawn it’s clear that you’re mostly in survival mode for the first part of the game. Your ship is broken, you’re wearing a spacesuit that sustains you and also makes you not die of toxins. Unfortunately that suit is powered by different materials and the power drains over time. So one of the first things on the list is making sure you never go out of power for your suit. Mostly because hey, you’ll die.
Since almost all your gear is broken except for your suit and your mining laser one of the first things you’ll want to repair is your scanner. With it you can scan for material deposits, which you need to repair and fuel your ship. Be wary though! Your inventory is limited. Only keep what you need and send the rest off to your spaceship.
Initially yesterday I just wandered around, got what I needed to repair my ship and immediatly took off to explore space, I could register the system I was in and the planet I was on so I did. Apparently the person discovering it can get a lot of ingame credits by uploading discoveries, so colour me pleased. I took off into space and immediatly got lost. At some point I figured out I had a pulse drive… After spending a very long time travelling to the next planet. Apparently I’m in a red harsh system, something I got mostly from the music that, at some point, really started grating on my ears. This is also the first big problem I have with the game. I’m pretty sure the ambient music of the system and planets is determined by their type and I landed on a horrible one. I even considered turning off my sound, that’s how bad it was.
After I figured out that I had a pulse drive I activated it and jumped to the next planet. Not knowing how to break I luckily slowed down automatically when I hit the next planet’s orbit… Only to be thrown off course and into a non-stop spiral, causing me to turn off my PS4 in frustration. I’m generally quite bad at piloting stuff though, so this is more of a personal frustration that I couldn’t figure out what to do than a game flaw.
Today I logged back in and was back on my starter planet. Apparently my last savepoint was right before I took off to explore. Everytime you exit your spaceship you create a new savepoint, which is a very usefull thing to remember. Now this time, instead of flying off again I used my little ship to start exploring the world itself. I’ve discovered local fauna already. I couldn’t figure out how to register that at first, untill I looked over my controls again. Apparently if you press your left analog stick on the PS4 you “zoom in” on the world, which is also immediatly the way to register flora and fauna apparently. I think I missed out on some stuff because I hadn’t figured it out immediatly, but I’m sure I can make up for that. In the meantime there was more than enough interesting things on my planet next to the living creatures there were abandoned buildings and signs of a civilization that may have once lived on this planet. I’m finding weird statues and buildings that teach me their language. I’ve also already had to kill several hostile sentinels, expanded my inventory and made some new technology. Every new discovery you do/make you can upload to the servers and it will give you ingame currency this goes for markers, but also for registering flora and fauna. It’s really worth sticking around and exploring an entire planet since it’ll make you rich as hell. So I’ve been flying around a bit towards markers that I hadn’t discovered yet, in the meantime making sure I’m stocked up on all the materials I need to fuel both my tools, my suit and my spaceship and scanning all the local plants and creatures in hopes of discovering something I haven’t yet. I guess the real exploration has more or less started for me.

Now for some more technical stuff.
Graphically so far the game looks fine. I’ve not experienced any glitches of any kind and roaming around in space and on planets is smooth. It’s probably not as pretty as it can be on a high-end PC, but my PS4 is holding up nicely and for me it’s pretty and smooth enough.
Gameplay is a bit confusing to start with, mostly because the amount of guidance you get is minimal. After playing about an hour and a half I can say I’m more or less comfortable with the controls while being on foot on the planet and that I have no issues flying around while still on the planet. I’m still discovering more about what my buttons do and how to get around the planet smoothly. Since the game saves you everytime you discover a new marker or leave your spaceship you’ll never lose a lot of progress if you have to unexpectedly log out. It feels like a very nice game to sink either hours and hours into but also to start up and play for a little, flying around and exploring.
In theory the universe of No Man’s Sky is so big that you should be able to explore it and see no one. Reality however isn’t that pretty. I woke up to a random message and group invite of a total stranger who told me his friend spawned on the same planet I spawned on, and that he couldn’t claim it because hey, I did. Apart from the fact that I don’t necessarily like it if I get messages from people I don’t know on any platform I was rather surprised that this would happen so soon after launch. Ofcourse RNG is RNG but the chance that someone happens to spawn on the same planet as me a few hours later is very very tiny. And I feel a bit meh about it. I’m kind of scared that this person jumped to all the other planets in the system and registered them before I have a chance to. This is my planet and my system damnit! So yeah, that was a mild irritation. Other than that the game has been a great experience from both a story, gameplay and technical point of view.

Final Thoughts (for now)
My first two hours or so with this game have been a confusing yet interesting experience. Having to figure out on my own how a lot of stuff worked was nice but also a bit frustrating. I feel I’ve gotten a bit unlucky with the planet I spawned on, but I’m still set on exploring it the best I can anyway. Controls are good once you figure out how everything works. Inventory is limited at the start so you’ll have to manage a lot! Making sure that you’re stocked on the most important materials to keep you going is a must. Treat it as a survival game more than an exploration game in the start and you have the right attitude.
The only major downside for me was the music/sound for this particular system and planet. Once in space the ambient soundtrack and music got so annoying that I wanted to turn off my sound. Other than that I’m really curious as to how this game will evolve and I will probably sink quite some hours into it.