I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m on a planet with a crashed ship, a cryptic message about following some kind of path, some weird rocks and a bunch of animals. I need to try and find some fuel and other things to patch up my ship to get the heck off this world. Annoyingly the main things I need seem to be quite far away from where I started. That doesn’t stop me finding everything required after about ten minutes of searching. What I should do is head straight back to my ship, but I get cocky. There are some shiny things near me and I want them.

That was my first mistake in No Man’s Sky. A horde of flying robots, known as Sentinels, descended upon me and thanks to not fully understanding what was happening I quickly died. When I respawned I noticed a marker for my grave. Curious I ran back to it and was able to pick up the inventory I had lost due to my failed fight. I should’ve headed straight back to my ship, but instead I saw more shiny things and tried to go after them. The Sentinels descended upon me again, but I didn’t try to fight them this time.

I ran. I ran as fast as I could back towards my ship, now that I had everything I needed. That’s when my hazard protection levels in my suit hit zero. I continued to run as my shield took hit after hit. One more shot and I would be dead, but I was so close to the ship. So close to safety. I dove in, quickly sorted through my inventory to fix my ship and shot off into space. That’s when I saw just a small glimpse of the scope of No Man’s Sky. As the clouds cleared and I exited the world’s atmosphere I paused for a moment to take in the star system around me. With various planets around I wondered which to fly to next, pointed my ship towards it, hit a button and zoomed through space. It was that simple.

Later on those journeys may be occasionally broken up by crossing the path of a space battle, which can be annoying mainly because ship combat is not the sharpest. For the most part though you hit a button and zone out for the allotted amount of time. On planets you need to have a bit more of your wits about you so that you spot landmarks, but you don’t have to worry about crashing your ship. In some situations this can be annoying, but for the most part it’s quite pleasant to fly about without the worry of crashing that most games with flying vehicles have.

The pleasantness is helped thanks to how nice No Man’s Sky looks. Its colour palette and procedural planets mean you’ll see a lot of genuinely lovely places that you’ll want to explore. As you explore there’s all kinds of things to try and find, from monoliths that help you understand more about the galaxy and the races that occupy it, to trading outposts. There are plenty of materials to mine if you want to, although the constant nosiness of the Sentinels will try and usher you away from doing that. You need to mine to build and fuel things, but you will quickly get bored if that is all you do. The Sentinels help break up that monotony whilst also reminding you to carry on exploring somewhere else.

The items you get from mining can be traded in at various points throughout the game. The amount you receive for it can vary. This means in some areas it will be far more profitable to mine something fairly common as opposed to, for example, gold. The money you get can be used for various things, such as buying more crafting materials or purchasing new ships and multi-tools. Annoyingly though it’s a clunky experience to track back to star systems thanks to an overly difficult to use star map and lack of fast travel. This means you are better off making the most of a good trade deal whilst you can.

Trading may be all well and good, but what about the story of the game? What makes you go from A to B? Well the answer to that is your own personal curiosity for the most part. There is a story path that can be triggered at the start of the game, but really it’s more of a pointer of what to do. It nudges you along just enough, but if you want any real meat to the lore of No Man’s Sky you’re going to have to explore. The previously mentioned monoliths can help you understand the history of some of the races of aliens you talk to as you play. You can hunt down language stones for those races and try to understand them better too if you want.  Even some of the trading posts will have puzzles that will help give you a bit of a background at what might’ve happened on that planet or to a certain race.

It may all sound very minor, but that’s because No Man’s Sky is not a game where the focus is on its story. Its focus is on exploring a galaxy, seeing beautiful things and having some cool moments. It may be a tired cliché, but it’s something that is definitely not for everyone. This isn’t an intense space travel simulator or a story rich RPG. It’s an easy to play exploration survival game that is perfect to relax to after a stressful day. Finding creatures and plants that look like something you’ve never seen before and giving them a hilarious name is strangely rewarding. Those that enjoy what the game has to offer will find the thing they want to keep going back to. Whether that is planet jumping, monolith hunting, puzzle solving, sentinel fighting, starship dogfighting, language learning or just exploring there is plenty to do. They’re just not necessarily things that everyone will want to do.

• You can watch me play over an hour of No Man’s Sky whilst expanding on my thoughts in the Let’s Play below. In it I show how warping, space battles, Sentinel shooting and more work whilst trying to keep things fairly spoiler free.

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