Category: No Man’s Sky: Beyond

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Cross-platform Multiplayer Coming to No Man’s Sky Tomorrow

No Man's Sky

Hello Games has been working on something big for its next update to sci-fi universe No Man’s Sky. Previously announcing that the title would be coming to Xbox Game Pass, the studio has now confirmed that the Windows 10 version of the videogame will also be Game Pass compatible. What has this to do with virtual reality (VR)? Well, Hello Games want’s to create one big universal family, so it’ll be rolling out cross-platform multiplayer.

No Man's Sky

That right, from tomorrow no matter which platform you’re playing No Man’s Sky on, you’ll be able to meet up with mates. Using a PlayStation VR and your friend has an Oculus Rift, that shouldn’t be an issue.

“We are excited to be able to announce that, starting tomorrow, PlayStation 4 players, Xbox One players and PC players will all be able to explore, journey, survive, build, and trade together. Excitingly, No Man’s Sky is joining what is at the moment a fairly small group of games which support cross-platform multiplayer,” says a Hello Games blog post.

The studio notes some of the key features when it comes to the cross-platform multiplayer and the friend’s system:

  • Replaced the entire network backend, so that players can now make multiplayer connections across all platforms.
  • Ambient multiplayer on the Space Anomaly, in space, or on planets, can now match you with players from any platform.
  • When face-to-face with another player, a quick interaction has been added to smoothly create a new group or invite new players to your existing group.
  • No Man’s Sky Friends can also be added at any time by means of a unique code.
No Man's Sky: Beyond

Alongside all of that here are the VR specific improvements and bug fixes arriving in the update:

  • Upgraded the OpenVR implementation to 1.10.30.
  • Cockpit exit handles can now be grabbed both ways up.
  • Added an option to show the player’s body when playing in VR.
  • Camera height now reflects the height of your character in VR.
  • Improved the accuracy of hand tracking in VR.

While No Man’s Sky has been available since 2016 it wasn’t until last summer that Hello Games released No Man’s Sky: Beyond, adding VR support in the process.

This new update arrives tomorrow, Thursday 11th June. For further No Man’s Sky announcements, keep reading VRFocus.

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No Man’s Sky VR Gets Gross Living Ships In Fresh Update

No Man’s Sky’s range of galaxy-trekking space ships are about to feel a bit more, well, alive.

Developer Hello Games today introduced the Living Ship update, which adds a race of biological space ships to the massive VR-compatible sci-fi adventure. These unique craft aren’t made of nuts and bolts but instead living tissue. And, get this; you can raise one yourself.

Yup, you’ll be able to nurture a ship from an egg until it’s ready to take to the stars. You’ll find their cockpits to be a little more… fleshy than your usual ships. If that sounds cool to you then more power to you; I think it sounds a little gross but who am I to judge?

To go along with the update you’ll also be able to discover the origins of the new ships in a new series of missions.

Plus there’s now more features to space exploration, including new lifeforms and objects and well as NPCs that will interact with you over comms. They’ll either want to trade or might be up to no good.

Finally, on the VR-specific front there’s now improved controls for swimming and new water rendering optimisations for PSVR. A handful of UI fixes round out the update alongside a raft of other quality of life improvements for the wider game.

As with the rest of the game since the launch of last year’s Beyond update, you’ll be able to fly these ships in VR using either PSVR on PS4 or PC VR headsets on PC. We think No Man’s Sky is one of the best VR games you can buy right now, and updates like this continue to give us reasons to dive back in.

Will you be checking out the No Man’s Sky VR Living Ship update with a headset? Let us know in the comments below!

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The Best PlayStation VR Games of 2019

So it’s the end of the year and what a 12 months it has been for virtual reality (VR) fans. With hardware makers pushing out more and more headsets Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has taken a far more relaxed approach by letting PlayStation VR continue to do its thing. The headset has had some excellent videogames appear and here is VRFocus’ pick of the best.

PlayStation VR Group shot

First and foremost this is a list of the best PlayStation VR videogames which launched in 2019. Which means there are several titles which appear on other ‘Best of lists’ that won’t appear here. Beat Saber is a prime example. While the highly popular rhythm-action experience left Early Access in May, that was only for PC (including an Oculus Quest edition). The PlayStation VR version launched in November 2018, hence its omission.

The Best PlayStation VR Games of 2019:

Blood & Truth

Hailing from Sony London Studio, Blood & Truth was the biggest PlayStation VR exclusive of the year by a long shot. Mixing intense action gameplay with a tightly interwoven storyline and cinematic cutscenes, the title showcased what could be achieved with PlayStation VR. VRFocus’ review gave it a full five stars, saying: “From start to finish Blood & Truth is one hell of a ride, a finely choreographed John Woo movie that’s all about sheer entertainment.”

Blood and TruthGhost Giant

Zoink Games’ Ghost Giant, on the other hand, is a very different beast; loveable and kind-hearted. A puzzle adventure where you play the titular Ghost Giant, an invisible friend to a lonely boy named Louis. Placed in the centre of a living cartoon world, you can interact with a lot of the world, helping not only Louis but the other town residents as well.

Perfect for gamers of all ages, Ghost Giant is a relaxed experience full of child-like wonder, being able to open houses and peer inside to see the richly detailed worlds. Great for when you don’t anything too hectic.

Ghost GiantNo Man’s Sky: Beyond

A summer update adding VR support rather than a dedicated VR videogame, even so, No Man’s Sky: Beyond was a major addition from Hello Games. With a massive procedurally generated universe to explore, new planets to discover, unusual creatures to find and other players to team up with, No Man’s Sky: Beyond offers quite possibly the most VR gameplay for your money. Plus the there’s the added benefit that the update was free for those who already own the original version.

Unless you really don’t like sci-fi and flying around in spaceships, then No Man’s Sky: Beyond is a solid addition to any VR library.

No Man's Sky: BeyondTetris Effect

How do you make one of the greatest, most iconic puzzle videogames even better? Give it to a team which includes Enhance Games and let them work their magic. Offering both VR and non-VR gameplay, the core Tetris mechanics remain untouched with some added extras for those well versed in the puzzle title.

The big change comes for the visual and sound design, with a feast for your eyes and ears. Needless to say, while the non-VR version does look and sound nice, the effects are far more pronounced and engaging. And when it comes to addictive gaming Tetris Effect doesn’t disappoint.

Tetris EffectTrover Saves the Universe

When the guy who helped co-create Rick & Morty decided to found his own videogame studio and then create a VR title, you know it’s going to be a little different from the rest. Trover Saves the Universe has that weird and zany humour Justin Roiland is known for, combined with a third-person adventure, where you control Trover, a little purple eye-hole monster trying to save the universe from a beaked lunatic named Glorkon, who just so happens to have kidnapped your dogs and put them in his eye sockets. Exactly…

Trover Saves the Universe

Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure

So what about proper multiplayer titles? While No Man’s Sky: Beyond does feature multiplayer, you can’t enjoy it when a few friends are around. That’s where Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure comes in handy. Exclusive to PlayStation VR, the title uses the social screen (TV) to allow up to four people to play locally, one in VR and three via the TV. The job is to collect treasure and not let the submarine you’re in suffer too much damage.

It’s a fast and frantic videogame where the VR player is the captain, with a different viewpoint and tasks to the other players. Thus encouraging everyone to have a go in VR. There is a single-player mode but Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure is all about the social gameplay.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under PressureFive Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted

What’s a ‘Best of’ VR list without a horror title thrown in to scare you. Bringing the classic franchise into VR, Five Night’s at Freddy’s: Help Wanted combines all the original mini-game levels with a bunch of new ones. Not for the faint-hearted, Five Night’s at Freddy’s: Help Wanted is full of jump scares as you try to survive the night in the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza security office, or repair vents in the depths of Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental.

When it comes to playing VR horror keeping the lights on won’t help, you need nerves of steel and Five Night’s at Freddy’s: Help Wanted certainly helps test that.

Five Nights at Freddys VR

A Fisherman’s Tale

Released all the way back in January by French studio InnerspaceVR, A Fisherman’s Tale is another puzzler for those who like something a little different. Clinching the VR Game of the Year at the VR Awards 2019, A Fisherman’s Tale is an experience about perspective and a little wooden sailor.

Delightfully charming in its design and gameplay, the single-player videogame centres around a lighthouse which you’re both inside and outside of. Confused? Don’t worry as it’s all about picking stuff up and learning how to manipulate your surroundings. Great for new and veteran VR players alike.

A Fisherman’s TaleVacation Simulator

A followup to the insanely popular Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator is like one massive toybox split across three different regions, a Beach, Forest and Mountain. Inside each one are loads of mini-games to complete as well as other fun stuff to play with. Challenges range from building sandcastles and making burgers to throwing snowballs and a little skiing.

With light-hearted humour throughout Vacation Simulator is another VR experience suited for all players, designed to showcase how immersive and unique VR technology can be in comparison to standard videogames.

Vacation Simulator

Concrete Genie

Another title which isn’t purely VR, Concrete Genie’s main campaign isn’t VR compatible. Instead, the title has two ‘VR modes’, the ‘VR Experience’ campaign which has a basic narrative and is required to complete before unlocking ‘Free Paint’, so you can let your creative ideas go wild.

With a visually stunning aesthetic, Concrete Genie offers an interesting mix of VR and non-VR gameplay depending on what you fancy at the time. Plus it’s a creative stop-gap until Dreams eventually arrives in 2020.

Concrete Genie

 

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No Man’s Sky Wins PlayStation’s Best PSVR Experience Of 2019

The PlayStation EU blog put out its Best of 2019 Awards post, naming the winners in various categories across the PlayStation range. No Man’s Sky took home first place for Best PS VR Experience of 2019, after the Beyond update earlier this year launched VR support on PlayStation and PC VR platforms.

The awards were voted on by fans over the period of a week, with nearly one million votes across all categories.

Clearly PlayStation players were enamored with No Man’s Sky VR update this year, voting it at first place in what the PlayStation blog called “something of an upset.” We’re not too sure what the folks over at Sony were expecting to take first place instead of No Man’s Sky, but Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown came in at second, LA Noire: The VR Case Files in third and Blood & Truth in fourth.

The honorable mentions category included Concrete Genie, Trover Saves the Universe and Everybody’s Golf VR.

No Man’s Sky is one of the games nominated for our own Best of 2019 awards as well. You can read David’s thoughts on the game’s nomination here, along with his reviews of the PSVR and PC VR versions of the game from earlier in the year. Blood & Truth is also one of our Best of 2019 nominees as well, but none of the other games from the PlayStation Awards list made our own list so far.

You can see the full list of categories, including non-PSVR awards, on the PlayStation EU Blog, and keep an eye out for end of the year awards.

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No Man’s Sky Synthesis Update Includes ‘Host Of VR-Specific Improvements’

When No Man’s Sky Beyond launched in August of this year it took the VR world by storm and Hello Games have quietly been toiling away at updates ever since. Now, the Synthesis Update, is the biggest one since Beyond essentially relaunched the game as a whole.

According to an email received from Tim Woodley, head of publishing at Hello Games, the No Man’s Sky Synthesis update includes nearly 300 different bug fixes and feature updates. It’s essentially an amalgamation of several improvements and changes that just hadn’t made their way into a previous update round yet.

“The Synthesis Update is our eighth major free chapter since launch,” says Woodley. “It’s a stepping stone on the way to much larger plans, but contains a lot of features fans are hungry for.”

no mans sky synthesis ship salvage

While we weren’t provided with the full No Man’s Sky Synthesis patch notes prior to the embargo lifting, but they should be live here if you’re reading this. However, we did get a sneak peek at some of the biggest changes, according to Hello Games:

  • We’ve added some of our most requested smaller features. You can now upgrade your starship, or salvage ships for parts. Players can own and customise multiple Multi-Tools and create multiple characters in the customiser to switch between.

  • We’ve matched up features across VR and non-VR, so VR players can now ride creatures and take photos, and non-VR players can drive vehicles in first person. As well as a host of VR specific improvements based on feedback from players.

  • We’ve streamlined, sped up and clarified lots of inventory and UI issues, including a whole new space map and a Personal Refiner you can use directly from your inventory.

  • There are new technologies and base parts – we’re excited to see what players do with these, especially with the Featured Bases we recently introduced to show off the best the community comes up with.

  • We’ve overhauled and optimised the terrain manipulator, with new visual effects and new ways to carve your mark in the landscape. As well as undo functionality and the ability to make a permanent stamp on the world with your edits.

  • And there are literally hundreds (297 in all!) of other bug fixes / small features / bits of polish that lift and bind the game together.

Let us know what you think of the No Man’s Sky update down in the comments below!

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No Man’s Sky: Beyond Patch Adds Weekend Missions, Featured Bases, And Bug Fixes

Hello Games provided a new development update on No Man’s Sky: Beyond today, announcing some new features and bug fixes for the popular space-exploration game.

The development update accompanies Patch 1.25, which releases today, and includes new weekend missions and featured bases, among other minor updates and bug fixes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siyBBebPCE0

Weekend missions are probably the biggest addition in this patch. They feature a new chapter available at the Nexus, once a week from Friday evenings (GMT) until early on Monday morning. These new weekend missions will run for “the foreseeable future” and will change every week in No Man’s Sky, naturally, offering something new for regular players on a recurring basis. Hello Games also gave a description of this first mission, starting this weekend, as follows:

“Nada’s spacetime loom has detected a concerning pattern resonating across the universe, and they need help from their explorer friends to investigate. Readings indicate a disturbance in reality, where an anomalous – and possibly sinister – force has begun to leak through to this universe…”

Besides the weekend missions, the next biggest feature for this No Man’s Sky update is featured bases, which will be accessible via the Space Anomaly Teleporter. Hello Games will keep an eye on some of the coolest bases built by the community and select a few as featured bases, which are easily accessible and available for you to visit.

In general, the team also noted that their player numbers are now at the highest they’ve been since launch, with both VR and non-VR modes remaining popular in No Man’s Sky. Hello Games assured players that they’re also still working on a number of requested features from the community behind the scenes, which are still coming but weren’t announced today.

There are also a variety of smaller changes and bug fixes, which you can view in full here.

Are you still exploring the endless worlds and planets of No Man’s Sky in VR? Let us know how you’re enjoying the game since the Beyond update launch a few months ago. And make sure to read our full review of the PC and PSVR versions, plus check our coverage hub for several guides written about the game.

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No Man’s Sky PSVR Update Looks Better, But Performance Can Suffer

Rejoice! Today’s update for No Man’s Sky Beyond drastically reduces the blur for PSVR players. But there are some strings attached.

As Hello Games previously promised, Update 1.12 for the game tackles some of the blurriness we first saw when the game launched last month. The visual hit was enough to make us score the PSVR version of the game slightly lower than the PC VR version (which also launched with its fair share of issues). Hello Games has been cranking away at constant updates since, though.

https://youtu.be/GpuECQEtet0

You can see the results of today’s update in the video we took above. Bear in mind this is directly captured from a standard PS4, though there’s no mention of official PS4 Pro support yet, either. It records in 720p, so the difference isn’t quite as pronounced as it is inside the headset itself.

Jumping into the PSVR version of the game with improved visuals feels like a breath of fresh air. Textures are much crisper, giving the world a much more polished feel and draw distances seem to be improved too. We’ll have a side-by-side video coming soon to help. But it’s not a perfect solution.

I tried Update 1.12 on two planets. The smaller of the two ran perfectly fine but, on the larger planet I noticed significant stutter when turning my head. You can’t really see it in the video, but it’s why I’m moving my head so much. To double-check, I went off-planet and traveled to the smaller one. No issues there. But, when I reloaded the game and returned to the original planet, the stutter came back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaaVbnNQqwE&feature=youtu.be

Today’s update is also meant to bring further improvements to the PC VR version of the game, though we haven’t gone hands-on with those yet. The full changelog is right here.

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No Man’s Sky VR Guide: How to Get Your First Freighter (For Free)

Attaining your first freighter in No Man’s Sky VR (read our review here) is an absolute joy. You can warp it into existence from nearly anywhere, making it the perfect mobile base of operations. But how does one come into possession of such a titanic craft? Well, it’s actually much easier than you might expect.

But before I explain how to get your first freighter (for free) in No Man’s Sky VR, I want to break down the way that freighters are classified. No Man’s Sky VR boasts ‘regular’ freighters and ‘capital’ freighters, which vary wildly in inventory size and exchange value. Inside of each category, there are then C, B, A, and S-class freighters.

Regular freighters range from 15 to 19 inventory slots and are valued between 8 to 15 million units. Capital freighters, meanwhile, range from 24 to 34 inventory slots and are valued between 26 to 178 million units, respectively.

no mans sky freighter captain

Do Not Buy Any Freighters Below Class A

Freighters are expensive. They’re also easy to get as a quest reward very early into the game, without much effort or investment at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t explained too well through regular gameplay. You will often see lower-tier freighters in No Man’s Sky VR warp into systems and pitch themselves up for sale, enticing players that have saved up just enough past the opening hours of the game. This is a shame for anybody who invests their hard-earned units on a ship they could easily have gotten for free.

That said, you can only have one freighter at a time, and you can’t sell additional freighters outright, so buying a C-class or B-class freighter is useless. Especially considering you’ll quickly learn that you can earn a freighter of equal or near-equal value for absolutely no units at all.

It’s possible for your free freighter to be an A class or even an S class freighter, despite the likelihood being far, far lower than with the other classes. What I’m saying here is that you might just not want to buy any freighters at all. Let the game do its thing, then upgrade once you find the one you’re satisfied replacing your free one with.

no man's sky planet upload centauri

Do Go Looking for Trouble in No Man’s Sky VR

In order to stumble over the quest, you’ll need to go hunting for pirates. Not just any garden-variety No Man’s Sky VR pirates will do in this case, either. Once you’ve completed the first series of tutorial missions and acquired the hyperdrive, start moving from solar system to solar system as you please until the quest springs up. Using a Conflict Scanner to tell which systems are more dangerous than others might not prove useful here, since the game actually calculates whether it’ll give you a rescue mission based on the number of times you’ve warped.

Once you find the quest, you’ll know it. You’ll get a distress signal in your ship communicator from the captain of the gigantic ship sitting in front of you that’s being attacked by no fewer than six pirates. While you can accept this and complete the mission as requested, you can also turn the captain down and fly off, or worse, shoot down the freighter’s cargo pods and take whatever precious loot you find, essentially aiding the pirates.

Unfortunately, becoming a pirate and siding with the attackers won’t help you get a free freighter in No Man’s Sky VR, so we’ll go with the first one.

Watch No Man’s Sky VR Space Combat Gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvjN01xVzNk

Blast all of the pirate ships in the area, which should be easy with even the most basic starter ship, and land your ship inside of the freighter afterward. You should have gotten a message from the captain once all of the pirates were shot down, and they should now be waiting to speak with you up in the ship’s bridge. Proceed from the docking bay up the stairs and follow the corridor to the bridge.

Speaking with the captain will quickly reveal that they’re way too old for this job and they’d prefer not to have to run such a massive ship on their own anymore. Guess who’s extending an offer to replace them? The captain will give you the entire freighter for the grand price of 0 units, which is quite fair given that you saved their life and all of their cargo a few moments prior.

Currently, it’s possible to earn a capital freighter rather than a regular freighter by not accepting the first free freighter you run across. When you break the siege on the second freighter you discover under attack, you should receive an offer for a free capital freighter with greatly expanded inventory slots over the first freighter you ran into previously.

no mans sky freighter menu

Enjoy Your New  No Man’s Sky VR Freighter

Freighters in No Man’s Sky VR are useful for a number of things. You can warp them to you from the ground or from space without incurring any fuel cost. But what’s the point of warping your freighter around at all? First of all, it operates as a mobile parking garage that stores all six of your regular-size starships. Second, any vacant parking space can be occupied by an NPC ship, which means that it’s a mobile trade hub as well. Third, you can amass a fleet of frigates to send out on missions that foster pretty sizeable monetary and mineral rewards.

You can remotely teleport items from your exosuit and ship inventories to your freighter inventory, clearing up space on the fly. And then you can build the freighter’s interior out as much as you’re able to afford, meaning that you can construct a very large but aesthetically consistent base right here, then take it anywhere you go.

While expanding your freighter base, also note that you can put cargo containers in for immediate remote access to any of those fine storage slots you’ve been filling up at your planetary bases. If you put a valuable item into storage on Planet A, you can pluck it right back out while you’re onboard your freighter, and vice versa.

On a final note, your new No Man’s Sky VR freighter will also spawn ships to defend you from pirate or even Sentinel attacks, making it the perfect floating fortress from which to stage interstellar heists or defend trade routes. If the heat gets too hot in space (despite space being mostly vacuum) you can always fight in style — with a freighter and an entire personal fleet at your back.

For more on No Man’s Sky VR, don’t forget to check out our coverage hub and read our other guides on getting started in VR, making money fast, and base building basics. Or read/watch our full review here. And keep an eye on the official website for updates.

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No Man’s Sky Latest Experimental Patch Targets VR Performance On Rift

Late last night Hello Games updated the Experimental Branch of No Man’s Sky on Steam with additional fixes for VR users and some of those fixes were specifically targeting Rift this time.

Last week the Experimental Branch was updated with improvements for Vive and Index, but this week the developer specifically listed Rift improvements as an item on the patch notes. According to the developer’s Steam forum, this latest update does the following:

Experimental Branch Update 26/08
  • Further adjustments to PC VR optimisations.
  • Improved VR-specific anti-aliasing.
Experimental Branch Update 27/08
  • Fixed a rendering crash.
Experimental Branch Additional Update 27/08
  • Broadened the PC VR optimisations to include Oculus.
  • When in VR, removed a number of settings that have no effect in VR.

Since this isn’t the main branch of the game you have to opt into it by right clicking on No Man’s Sky in your Steam Library, selecting ‘Properties,’ navigating to the ‘Betas’ tab, and then typing in ‘3xperimental’ into the box and clicking ‘Check Code.’ Then you should see “experimental – Experimental” listed as your opt into choice. After a short update, you’ll be good to go.

However, it is of course worth noting that you opt into this beta version at your own risk. There is always the chance it could corrupt a save file or result in unexpected bugs, so you’d be best advised to back up your save file.

I just tried out the new Experimental branch on my Rift S and could notice a slight performance difference. It wasn’t dramatic, but around my main base on my home planet the stuttering is less than it was before and framerate feels much smoother. Exiting and entering planet atmospheres feels smoother as well and flying is very noticeably improved in terms of performance.

Hopefully next Hello Games considers issuing a PS4 Pro-focused patch to improve the blurry PSVR visuals. In the meantime, read our reviews of the game for the PSVR version and PC VR version.

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No Man’s Sky PSVR Review: Fully-Realized (But Blurrier) Virtual Universe

No Man’s Sky VR support has officially arrived in the Beyond Update and we’ve got our fully finalized official review for the PSVR version of the game right here. 

Every game of No Man’s Sky begins both exactly the same and completely differently for each person. New players always awake on a strange, unfamiliar planet with nothing but a space suit and displaced spaceship awaiting repairs with the guidance to follow an identical set of instructions to get up and running — it’s the same, but different.

You see, No Man’s Sky is built on top of Hello Games’ ambitious procedural generation system that crafts billions of planets across millions of star systems and simulates plants, animals, terrain, alien species, economies, and more throughout the entire universe as a whole. Initially released three years ago, No Man’s Sky has evolved over the years and dramatically improved itself up until now, the Beyond Update, which is officially 2.0 for the non-VR version. With this update comes a revamped multiplayer experience, tons of new game mechanics like creature taming and expanded base building, and most importantly, complete VR support. At least, the 1.0 edition of VR as Sean Murray from Hello Games puts it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siyBBebPCE0

The premise alone for No Man’s Sky is almost too good to be true, especially when you add VR support into the mix, and that’s probably why it’s taken over three years post-launch to get to this point. This is a game in which you can explore a vast, massive planet full of unique flora and fauna, go mining, dig caves, explore underwater, terraform, build bases, and uncover ancient relics — then take off and fly to another planet or solar system and do it all over again without ever hitting a loading screen. It’s remarkable. And seeing it all from inside of a VR headset is a rare kind of escapism I haven’t seen executed this well before.

I’m frankly envious of someone that can don a VR headset for the first time and experience a game like this as their introduction to the medium. There is so much to do and see it will likely sour the taste of future experiences. Even though I could be considered a VR veteran at this point, it still caught me by surprise just how staggering the sense of scale was or the illusion of presence as I stood on my starting planet, stranded and alone. It’s the difference between wanting to finish the tutorial so you can get to the real game and wanting to find the necessary resources to keep surviving. It’s a connected universe that feels much larger than just a game.

Truth be told No Man’s Sky is a bit like several games jammed together into one package. While there is a main storyline about aliens, ancient civilizations, and solving mysteries, that’s far from the point of it all. This is basically, “it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey” boiled down into a video game. The sense of discovery is so ingrained into No Man’s Sky’s DNA that players can rename everything they discover from planets and solar systems to animals and flora.

With that ambition though, to let No Man’s Sky offer a bit of everything, is the caveat that none of the individual pieces are as refined or as deep as they could be. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s as vast as an ocean and as deep as a puddle, but there are whiffs of that notion throughout. For example, combat is about a bare bones as it gets — especially on foot. You point and shoot your mining beam for rudimentary attacks early on or point and shoot your boltcaster and other weapons you’ll eventually unlock later in the game. There isn’t a stat-based progression system of any kind, no abilities you unlock, it’s just very basic. Obviously you can install new technologies on your exosuit and ship to get that sort of gradual advancement, but it’s rarely combat focused. 

Other aspects like ship and exocraft controls feel very wonky and floaty in VR at first, taking some real getting used to. UI navigation is mostly intuitive with lots of holographic menus that you point at to make selections, but it gets tedious after a few dozen hours. Quick gesture commands in place of hot keys could have helped a lot. And targeting icons when using the Analysis Visor, something that was already tough to do in non-VR at times, is nearly impossible in VR. The lack of a crosshair just makes it painfully frustrating to accurately pick what you want to tag on the horizon when icons are cluttered together.

Hello Games have stopped just short of establishing this as a true MMO, but most of the pieces are here. The whole universe is persistent and players can see your bases on your planets and find things that you’ve named in real-time. If you’re on the same planet as another player at the same time, you’ll probably see them even if you’re not in a “group” together. But you can absolutely link up with friends and go exploring together or visit the new Space Anomaly social hub that includes a Nexus full of group multiplayer missions.

No Man's Sky VR New no man's sky vr ship warp drive no man's sky planet upload centauri

Hopefully the networking issues are resolved soon though, because it makes it difficult to enjoy a lot of the new functionality. While playing in a group with friends, there is a weird desyncing issue that pops up where you can see their icon and hear each other like you’re on the same planet, but cannot see each other. Like they exist in a separate but identical dimension. Avatars freeze in place and stop moving forcing a reload as well. Not to mention the slew of bugs that still exist like container items suddenly not letting you interact, your ship spinning in circles instead of landing at the Space Anomaly, or objects and terrain clipping through your base sporadically. 

There are a lot of moving parts here and a lot of those parts are still broken, especially in VR.

The Nexus missions in the new Space Anomaly hub offer great replayable variety with good rewards, too. Hunting down a pack of space pirates as a group, for example, can net well over 200,000 units. Some missions even task you with things such as establishing colonies and outposts on planets or taming creatures.

This is an incredibly dense and complex game. I’ve logged about 40 hours since the VR update released, a bit of which has been outside of VR to compare things, and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve still got some base building tutorial missions left uncompleted in my log because I keep getting sidetracked with other activities.

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No Man’s Sky is all about diversions like this. You could do any one of a thousand things that may seem trivial or boring at first, and then realize you spent six hours digging holes and stocking up on resources for your next base building expedition. I’ve flown around in space, hunting pirates and blowing up asteroids for precious minerals for hours while listening to podcasts and music while inside the headset, like an intergalactic bounty hunter. I’ve also sat in my cockpit while acid rain pours down with my eyes closed, relaxing, while I listen to the droplets bounce off the glass. 

When playing No Man’s Sky in VR it’s easy to not only get lost in terms of finding purpose and direction with what to do next in this nearly infinite procedural sandbox, but to get lost mentally as well; to lose yourself and forget about reality. It’s an overwhelming and captivating feeling that amplifies everything else the game does so well. 

There are just so many things to do and see it’s hard to summarize my thoughts and experiences, let alone articulate the breadth of it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du6svxbKvy0

As far as VR ports are concerned, No Man’s Sky is head and shoulders above its peers in terms of pure functionality. Performance issues aside, they’ve done tremendous work to get the game running and feeling “right” inside a headset. Everything from the inventory interactions, terraforming planets, driving vehicles, flying ships, shooting guns, building bases, and more is completely changed to fully support VR motion controllers. I’d even go so far as to say that building bases, manipulating terrain, and mining resources feels better than it does in non-VR mode because of the spatial awareness and 3D presence offered in a headset.

One of the most intuitive parts of it all is the wrist-based menu system that has you point at your wrist to pull up holograms of components for building or even a tiny hologram of your ship prior to summoning it. Reaching out with your hands and pointing feels extremely natural, albeit a bit clunky for some things. It’d be nice if there was a single gesture or button that opened your inventory since you spend so much time looking at it instead of having to twist your wrist and laser point at the right spot each time first.

Comfort

Comfort options are pretty standard in No Man’s Sky. You can switch between both smooth and teleport-based locomotion as well as both snap and smooth turning. There’s also a field of view dimmer. On PSVR you can use both PS Move controllers and the DualShock 4 controller at any time, freely. A good method is to stand with Moves while out of a vehicle and then sit with DualShock when inside of a vehicle. Technically you can move around the room while playing, but if you get too far away from the “center” of the play space it asks you to return or recenter manually. There are plenty of options to keep No Man’s Sky as comfortable as possible while playing, but the real bottleneck on PSVR is the visual difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5LyfG2E0-A

No Man’s Sky PSVR Final Verdict

No Man’s Sky is very much more than the sum of its parts. When looked at under a microscope individually, each element can show significant blemishes with plenty of room to be more polished, more dynamic, and more expansive, but to focus too intently on the moving parts and not take it in as a collection of its immersive ambitions would be missing the point. Performance issues and some non-game breaking bugs aside, to appreciate what makes No Man’s Sky VR so special is to appreciate the underlying appeal of VR as a medium. They’re both about exploring a vast, endless sea of fantastical destinations. They’re both about embodiment and unrivaled immersion. And above all else they’re both about becoming who you want to be by exploring the far corners of seemingly limitless potential.

With regard to the PSVR version specifically, it’s no small miracle that the game runs on Sony’s headset at all. But the game takes a significant hit in the visuals department. Planets and space stations are really blurry, which is a massive shame for a game all about exploration. You can also expect longer load times when first booting the game up. The game is still entirely playable, but there’s no question that the PC VR version is the superior of the two. There’s currently no difference between the standard version of the game on PS4 and the PS4 Pro, so there’s hope that Hello Games could improve the latter version later on.

No Man’s Sky is available with optional VR support on both PC and PS4. This review is specifically focused on the PSVR version using a standard PS4. For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines.

And for more on No Man’s Sky VR, read our guides on base building, changing your appearance, and getting started with beginner info from a VR perspective. Or you can read our detailed interview with Sean Murray himself.

You can read our PC VR-focused version of this review right here.

The post No Man’s Sky PSVR Review: Fully-Realized (But Blurrier) Virtual Universe appeared first on UploadVR.