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Can 'No Man's Sky' Redeem Itself With Its Third Free Update? (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget's new article on No Man's Sky: Developer Hello Games has gone some way to giving the people what they've wanted Friday with the third major update since the title's launch. "Atlas Rises" (aka update 1.3) adds the beginnings of real-time multiplayer to the space exploration game, though admittedly, "interaction with others is currently very limited." Thanks to the update, up to 16 players can now exist together in the same space. Fellow pilots will appear as floating blue orbs moving about the terrain, and proximity-based voice chat will allow players to plan their next jump together. That's pretty much it, but Hello Games calls it "an important first step into the world of synchronous co-op in No Man's Sky."

Meeting up with other explorers should be a bit easier with the new portal system, which allows players to travel between planets instantly, including to random worlds. Taking a leaf out of Stargate lore, activating a sequence of glyphs on portals can designate specific exit points. Hello Games hopes the community will band together to create something of a database of glyph sequences... There's 30 hours of new storyline gameplay and a new mission system that lets you pick up all kinds of different odd jobs from a forever-updating list. Star systems now are now graded with "wealth, economy and conflict levels," giving you more information on desirable destinations (depending on what you're after). There's a new class of ships, new exotic planet types and a new "interdimensional race" to contend with. Terrain editing is now possible provided you have the appropriate Multi-Tool enhancement, and crashed freighters on the surface of planets serve as new scavenging hotspots... to its credit, Hello Games continues to push massive, free updates for the title, such that the game is now very different to what it was initially.

The game has been heavily discounted to promote the update, and Saturday it became Amazon's #12 best-selling PS4 game -- and one of Steam's top 100 most-played games.

6 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. easy question by sucko · · Score: 1, Insightful

    no.

  2. $24 on steam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's probably about where it belongs. It was never a $60 game. Still, game is basically dead after all the shit that's happened.

  3. Free update!? by Daimanta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The kind of thought that needs to connect the word 'free' to the word 'update' is so damaged by the current gaming environment that any logical output will be at best a matter of chance, akin a monkey randomly typing a copy of Shakespeare.

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    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
  4. Well... by XSportSeeker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For new players, sure? It's finally delivering most of what was advertised.
    For the fans who bought this early on and were probably the most enthused about the game? I imagine there's pretty much no redemption route for them.
    It's less redemption and more disaster mitigation at this point...

  5. If nothign else good on them for trying to fix it. by Noishkel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For all the, admitted well deserved, hate everyone is laying at the feet of this game at least the developer didn't just abandon it. Many gaming studies gladly cut their losses well beyond this point. But yet the developer keeps doing their best to work on the game. And that's enough to drop the $24 on a copy of it on GOG and try it out.

  6. Re:Fuck co-op, PVP is where it's at! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fuck PvP, go play Unreal/Quake/etc if you want that kind of shit.

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