It's changed a lot. It's upgraded again there is a tonne of stuff to do, lots to see and explore and plenty of "hooks" to give you the excuse to see them.
NMS gets a lot of hate and I don't think it's deserved but hey if the author doesn't want to play it, then it's no skin off my nose.
They can do what they want.
Should we just ignore all of the hype and promises made by the developer/publisher which were never delivered on? That's where the hate comes from. They promised something much more than what they delivered.
Yes, they've made improvements, and that's great, but it still doesn't contain some of the biggest features promised while the game was still in dev. The marketing of this game was very deceptive, and they deserve what they got for that.
Besides... most find the game pretty boring.
The people who pre-ordered should've waited till the reviews came out and then bought?
I have rarely seen a level of delusion from a fan base than the one around NMS, they collectively hyped themselves to a level of frenzy before the game came out that could only lead to disappointment.
Just wait until star citizen crashes down hard
This is obviously true—no one should ever preorder digital games.
But that does not absolve the developer from flat out lying in interviews and promises, sorry.
Please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-tgaE37UE
Even if you ignore the blatant lies, the game just turned out to be boring. An empty universe which lacked the awe inspiring sense of adventure that was promised.
As I said, that fanbase hyped themselves up to a degree which is ridiculous, they took every word out of the devs mouth from years of interviews as gospel, it really was an unholy shitstorm where everyone from the developer, the publisher and the customers made things worse than it needed to be.
The post article would suggest NMS is being pulled in a lot of different directions... it has a single player quest, but it's not a great quest-based game. It has sandbox elements, but no obvious gameplay loop to make the sandbox compelling. It doesn't speak to the multiplayer elements, and I don't have personal experience with them, so I don't know how well they fit.
The Verge seems a fair bit more charitable regarding the changes, while acknowledging that the game is still flawed. They seem to like the additional quest components, and feel the overall engine improvements have been well done. But it still doesn't seem to address the core issue this article is focused on, which is that they feel NMS is a jack of all trades but a master of none.
So what's your take?
When my more "invested" friends pointed out all the things the developer said would be there, that weren't, I thought, "Well, it'll probably come later." And behold, now some are. Maybe more will come.
As a game, I probably lost 40-60 hours playing the initial release of the game. I treated it as a weird independent/art house game which was more about an experiment than about a crystalized game loop experience.
It was fun, and interesting, and what systems were present were pleasant enough.
Having played with the update, all of the updates are great and worth revisiting. It definitely changes the feel of the game.
It's not a "great" game, but what it is is great. You can fly around a universe and see things literally no one has ever seen before, including the developers. There are some mechanics to make exploring easier, some things which make you more powerful, and a loose, cryptic plot.
It's easily worth the 60 bucks, which is all you can ask of it.
I think it also might be that I am pretty aware that games/most projects in any field are never going to be what is said when first announced. I used to feverishly follow game developments when I was a kid and became intimately aware that features promised at announcement don't always make it to the end and that I also impose a lot of my own desires onto the project that never had any reality of coming true.
Finally I will say I found NMS to be a pretty boring game, but one that is incredibly beautiful. The sense of planetary scale in the game is unmatched IMO and I think that Hello Games or a developer with similar tech can make something truly special with that.