No Man’s Sky On The NVIDIA SHIELD – Tons of Fun!

At this point, I’m sure almost every geek, nerd and gamer has heard of “No Man’s Sky.”  I’m sure that most of us have heard how it was an over-hyped game that failed to meet expectations.  Some, if not most, of us have played No Man’s Sky.  I had heard of it, I thought it was a great concept and was very intrigued.  Unfortunately, my computer didn’t meet the specs required.  Then it got a lot of lackluster press and I lost interest.  Fast forward to last Monday, No Man’s Sky came out on the NVIDIA SHIELD.  I have now not only played the game, I am hopelessly addicted!

No Man’s Sky is a procedurally generated, first person, space exploration, trading, action-adventure, and survival game.  You start out on a planet with nothing but your spaceship, a mining laser and the exosuit you have on your back.  Right away, you begin exploring the planet and look for the materials necessary to fix your ship.  Along the way, you find mysterious ruins, base camps, and other interesting locations.  Some of these locations contain upgrades to your mining laser and your exosuit.  Other locations help you learn more about who you are and further your relationship with the Korvax and other alien species.

Eventually you get everything you need and make your way off-planet.  Once off-planet, you can visit other planets, space stations, and even other galaxies.  As you explore you find strange new worlds, each with their own animals, plants and rock formations.  I’ve seen animals that look like dinosaurs, small reptilian foxes, leopards with bug heads and more!  You can see floating rocks, glowing caves, plants the size of buildings and other endless possibilities!  Each planet has their own set of resources that you can harvest and sell at space stations.  

It’s not all exploring, mining and upgrading though.  You need to be careful when you harvest because sometimes the local plant and animal life don’t take kindly to intruders and will attack!  If that wasn’t bad enough, every planet has Sentinals, little robots that protect the planet from people who kill or harvest too much.  Then as you travel through space you may find yourself flying through clouds of asteroids, or if you are really unlucky there are pirates who will try to steal your cargo as you travel through space.

As you can imagine, a game like this is very resource intensive.  As I said earlier, my computer can’t handle it.  Fortunately, I have my NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV and my SHIELD Tablet.  Both handle the game like a champ!  The real miracle is that my SHIELD Tablet is more than two years old and runs it flawlessly!  The game is able to run like this because of the awesome GeForce Now service.  It allows you to connect to virtual machines hosted by NVIDIA that are more than up to the task of running the game.  The game runs on their systems and all you have to do is stream it down to your end.

The possibilities in the game are endless.  I’ve played for several hours and am still enjoying it.  It is an insanely fun game and as soon as I finish with this review, I will be making my way back to the world of Gwasinyziki Kawrst.  I just landed there and am looking for fuel for my starship.  I can’t wait to see what other wonders I find along the way!

No Man’s Sky is available via GeForce Now for $60.  If you buy the game through GeForce Now you also receive a free Steam code so you can get the game on Steam too!  That’s two copies for the price of one!  Check it out here: No Man’s Sky for the NVIDIA SHIELD

If you don’t have a NVIDIA Shield get one quick!  Check out our reviews of both the SHIELD Tablet and SHIELD Android TV below.

SHIELD Android TV: NVIDIA SHIELD Pro Review
SHIELD Tablet: NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet – Two Years Later