Trending Topics - Week 23, 2023

Even with Hello Games focus on bringing No Man's Sky to more platforms the content drops have not stopped and with this latest patch, a new expedition called Singularity begins.

Explorers will begin their pilgrimage in a harmonic camp, nestled among the purple-hazed mountains of Ahei XV. Singularity is a narrative-heavy journey, and forms the second chapter of the story introduced in Interceptor. We don’t want to spoil too much, but Travellers will be invited to unveil a little of the history and origin of the harmonic camps in a mystery that touches upon artificial intelligence, the will to exist, and the very nature of what it means to be alive.

Hello Games (Website) June 7, 2023

What would an expedition be without its rewards which include a Construct Customization Set, Atlas, Atlantid, and Construct Posters, Discordant Jetpack Trail, Crimson Freighter Trail, Living Fragment Base Decorations, and a Wayfarer’s Helm.

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• Expedition 10, SINGULARITY, will begin shortly, and will run for approximately five weeks.
• The expedition sees players work alone and as a community to solve the mystery of the damaged Autophage heads found abandoned at harmonic camps.
• Rewards for uncovering the mystery and assembling your very own mechanical Construct include a set of unique posters; new jetpack and freighter engine trail customisations; buildable Atlantideum crystals for your base; an exclusive new helmet customisation; and an entire Construct visual customisation set.
• A layer of more hidden clues exists for players who are willing to hunt them out…
  
• PC VR players can now use the virtual keyboard to name discoveries (and other nameable items).
• Fixed an issue that caused the third-person camera pitch to be reset after using the Analysis Visor – pitch will now remain consistent as players switch between modes.
• Players who enable auto-follow for the third person camera will now benefit from this setting in the Space Anomaly and aboard Space Stations, as well as on planets.
• The starship’s autopilot will now prevent players from crashing into various space points of interest while engaged on the starship communicator.
• Fixed an issue that prevented some flash-to-white screen fades from respecting the setting that disabled them.
  
• Upgrades to the Neutron Cannon have received an increase in their damage bonus, and a large increase to their charging time reduction.
• Fixed an issue that could allow corrupted Sentinel drones to chain heal each other in a circle.
• Corrupted Sentinel drones now have a cooldown on healing that is triggered if they are damaged mid-heal.
  
• Fixed a crash on PC related to memory trampling.
• Fixed a number of memory-related crashes on Xbox platforms.
• Introduced a significant load-time optimisation for PlayStation platforms.
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to appear in the wrong system after leaving a multiplayer session and then immediately rejoining it.
  
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause missions that send players to visit an NPC specialist in their base to choose the wrong base.
• Fixed a rare issue that could prevent the completion of puzzles within harmonic camps if another player in their session had completed them first.
• Fixed an issue that caused one of the glyphs in the harmonic camp puzzles to always be 9.
• Fixed a number of issues that could cause the Target Sweep to claim there was no mission target, or that the target was too distant, when this was not the cause.
• Fixed an issue that caused the planetary section of the lightweight Creative Mode tutorial to be skipped.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented dissonant worlds from being correctly labelled when using the starship scanner on more relaxed difficulty settings.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the wrong technology name and/or icon to be used in tip text after changing ship.
• Sentinel Interceptors now require Crystalised Hearts rather than Quad Servos to repair their hyperdrive.
• A large number of improvements have been made to the clarity of tips and icons for the automatically generated technology pinning guidance.
• If a mission is currently requesting the installation of a piece of technology, that item will now appear as the first item in the list of available techs.
• Fixed an issue that could make it difficult to interact with the terminal for Nada’s simulation aboard the Space Anomaly.
• Fixed a controls issue that could cause the starship to land when scrolling through the quick menu.
  
• Fixed a number of graphical issues with shadows in the starship cockpit on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
• Fixed an issue that caused a number of particle effects to be missing on PC.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent screenspace reflections and other similar effects from rendering correctly.
• Fixed a number of graphical issues with capes when using FSR2.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the player’s head from casting a shadow in VR when full body was enabled.
• Fixed a minor graphical issue that could cause laser impact effects to be the wrong colour.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a red effect to appear in one eye only during the boot screen when using PSVR on PlayStation 4.
  
• Introduced a number of improvements to quick menu usage in VR, making it easier & more precise to use.
• Fixed a VR issue that could cause players to be treating as pointing at the quick menu, when in reality their hand was in front of the menu.
• Fixed an issue that stopped players from moving in VR if they pointed at their wrist with the point to move setting enabled.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the “Out of Bounds” VR message to remain on-screen if players reset their view while the main menu was open.
  
• Fixed an inconsistency in the use of upper/lower case in the friend request popup.
• Fixed an issue that caused the weapon charge/ammo percentage in the HUD to drop the % symbol.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause some customisation options to be unavailable in the Appearance Modifier UI.
• Fixed a number of issues that could cause items within the crafting tree to be highlighted when they were not available for crafting.
• Fixed an issue that caused the incorrect “Back” prompt to be used for the base building parts menu.
• Fixed an issue that could cause incorrect tooltips to be displayed when using the Terrain Manipulator’s “Create” mode.
• The clarity of expedition milestone objectives displayed in their popup has been improved.
• Fixed an issue that caused the guidance for Quad Servos to be displayed when requesting guidance on locating Crystalised Hearts.
• Fixed an issue that caused some starship communicator messages to linger incorrectly after a save/load.
• Fixed an issue that caused the tip related to derelict freighter emergency signal scanners to become stuck on screen if the player deleted the signal scanner.

Some might not be fans of No Man's Sky gameplay but you can't say Hello Games hasn't consistently pumped out updates since its disastrously bad launch so many years ago. In recent times the ports just don't stop as No Man's Sky has now not only released for PSVR2 and Nintendo Switch but most recently on Mac.

We also covered the last major update called Interceptor which introduced many new features such as Corrupted Planets and Salvaged Interceptors. It seems the evolution of No Man's Sky never ends and what many other studios can take pointers from is the lack of microtransactions. Not only is this unheard of in this era of selling gambling simulators to kids, but the multiple copies of No Man's Sky I've purchased over the years were worth every penny.

Not only did Insomniac Games announce when we can get our web shooters ready for preordering which is June 16th, but finally the release date to go along with it. The highly anticipated sequel Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will be available beginning October 20th.

The new Spidey adventure will be taking advantage of the graphical horsepower PlayStation 5 provides with breathtaking visuals, faster web-swinging, 3D Audio, and near-instant character switching.

What would a new game release be without several different editions to preorder and tracking down what retailers include the best bonuses? The Standard Edition will be priced at $69.99 and like all editions of the game will include a bonus if you preorder.

That bonus includes early unlocks of the ArachKnight Suit which looks like it took inspiration from Moon Knight and the Shadow-Spider Suit with three different color variants of each. You will also get access to the Web Grabber gadget early along with three skill points.

The next bump up in price is the Digital Deluxe Edition which will retail for $79.99. It comes with the same previous bonus as well as ten more suits, Photo Mode items, and two skill points.

If you're a collector, Insomniac has got you covered with a Collector's Edition that will be priced at $229.99. It features an 18-inch statue that showcases Venom squashing a couple of spiders. Unfortunately, it does not come with the physical copy of the game, instead, they have opted to include the Digital Deluxe Edition. Of course, it does come with a Steelbook for some reason and regardless of it lacking a disc, it does look amazing.

Sony has not mentioned a PC version of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (yet) but with the numerous PC ports over the past couple of years, I wouldn't bet against it launching a year or so after its PlayStation debut. Most recently Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was announced to be making its way onto PC and I hope Sony continues to expand their PC portfolio. I will even be in favor of them branching out to their PlayStation 4 exclusives so we can see games like Bloodborne and Killzone make a resurgence.

What happens when you introduce Pinocchio to Dark Souls gameplay, well apparently you get a world poisoned by madness and bloodlust. The developers behind this new souls-like adventure game called Lies of P revealed it will be launching on September 19th but everyone will get the chance to play Lies of P three months early via a demo.

Starting today until June 26th you can play the demo which features the first two chapters. It seems the developers want to get as many players as possible to experience this new title early as they would like feedback to help them prepare for the full release.

If you have access to a modern console, you can play the demo yourself as Lies of P is available for PC, PS5, PS4, XSS, and XBO.