No Man's Sky is a big deal. Not just because it's literally the largest game ever created, but because it's opening up a new horizon for game design. That said, all is not rosy with the game, especially if you're one of the people who had to wait until Friday to play the game on PC. Many Steam users have reported that the game is poorly optimized for the platform, resulting in a Mixed Steam user rating of 57% positive out of almost 25,000 players.
As much as I wanted to love No Man's Sky, I'm afraid that I must concur.
Since this is the internet, and drama always trumps rationality, I feel the need to express that I am not suggesting that the game's issues are based on its content. That said, here are the two biggest (non-content) issues that are prevalent in No Man's Sky's PC Port.
- Frequent game crashes
- Frequent lag, FPS drops
In my 3 hours with the game, I experienced both of these issues, namely the drop in FPS. The game failed to load on startup multiple times, and then once it did, it was immediately apparent from the title screen that all was not well. Stars flew by at a very jerky pace, and once I began my adventure, I found that the opening crash site was also a problematic area.
On the bright side, once I began walking and exploring, things cleared up rather quickly and the game easily touched a flat 60 FPS. It seems that more resource heavy assets like the Monoliths and fire animations proved taxing on the game's performance. Unfortunately, things only got worse once I fixed the ship and took off for the first time. The transition from space to planetary atmosphere often froze the game for 7-10 seconds at a time, and although the game never crashed, it was clear that this was going to be a persistent problem.
Fortunately, these issues are pretty fixable, but if you're a PC player that's been pondering taking the plunge on No Man's Sky, you may want to hold off until Hello Games has patched these issues.
Source: [No Man's Sky Steam Page]
