I’ve started a new game of NMS a couple of times. I first set forth with the PC version at launch, later moving to Playstation, spinning up a game on Switch when it launched there and now with having an Xbox in the house, starting a game up there too. This is the slowest I’ve taken it though.

Certainly with the Switch version, I had pretty much everything I needed up and running in the space of a fortnight – money, farms, bases, the works. Not so this time. Partly, I’m exhausted a lot at the moment – effort is hard – and partly it’s that I’m just not in a rush. I’m here more to tootle around and take pictures, the gamey bits I can fit in-between.

I’ll confess I used a combination of Twitch rewards and the last expedition to get out the gates a wee bit faster, ensuring I didn’t have to exert too much effort on the basics. Sure, everything is a lot smoother and a lot easier now than the few times I’ve gone from the top, still.. after 7 years I can’t say I’m especially arsed with the early game acquisition part. Now, I know I could just start in creative mode and have everything in place at the start of the game but I need some degree of friction for the times where aimless wandering isn’t doing it for me.

Not a lot, just some.

So progress is pretty slow and so far, I’ve only visited a handful of star systems and pretty much all of those haven’t been too far from the one the expedition dumped me in.

I’m loving the extra fidelity this latest gen version of the game brings though, especially where the grass is concerned.

In previous gen versions, the grass would be really dense and gorgeous up close but a very, very short distance away it would kinda just stop leaving a bald landscape that matched the colour of the grass. Perfectly fine when you’re playing the game and everything is moving, less ideal for photo mode.

This is an old PS4 Pro shot where you can see the grass gradually disappearing the further from the camera you look.

(Obviously I understand the reasons for this and it’s cool, you can’t blame me for wishing it didn’t have to be the case though!)

Well, with the latest gen it’s no longer a problem. The grass is thick, dense and visible into the distance at pretty much all times. Now, the grass has always been one of my favourite things in the game since launch and now it gets to look incredible in static shots as well as whilst playing. It’s fantastic and I’m a very happy Rob with it.

Big pics from this month’s adventures after the cut.

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The online home of Rob Fearon, disabled videogame maker, games journalist, crap film watcher, gobshite and doodler. Rob’s been around games a very, very long time now and Punching Robots Club is their personal blog featuring whatever nonsense takes their fancy.

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