Dirt compares these two legendary games with an objective perspective that is not swayed by emotion in any way. Twitch - / dirtthegamer Discord - / discord TikTok - / dirt_thegamer Donate - streamlabs.com/dirtthegamer/tip
@@michalmannartandstuff1054 you also don't have access to certain naturally occuring colors and only 3 ship types are buildable. Hopefully there will be further improvements.
different planets with different generated quests is still missing from NMS; as a coherent main story and faction stories. NMS feels like minecraft in space, where nobody could get bothered hiring a writer because all the money went into hiring graphic artists and programmers. Sandbox games are the fundamental expression of being lazy; sold as "do whatever you want". And I love NMS for what it offers, but at its core, if you remove the planetary tech to generate "sort of unique" stuff; the rest has been done since the early 2000s by other sandbox survival games.
@@fcf8269the story is pretty interesting and good imo if you pay attention to the dialogue its obviously not an amazing storyline but the game also was designed to be like minecraft but in space not a mission clearing rpg
@@fcf8269 Man, despite Hello Games having less than 60 employees, NMS is a great game with great updates once in a while, and oh it's also all free. The competition on the other hand (despite having hundreds of employees), well can't say so much of the same thing.
@@skyriminspace yeah dont go into nms wanting to run and gun and have perfectly designed ship combat, starfield definitely better in that aspect I don’t even need to play it to know that, but if you just want to pop some music on and drive around a motorcycle and spaceship nms is the way to go
Also the team at Hello Games listen to criticism and strives to improve there game. Bethesda on other hand gets defensive and fails to improve there games at any sort of constructive criticism
What i dig most about NMS is that, when i say ok now i,m going for the first main storyline (been in 150hr+ and have not even done the 1st storyline), within 5min in game i am distracted. There is always something going on. On planets massive ships warp out of hyperspace, so i jump in ship and going to check them out, or some ruins or a crashed ship or freighter to check out. Scanning all life and plant forms on a planet. In space things just warp in, or fly in the rings of a Saturn like planet the list is just endless. I hope they never stop adding things to this game i really do.
I got to NG+++++, and got a unique universe with myself in it. Figured that was a good place to stop and completely lost interest in the game. Have probably close to 400 hours total in No Man's Sky.
If you stopped playing after 3 hours you must’ve really hated it. Sucks that you had that experience because Starfield was amazing for me and tons of others
@@jayg.2066 what killed it for me was loading screens, There are entirely to many loading screens, and it is unnecessary, also, the ship flying and combat are horrible, more interactive, but horrible. Feels like I am trying to fly a Mack Truck. And the exploration leaves me feeling bored at best. I wanted to enjoy it, but it got harder and harder the more I played, and the modding community has all but given up completely, so I can't even change it up to allow for a more fun experience for me
In NMS you can discover planets and name them after famous gerbils or your shoes or even Carl. Other players will see the name of your planets and say "seriously?"
Naming can be a ton of fun. In one system I discovered, the planets are named after characters from The Usual Suspects. Others have planets named after characters in Snow White, nicknames of kids I grew up with ... the list is long. 😂 Had an awesome, maxed out Sentinel ship named Dracarys. Sadly, I lost that save. (PS5) Getting a new desktop next week. Looking fwd to seeing what the game is like on PC with customization mods.
I think the music is actually a draw at best. NMS has really underrated music. Sure, it’s not as “dramatic” as Starfield’s, but it creates an amazing vibe while you play that really feels like exploring a strange planet or floating around in space.
Nah I thought NMS had that one in the bag. The synth tracks that play when you're first loading the galaxy and flying by all those stars always gets me excited and curious about what I will find today.
@88heisenberg88 he said no mans sky is way better than starfield...... and he's not wrong. No Mans sky is better in many ways. The biggest way is the loading screens and fast travelling that's forced on you in starfield breaks the immersion which is an rpg game breaker.
And the song that plays landing on the space station for the first time , and the ambient music that plays during the pulse drive, and even the combat music. No mans sky wins music imo.
No mans sky actually gives you what you expect. You fly about, you can think about where you land on a planet, you can find actual stuff from other players that was left years ago. You can actually land on big ships, or own a big ship and have crew....and can spot those ships in the actual universe going about the missions you have sent them on. Also vehicles, which are genuinely fun and alien pets. I remember finding a planet in NMS where players had met in the old days when that was rare - there was an item floating there as a marker, as such meetings were celebrated in that way. I had no idea what it was and many players i went to had no idea either, i had found a genuine ancient relic on a forgotten world and could research it as it had their names on. Eventually i learned the lore of these unusual creations. I really was doing some in game space archaology... in a real ruin as some of the placed items nearby were still there, a broken stair and some walls....and what appeared to be a bridge that the two players had met so that they were both standing on the same coordinates years ago. Starfield though - they had all that money and talent - and others had made mistakes they could learn from and avoid, including their own studio...and yet....everything went backwards. Its such a tragedy, it could have been so good. Should have been so good and instead all we got was a busted version of elder scrolls that was more like a knockoff copy.
Except that’s not at all what starfield is! Yes the game has its flaws! But it’s far better than no man’s sky at its stage of life! And has a shit to to do! No mad sky needed a miracle to fix its many MANY issues at launch, and after 5 years became the game is was suppose to be! Starfield is much closer and won’t take long to iron out some of its flaws!
@@crazysoundman Well, to be fair the big flaw it had was its advertised multiplayer was non existent - starfield is a single player game and doesnt have to worry about that. It just has to be a space exploration game with a cool plot....and instead its a terrible exploration game with flaws it shouldnt have....because all the earlier bethesda games did exploration aspects well. People are upset because, if bethesda just gave them a game like skyrim in space, they would probably have been happy....but the game takes massive backwards steps compared to all the preceeding, much older content from the same studio. The guys doing no mans sky tried to jump really high and had no real foundation to start on, so they had to build their way up. Bethesda started with a pre-made ladder on a tall building and then ignored both. They could have done so much better - because all their older games do it better.
@@crazysoundmanno. You’re wrong. Starfield is boring, you can’t even fly through the atmosphere or non atmosphere of a planet and land, you can’t explore the whole planet, they are all empty and boring. Yes I’m sure space is really that way, but this isn’t real life, it’s a game, there should be interesting things to see and do. I have both games, and don’t play either much anymore, but it’s important if your making a space game, with a ship you can fly, to actually have a reason to FLY it. All I use in Starfield is the menus to teleport everywhere. It’s boring.
@@ignacio3460 endless things my dude lol, no man’s sky is just a much simpler game but that’s definitely not a weak point it’s just a choice that was made to execute their vision.
Don't forget one of the most important element: Multiplayer. No Man's Sky wins BIG TIME. (No Man's Sky supports VR, which makes it 10 times more immersive.)
@@crazysoundman I would say play it anyway only if you have game pass. Just play with console commands to set your speed to offset the over encumbered penalty. Player.setav speedmult 300
@@GAMER32231 there is very little to actually do in space. And it gives you so many quests all at the start with the illusion of time constraints and implications that you shouldn't be lollygagging around space. No mans sky has you lollygagging around at your own pace from the beginning of the optional starting tutorial. Starfield is just a Bethesda RPG set in space. In fact this is the same reason I love fallout 76 and new vegas because it's open to the player playing at their own pace without making the story quests seem ridiculous "oh no Starboy we lend you our ship and oh no it's so urgent don't take too long the whole universe is on your shoulders so don't Dilly dally" "okay I'll do this quest in two in-game years and you'll just act like it's yesterday"
Yeah I've played NMS for hours, over 2500 hours worth. I was really excited for Starfield. Played it for 2 maybe 3 hours tops. I'm back to NMS. Nothing wrong with Starfield it just doesn't have what NMS does and NMS does it very well.
NMS is the better overall by miles, but there are a few things I found missing and wanting in NMS: 1) Larger lived-in interior spaces [that aren't player-made] 2) Space magic (staves and certain modules for your multi-tool come very close, though; from barriers to invisibility to fireballs and electric balls) 3) Multi-biome planets (more specifically for life-bearing planets with dense flora, like lush and swamp worlds) (easy to overlook with deserts and snowball worlds) 4) Cities, towns, anything substantially larger than a settlement with permanent infrastructure for transit and utilities
@@baitposter I don’t play starfield, I do however have 600 hours plus in NMS, and it needs a few more game modes. It’s literally the largest game world ever created and there is basically nothing to do but decorate lol. People need a reason (game loop) to log back in. Expeditions are good but infrequent. Imagine if our scanner could tell us a contested galaxy is nearby and players could side with the pirates or the law? Or a StarCraft like rts mode where a bunch of players do a battlefront scope rts? Game loops.
Probaly not ship building rather changing a few things to your starship linda like the compainions being able to have things on their back as full building ships would make rare ship finding pointless
@BenSmith-ul7mj it's already pointless, you can find exact coordinates for any ship you want online, and would still serve as a way to find a decent ship early game.
Imagine an endgame system for crafting starships, where you start with basic modules/parts but need to buy starships and dismantle/research them to get new ones. This would make finding new ships worthwhile, even if you don't plan to use it. Then Maybe being able to trade ships to others, or selling them at trade hubs and space stations like NPC's do.
NMS got ship building! It's quite simple for now with only 3 ship types and 18 colour options, but it's still cool to have it! I think it was one of the final pieces of the puzzle to complete ships in no man's sky. But now we need customisable living ships and sentinels... mabye even freighters?!
The ability to have something unique only to you in no mans sky is another thing that is great, you could find amazing ships, planets, systems, and only you have the power to show off what amazing things you have found, also nms has ship meets where players bring there best ships to show them off in a server with tons of other people! The player base for nms is a win
Exactly. Like sure starship customization is cool, and starfield deserves the win in that regard, but at the same time I don't really want cosmetic ship customization in No Mans Sky, because it keeps that uniqueness, making cool looking ships that much cooler because you can't just build it. Any ship can feel like a main character ship, because its your ship. Even if NMS does get ship customization, I probably won't use it beyond maybe getting a new paintjob on principle.
Actually Starfield storytelling only have presentation better than NMS, because the story in NMS is actually quite good, and the lore is especially good too, somehow with the races in NMS being so vague, and the effort you need to make to UNDERSTAND their languages in the first place makes the world building of NMS far superior than Starfield, it relly feels like you were discovering new alien races and misteries that start to get weirder and weirder as you progress, there's even some emotional moments, like Artemis rescue where we are put on a real dilema, we barely know Artemis, and the story told us to follow her thread, and we basically do when we feel like it... we don't give too much thought, and we don't even care about Artemis character, BUT somehow, Hello Games manage to pull an emotional response from us on Artemis character, not only that, but make us start questioning our OWN reality, and even then, the universe still feels alive, because of the amount of things you have to do in the game... Even the companions, Laylaps and the Mech are somehow captivating, the Mech doesn't even talk, but you can see it's personality in the way he moves once your not piloting him. NMS universe feels somewhat bittersweet, on one hand is one of the most fun and engaging universes to be, on the other hand it always reminds you that it's a "simulation" because it is it's nature, is almost like the simulation want you to get out from it on the first place, but without forcing you too it.
@@BenSmith-ul7mj one paragraph is an essay? And is that a bad thing? The video the person reviewing both games made is 17 whole minutes long lol, It’s may as-well be a whole documentary😂
@@Handle.NoimDoorKnobtbh i also think the comparison is lacking severly. i mean, yeah the planets are roughly the same. but trading, so many systems they arent even all discovered, then another 255 galaxies of the same size to explore, all the new story updates and so on
@@zero.Identity haha I totally agree, I don’t know how starfield got any dubs from the videos producer💀 If Bethesda even does anything with the game at this point it will all be paid dlc add ons unlike the years of free expansion updates nms has been doing, and I’m pretty sure we will be getting freighter battles some time this year if things go well with development🙏 it’s mostly rumors but all them weapons on my freighter are waiting for their moment👀 I’m sure there will be even more updates but that’s all I’ve heard so far.
What surprised me in Starfield was that screenshot taken in Photo Mode are used by the game during loading screens. Taking into account that you are staring at the loading screens 90% of the time in this game it is a nice touch. A bonus fact - You can actually add other pictures by just dropping them in game's Photo folder where your screenshots are saved and those pictures will be used during loading screens as well.
Well, regarding NMS customisation of spacecraft and multitools, i see it as "Collectible" and achievement mechanic. The cool stuff is very rare and if you manage to find some - you're either extremely lucky or put tons of effort into that process. If you manage to find really cool ship and fall in love with it, it will emotionally be much more investing, than just building your own ship. Altough, ship customisation is great, i really enjoy that "Collecting" that NMS provides
i agree with this! i actually quite like it. since every ship is randomly generated from an array of parts and colors, you can spent ages searching for a nice one that suits you, or pick up a random one and form an attachment to it! i think it is neat and makes it stand out more from other games
Well, looks like hello games heard your concerns since when they added ship customization They made it so you had to collect the parts of the ships by salvaging them, so the exploration hasent gone anywhere
@@superabdoking5372 Yeah, but you still can not customize a ship))) You can create a new one, but you are limited to explorer, hauler and fighter. You can't customize any ship you have and obtaining a cool exotic, interceptor, solar or living ship is still an effort to make. New stations designs are sick though
Customization you ask with the new orbital update besides the new space station you can now build your own ship from the disassembled parts from other ships you found
It depends on what you're looking for in your space game. If you want a more pure space exploration game with crafting and building as it's main draw then it's No Man's Sky. If you're looking for a more narrative driven game with gunplay as it's main gameplay loop, then it's Starfield.
14:53 Fun fact. The mining laser doesn't need to be equipped to be used. Simply having it in your inventory and using your scanner will automatically bring it up when you press your console's or PC's "Fire" button while scanning mode is on.
Even With NMS recent ship customization, I still have to give Starfield the edge in the ship building. Being able to start from scratch, and create monstrosity of a ship, cant be beat. At least for now.
Man your commentary is so fun :D I subscribed and liked the video when you made the white house mail joke hahahahahahah. I really enjoyed your video bro thanks for the content.
Aw man, I wish this video was released 2 months later. The customization in No Man's Sky just got a huge update! I don't think it would still fare very well against Starfield's, but it would have still been a much better contest than it was at the time of recording.
@@DirtTheGamer so true. and the amount of updates isnt even getting slower. not even repetetive, every time i thought, damn i must play that again to see for myself.
If nms had more story/quests, ship design, and traits to level up, they would blow starfield away. But also if starfield just had the ability to land/fly anywhere in your ship (including actually flying into a planet's atmosphere) with better control mechanics it would be a much better game.
Yes, I think you're right. It would be easier to improve NMS by adding in the RPG lite features, quests and weaponry of Starfield into NMS than it would the other way around. That is, trying to make exploring and survival actually interesting in Starfield. IMHO, both games have the same basic problem of too much emphasis on quantity and not enough on quality. Game worlds don't need to be huge to be interesting. Both are interesting at first, but soon wear out due to repetition. HAving said that, given the huge negative reception to NMS at launch, it is surprising that Starfield launched with basically much the same overall problem. Lots of ... nothing. The things to do don't affect anything. Would have thought Starfield would have learnt from NMS mistakes.
i mean, ship design is constantly updating in no mans sky, you can level up, just not traits but you get new building stuff as well as more life and better multitools, better ship weapons etc, and if you havent found the story in no mans sky yet you should play it a bit more. it has no big cutscenes but it stands out as soos as you let it happen. in NMS story is also used as a tool to show you everything you didnt know about the game because its so big. but it doesnt make it feel like you know everything about it, it actually just makes it more mysterious.
@@zero.Identity I have about 200+ hours in NMS. Finished every story quest, almost all expeditions, took a C class settlement to an S class, and have just about every item there is to have in the game because I ran out of things to do.
@@DirtTheGamerplus, you can now be a space pirate. and even bigger freighters. and the freighter bases werent mentioned. so you can basically have a big ass explorable ship/base that has also tons of uses as you can controll your fleet as well as jump into way further systems at once
Starfield should completely blow No Man's Sky out of the water. Should. The advantages Starfield has are incomparable. Bethesda has way more resources and experience compared to a 20+ indie dev team working in a small rent-a-flat who never made anything as big as NMS before. The fact that NMS actually has a chance in a comparison like this proves how much Starfield was messed up.
The thing with No Man's Sky is that it gets updates that add content beyond bug fixes and skins, and they could eventually do a combat overhaul and add as many options as Starfield has.
You forgot one thing that puts Starfield to shame: VR SUPPORT in No Man's Sky, the ability to experience the infinite in full immersion. That alone can't be beat!
Customization: stay better in starfield only because of ship designer...(yesterday they added new big patch to no man sky where u got ship builder now too from basic 4 parts cockpit, reactor core, wings and thruster) UI: on nexus mods StarUI acually have 1.5M downloads after 7 months of playing so no starfield doesn't have good UI...Didn't saw any UI mods on no man sky Combat AI: U forgot to mention this (it's terrible, no man sky got better combat AI) My winner is no man sky because hello games acually care about their game (they added like 40 big patches over the years)...for betesda starfield was just beta project for their new engine.
An absolutely stellar comparative review by Dirt. These are two of my absolute favorite games, and your review felt both genuinely thought out and fair.
I agree with all of this. Great vid! I tried Starfield and it just feels dead and empty. It takes too long to accomplish anything, and it has this repeatability to it which I don’t really get in NMS. The procedural worlds in NMS win hands down. Whilst the story might not be as strong, Starfield just isn’t something I want to return to, or sink lots of hours into.
@@efxnews4776 100% agree. It raises some really interesting existential and ethical issues about consciousness and humanity. Like you say, the text interface of it is very deceiving
and i think thats good. because they maintain a constant mystery feeling about the entire story and universe. you never see to much but as soon as you delve in, it only answers the existential questions. to understand what those big ass teleporters are with the runes, well its mentioned but i had to google after that. which makes it feel so much more surreal. like as if you are actually just seeing it through a screen, like reading the matrix cuz its just a simulation - but real.@@efxnews4776
Personally I prefer No Man's Sky soundtrack over Starfield, Inon Zur did a good job but it sounds too much like Fallout for me, the NMS soundtrack is very particular, and several songs stand out.
Hopefully No Mans Sky adds some better ground combat scenarios with something like much more hostile animals, or Pirates shooting at you on foot. Maybe pirates can chase you from space to planet and continue the fight from air to ground. That would be awesome. They’ve drastically improved on the space battles since launch which I’m happy with, but that would be absolutely amazing to have as well.
_Starfield_ convinced me to play _No Man's Sky_ and I couldn't be happier. So glad that after SF I got an actual ending and answer for collecting artifacts and evolving past the galaxy in NMS.
One question please, i play NMS in VR (quest 3) only, which is a dream come to reality to be honest the immersion is insane. Only drawback is the flight mechanics. Do you perhaps know if the optional quest pro controllers do a better job?
After 150 hours in NMS it's still fun to break through a planets atmosphere and see what kind of weird planet you found. Taking off is still fun as well. I'm shocked Bethesda would make a space game without that function. It's without a doubt one of my favorite parts
The biggest failure of starfield was not making it seemless....like NMS. And that was clearly because they had the wrong priorities....do we really need to be able to put a thousand patatoes in our ship. It's a cool experiment but doesn't make the game play better.
I feel on the music segment, Starfield's soundtrack is meant to make you feel like you're the main character of a grand space opera movie. No Man's Sky mostly feels very tranquil and relaxing to better suit the casual planet-hopping gameplay.
I was assaulted by earth tentacles in no man's sky once. Haven't been back since. To be fair tho I did start the fight. I just had to know... I couldn't leave it alone
Starfield: 50 planets and about 6 loading screens just to explore a “section” of the planet before needing to enter a new loading screen to get pass one of the four invisible walls containing your “explorable area” NMS: 18 QUINTILLION PLANETS you can freely explore with unique flora and fauna only needing warp between solar systems that physically exist in a massive galaxy.
While the moment to moment music in NMS is extremely atmospheric, it has some EPIC highs, like at the end of an expedition, that give me chills every time, and I honestly think that the largely atmospheric nature of the rest of the soundtrack just makes the bigger tracks stand out more.
Simply being able to fly directly between planets (spending a considerably amount of time between each I might add) does NOT give NMS' simplistic, single-biome, scattered alien-life monotony an edge over the POI and quest-populated multi-biome, richly textured, aliens-with-animal-behavior-and-schedules worlds of Starfield. Starfield's exploration and planets win to me, though I do love NMS ambient offerings in small amounts.
I mean, No Man's Sky doesn't have star citizen graphics. It goes straight to the values of the everyday player, which is the little grind, the fun and semplicity of stupid little things. Maybe No Man's Sky the space gameliest game our generation of players have experienced.
Hey Dirt it's me again that one guy in the comments that really likes your Channel another great video down. I got to say that forgetting you put the packet in the ramen boiling is extremely relatable to me. And now I have the confidence to go get some ballroom dance lessons. Any hints on upcoming videos?
Erm..... this like comparing The Dyson Sphere Program to Skyrim. 2 very different games for very different reasons. NMS - You buy it once and that's it. New content released for free, regularly updated by Devs and bugs fixed too. Building your own ships from previously scrapped ships was the most recent addition. So that's interesting. Starfield - In usual Bethesda fashion you're charged for the game (mainly a buggy mess) and then new content might be released but you have to pay extra for whatever that might be. Devs leave it alone, rake in the money, don't fix bugs, and rarely update it. NMS is an exploration and building game with a focus of resource management, but with elements of combat. Starfield is specifically a combat focused game. They aren't the same kind of game for those reasons.
I can already see starfield being forgotten and nms still thriving and releasing updates... id love for Bethesda to do the same just bc the combat is a lil better. But i doubt they will... they already showed they dont care by making the game on a 10 year old engine😒
Cost should have been a comparison as well. Replay value and lifespan also as important. I don't see Todd Howard still supporting updates to anything to Starfield in 7 years...maybe a separate company releasing a remaster of ut at best.
This was a great video. Not that I have any intention or desire to play Starfield. NMS is enough for me, and I haven't even gotten through the ES titles yet.
The only ES games worth playing are Morrowind and Oblivion, Skyrim is only great due to mods that turn a 7/10 game into a 10/10 game, but if you would buy Skyrim, i suggest you get on GOG, you would thank me later... From the franchises that Bethesda have the ONLY trully great game of then is actually made by Obsidian wich is Fallout New Vegas