Shortly before the release of No Man's Sky, Sean Murray, the game's director, predicted that the game "might not be for everyone" and that he expected it to be "super divisive." His prediction could not have proven more true. No Man's Sky, released for both PS4 and PC, has taken the gaming world by storm, for better or worse, with players and reviewers seemingly split down the middle as to whether or not the game lived up to its hype and whether or not its worthy of a high rating score.

Anyone who follows gaming news even slightly has undoubtedly heard of No Man's Sky. But for those unfamiliar, No Man's Sky is a first-person Survival/Adventure/Sandbox video game developed and published by indie developer Hello Games, and released on PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows (PC). The game was initially announced in 2013, and has been highly anticipated ever since. The game's primary feature is its revolutionary size and scale, made possible by procedural generation. It drops the player in a fictional universe, and presents them with a non-linear means of exploration. While there is a loose overarching narrative players can choose to follow, there are other paths that players can take, or they can choose to take no path at all and simply explore for countless hours. Almost every aspect of the game is created through procedural generation: in other words, driven by math. Using math to generate physics, terrain, weather, flora and fauna, and so forth, almost every planet is promised to be unique, and because math is universal (1+1 is always 2), all players share the same universe. (Although the PC and PS4 versions of the game use different servers.) There are countless numbers of solar systems that players are free to explore and discover - discoveries which can be uploaded - and in all there are said to be over 18 quintillion planets. To put this in some perspective, there are - according to NPR - roughly 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth. As if that weren't impressive enough, the planets themselves are indeed large, and you could spend your entire gaming experience trying to walk every step on a single one. Players are dropped on starting planets at random, where they can then collect resources to keep themselves alive and their ships fueled (as well as earn in-game money through a trading system), and the universe is so large that Murray suggested the chances of ever running into another real player would be slim to none. This, however, is where the trouble begins.

Though many of the promises of the game were kept, many were also seemingly cut before release. For example, players were originally told they'd be able to land on asteroids in space: this did not come to pass. Players were also shown a universe with much more developed and complex physics, but these physics seem to have been simplified in the released version of the game. The PC version of the game has hardly any graphical advantages over the PS4 version, and its release was plagued by optimization and frame rate issues, with many players being unable to play the game at all. Though much of these problems have since been fixed with patching, it has undoubtedly left a sour taste in players mouths. The randomness and variety of planets also appears to have been exaggerated in previews of the game.

While there is still an impressive variety to discover, it's not quite as vast as what was promised early on. Some of the complaints are of course unfounded, and speak to why Murray suggested the game would be divisive. Though players share a universe, the game is not meant to be multiplayer, and this has been repeated on numerous occasions. Still, some players went in expecting such an experience and were unsurprisingly disappointed. This came to a head when two players shockingly managed to find each other within a few days of the game's release, and arranged to meet at the same location only to find that they could not see one another. (It's still unclear why this is, as it was suggested by Murray that players would in fact be able to see one another if they were lucky enough to meet.) The game is also meant to be more of an 'experience' than an actual game, and while there are periodic episodes where combat is necessary and there is an overarching narrative, these things are minimal at best. No Man's Sky is much more of a zen experience than anything else, a thing of beauty to be explored and appreciated rather than rushed through guns blazing, and this can be frustrating and unfamiliar to players used to something more like Call of Duty.

While the game is not everything it promised to be, it is beautiful and noteworthy. Particularly if you're into casual gaming and/or visual experiences, No Man's Sky is definitely worth your time and money, and supporting indie developers is always a good thing. The game is still a work in progress, with hints toward other features such as base building coming in the future. Until then, my personal rating for the game is an 8/10. It's certainly worthy of some criticisms, and the developers have questions to answer, but this doesn't mean the game isn't worthy of time and cannot be enjoyed. The experience of No Man's Sky is truly what you make of it, and with such a large universe you're unlikely to find a lack of things to do or of discoveries to make.