A rough play-by-play of the ~2 hours I spent with No Man’s Sky before aggressively uninstalling it.

NMS: "Find your ship and also get some sodium now before you die!"

Me: "Uh, okay, where do I get sodium?"

NMS: "Click the left stick and look for yellow icons! THERMAL PROTECTION FALLING, you're dying!"

Me: "Yeah, and I can already barely see because of this red vignetting on my screen. That yellow icon is really far away, are there really no others closer than that?” *clicks stick again*

NMS: “Scanner is still charging!”

Me: “Ugh, fine. Well I’d better hurry over there then. Hey btw why are your tutorial windows alternating between two different styles and formats?”

NMS: “Oxygen dropping! Sprinting is bad for life support! THERMAL PROTECTION FALLING!”

Me: “Oh my god, fine. Guess I’ll just hope I make it there in time so I don’t die from one thing before I successfully stop myself from dying from another.”

NMS: “You died! *pretentious philosophy quote* Do it again! THERMAL PROTECTION FALLING!”

Me, a little later: “Okay, I got in my ship literally a half second before I died. Now what?”

NMS: “Four things are busted. Each thing will need replacing. A thing is made of two parts. A part is made of 50 pieces of stuff. Go get stuff to make the pieces to make the parts to make the thing! And don’t forget to get the other stuff every two minutes that keeps you from dying and the other other stuff every five minutes that keeps you from dying from the other thing and the other other other stuff that charges your laser so you can keep getting the stuff! THERMAL PROTECTION FALLING!”

Me, a little later, still playing this game for some reason: “Okay, I’m still not sure how to know whether a thing needs to be crafted under the multi-tool menu or the exosuit menu, but I finally got the parts to fix the ship and I only died like 4 more times. Is this where I get to the whole ‘Sky’ part?”

NMS: “Push this button! You’re in space! Incoming message! Land here, now!”

Me: “O…kay.”

NMS: “Your ship is out of fuel! Fuel is made of things made of parts made of stuff! You know what to do!”

Me: “….Well at least I’m out of the extreme heat. Okay, here’s some carbon." *starts shooting plants*

NMS: “A sentinel has shown up! It will shoot you if you keep playing the game!”

Me: “Well fuck this guy then.” *clumsily shoots laser at sentinel until it finally dies*

NMS: “Two more sentinels are coming now! You’re not supposed to play the game here, idiot!”

Me: “JFC, fine. I’ll go somewhere else.” *wanders off and finds more plants*

NMS: “A sentinel has shown up here too! Stop playing the game!”

Me: “Fine, whatever, I have just enough stuff now to make my stuff-refining thing-maker for the part piece.” *goes back to ship*

NMS: “A giant hostile octo-spider-pus is hanging around the ship! You can’t kill it! It won’t go away even after it kills your current spawn! Stop playing the game!”

Me: “Okay, you seem pretty insistent. Fuck me I guess.” *uninstalls*

—–

My friend tells me I just got a bad roll. I shouldn’t get any kind of roll on the tutorial. Also if this game is just gonna be shooting at rocks and flowers and managing meters I want nothing to do with it. Maybe this spacefaring society should have made exosuits that don’t collapse under the elements in a matter of minutes and tiny mining lasers and single-passenger ships that don’t need constant refeuling before they set out to the stars. Extreme no-thank-you to this game.