No Man's Sky survival mode

Decided to take a peak at this. I'm finding it fun but it won't be everyone's cup of tea.

When you start survival it's similar to when you first started No Man's Sky. You're marooned on a planet. For my attempt, I started at a small base. There was a save point, a bit of salvage but most importantly there was shelter. My starting planet was cold and my thermal protection lasts just a couple of minutes so I have to frequently return to these shelters to warm up. Sentinels are relaxed though, so that's something (in my regular game I've been to a string of 4 planets where sentinels attack on sight).

So first order of business is fixing my multi-tool, then I start working on repairing my ship, which you can magically do from anywhere. I get a notification of a mineral deposit (Herodium) but it is far away. So I decide I'll fly there but... erm, where exactly is my ship? OMG it's 8 minutes away. I can't survive in this cold for 8 minutes!

Also my life support is draining and if I use my jump jets it drains even faster. I do find a power cell in a crate so that saves me there, but even making a run to get plutonium is tough. I just don't have the thermal protection to make it.

Just for grins (and because I wanted to come write this post) I decide to make a run for my ship. Eight minutes may as well be 80 kilometers. I die about 4 minutes from it and respawn back at my base with some of my gear broken, but not all of it. So it's not a clean restart but they definitely seem to punish death.

Some folks are going to find this super-frustrating and I would too if it were the only mode, but as something to try now and then when 'normal' mode is feeling a little too easy... well that's a nice change of pace. I've always enjoyed the 'start up' phases of games like this and survival mode will probably be perpetual start-up for me! :)

I wasn't one of the people ranting about No Man's Sky. I put about 30 hours into it and had a good time. I wasn't expecting there to be multiplayer, I guess because i follow Sean Murray on twitter and he specifically said this was not a MP experience a few days before launch. Plus the PSN store indicated it was a single player game.

Anyway I liked the game and felt like 30 hours was good value. So to get this patch now just feels like gravy and apparently this is the first of several updates planned. I won't be playing No Man's Sky every day until the next patch, but I'll dabble in it and I'm sure I'll come back every time a new update is released just to see what is new.