No Man’s Sky again, back in the central settlement of Drammen, Norway I founded last post. I managed to get enough wood to expand my somewhat pathetic house into a slightly respectable one, now with a second story and a sort of ramp/deck thing. It’s still dark as hell inside despite my placing lamps and glowy plants in there, though. Apparently these assholes can’t afford better than 40 watt bulbs.

Exploring my surroundings, I find the lake isn’t dangerous to swim in. Whatever that crap in there is, it’s not toxic. Looks like tomato soup from this angle, in fact, one of my five favorite soups probably (alongside lobster bisque, mushroom, French onion, and cod chowder. Subscribe to my upcoming soup-dedicated blog.)

See also the dinosaurs. I don’t know my dinosaurs very well beyond the basics, but these look like they’d fit in one of those crap-looking Jurassic Park sequels. It’s almost impressive how, excepting the first movie which I think still holds up decently, the makers managed to make dinosaurs of all things so damn boring.

Aside from the usual mineral deposits and resources to extract, I find these Dr. Seuss looking trees. The whole area looks like a Dr. Seuss setting a bit, but it’s still the best planet by far I’ve come across.

But why can’t we find a better one even than this? It’s a relatively safe planet, but the toxicity is still a little too high, and there are plenty of resources I just couldn’t find here. I had some fuel in the tank, so I decided to take off and check out some still-undiscovered worlds in this system.

Like this entirely snowy mountain range planet. Here in the US, for some reason some of our worst beers like Coors love using the Rockies as an advertising gimmick, like making their drink seem colder makes it also seem less shitty. That doesn’t work. Anyone who’s had ice-cold Popov out of a plastic jug can tell you that from experience (i.e. every living American college student. God, that stuff was piss.)

My point is this planet reminds me of shitty mass-produced American beer so far, and that’s a bad sign.

And of course more god damn farting plants. What is it with these things.

After doing some exploring, I decided to establish another base here. Not because it’s all that nice, but because this is the first cold world I’ve found, and I figure these places have their own unique resources to collect that I might need. A new base means a new name, however, and this time I used something I still fucking need to watch as a reminder to myself:

One of the classic potentially offputting anime titles, and a perfect name for a base. I guess. It’s really a little unwieldy, but though nothing compared to modern light novel titles. “I Died and Reincarnated as the Princesses’ Horse” etc. Hell, if they made that isekai, I might actually watch it.

Of course, the moment I lay claim to this territory, some strangers fly overhead in their spacecraft, violating my sovereign airspace.

I can’t sue them for trespass, since this system doesn’t seem to have any courts or laws, but on the upside that also means I can probably kill them and get away with it. At least I could if I had anything more than one sad little ship with just enough firepower to shoot down a few poorly armored pirates.

But just in case all this excitement is giving you the wrong impression, let me ground you. This has been at least half of my experience with No Man’s Sky:

Shooting rocks and plants with my extraction beam for resources, excitement. Though again, I guess that’s a lot of what Minecraft is as well, and there’s a lot of understandable love for that game — and still another obvious comparison between the two games here. Not that it either helps or hurts No Man’s Sky for me, since I’m too old to have had any nostalgia over Minecraft, but the building options in that game seem to be far more interesting. Then again, I’m not that far along in this one.

Before leaving this ice planet, one look at my newest base with its fancy flag and trailer as the only shelter. Naturally, there’s nothing inside aside from a few plants, no furniture at all. Let me bring a damn chair down from the local space station at least, since they’re not using most of them.

Speaking of, back at the station. This is the only place I’ve found so far where I can buy and sell goods, but I like the decor and feel as well. I never minded flying that much back when I did a lot more of it — I always liked hanging around at the airport, sitting in the lounges (not the fancy ones that I wasn’t admitted to anyway, the ones at the gates) and watching planes land and take off. I do wonder who the hell owns and maintains these stations, though, since this one looks exactly like the one I visited in the previous system, even down to the layout. I hope they didn’t just copy-paste these damn things all over the game.

This other Portal 2 ball acts as the interstellar marketplace. It’s good to know I have a place to buy dirt. I can probably just get some dirt on one of the planets I’ve visited if I need it, but maybe this is special dirt for gardening or something.

After going through the usual talking to aliens and exchanging our cultures (note, I have no idea what my character’s culture is, however) I took off again and headed out to possible the shittiest planet I’ve found so far after the toxic tutorial planet. This place is truly a dump. Where are all the nice waterfalls and flowers and whatever? I didn’t love Avatar all that much, but something like the planet in that movie. Maybe that’s around here somewhere and I just have to find it.

But I didn’t come here just on a lark. I was following yet another signal, this one to some sort of phallic-looking shrine. Apparently there’s a message for me there. Why these god-aliens or whatever they are can’t just contact me on my ship’s radio is beyond me, but I guess they have to be all mysterious about it.

The Heart of the Anomaly I have to assume is related to the Eye of the Anomaly. I wonder if I’ll have to fight each of them at some point and then have a final battle when they’ve all joined together, only the final form is somehow weaker than even the weakest individual part. That’s a Grandia II reference if anyone else reading had a Dreamcast back in the day. That was a damn good JRPG, even if the plot got a little silly at points.

As for this anomaly, I’m going to lose my patience with it pretty quickly if it keeps asking me cryptic job interview questions like this and others. “If you were an animal, what kind would you be?” An eyelash mite, and I’m not explaining that answer either. Asshole companies with their bullshit. Maybe Anomaly is a tech company or a fucking law firm.

Back home, and away from No Man’s Sky again for a day or two. I feel I’m getting near a point where I can predict how this game will go, and I don’t know if that’s in a totally positive direction yet. Flying around trying to solve a mystery in space makes it hard not to compare it to that other popular space exploration game, even if it’s a very different game in every way so far apart from those elements, but I’ll give No Man’s Sky all the due it deserves either way once I’m done with it. Until next time.