Watch: Why I'm not sticking with No Man's Sky
I can't Gek on with it.
It feels strange to say it so soon after launch, but I think I'm about done with No Man's Sky. On paper it's very much my kind of game - I'm a big Elite: Dangerous fan and very much enjoy bimbling around in open world games - but there's simply something about the experience of playing No Man's Sky that rings hollow.
I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about this and I'm convinced the reason for the flat gameplay experience lies somewhere between procedural generation and emergent gameplay - specifically that No Man's Sky has shedloads of the former and almost none of the latter.
The video above explains what I mean in greater detail, with reference to other games that use procedural generation to far greater effect. Sad as I am to say it, I feel like I've less reached a journey milestone in No Man's Sky and more reached journey's end.