Nebula Realms was a real-life simulator game on PS4 and Steam, similar to games like Playstation Home and Second Life. Especially Playstation Home inspired Nebula Realms massively. Some areas in this game looked nearly identical to those of its spiritual successor (Did somebody say Asset-Flip?). Since Playstation Home shutdown its servers in 2015, Nebula Realms has been battling with Atom Universe over the title of being the go to real-life simulator game on the Playstation Store (I am not saying it's a battle anybody paid attention to). Since Nebula Realms has shutdown in December 2023, the battle has apparently been decided.
Btw, Playstation Home has received private servers in 2022, which make the game playable again. Unfortunately it does require having a modified Playstation 3, but I thought I would still at least mention it.
But let's get back to Nebula Realms. As a real-life simulator, the goal for Nebula Realms was to provide a place for its players to meet up, chat and engage in gameplay activities.
The last aspect in particular was a huge problem for Nebula Realms. I have been talking with a couple of people, who told me I shouldn't be so critical of a game, that has a strong focus on the social aspect. I personally however disagree. Yes, Nebula Realms has a focus on connecting people and that was certainly one of its few strengths, but this is a videogame after all. I am not expecting AAA Quality, but there should at least be some kind of fun you can have with the gameplay of this videogame.
Nebula had a large hub area, where players could meet up on a disco space right next to a swimming pool. This area was clearly one of the most popular places in the game and players would just stand around here in the dozens while talking to each other. I do think it was one of the better areas in the game, even though it did feel a bit empty outside of the disco space. From this hub area you could travel to all kinds of rooms and places to experience all the "exciting" gameplay activities of Nebula Realms. There were for example two other, even bigger, Disco areas with barely any players. So far, so unexciting…
You could also visit places, like a medieval village, which sounded pretty cool. In this village you could even enter most houses, but they were all completely empty with nothing to see. All the houses you entered in this game were actually completely empty in every room, without decoration or items whatsoever. I don't know what that was about, but it felt like a big waste of time. You could at least shoot love arrows with an cupid bow onto other players in the medieval village, which did feel a bit creepy, but each to their own.
Another place to visit was a Ghost Town, where you could get scarred by paper ghosts. A friend of mine called it one of the most pathetic things he ever saw in a videogame and I can't argue with him on that. You could also visit a couple of more open house stages, which were actually more of empty house stages. I just don't get what the developers were trying to achieve here.
There was a button memorization minigame, which is something you would only expect in a small kids game, where they learn to count and read, or in Nebula Realms. It was however better than the plane minigame, which might have sounded exciting, but unfortunately controlled like hot garbage. Even completely tilting the analog stick barely moved the plane. It was an uncontrollable mess, we better not talk about anymore.
Nebula Realms even managed to make Jet-Ski races look boring. That isn't even easy to do, but you could just drive in a very small, strictly limited area without any checkpoints, obstacles or anything of interest. But if that for some reason was too exciting for you, you could also drive a paddle boat on a tiny Sea park in slow motion. There were actually checkpoint races in the game. You could walk through the same lazily designed park for a whole minute. If you were lucky, you didn't experience any glitches during that. There was also an actual kart racing track in the game, but everytime I logged in, the kart track was closed. Maybe this could have been the gameplay activity that saved Nebula Realms, but I doubt it...
Instead you could ice skate in Nebula. It was very slow and the area was smaller than any ice ring I have ever seen, but better than nothing, I guess. Unless you got unlucky, like a friend of mine, whose game apparently glitched and he could only walk across the ice... He could however participate in very exciting snowball fights (not really)…
But enough with the negativity, let's talk about the activities, which weren't completely abysmal. For example Tic, Tac, Toe. It is exactly what you would expect, but in this game it was a highlight. You could even play chess in this game (how impressive...). The Bow and Arrow game was actually quite decent. It's not like it would be worth playing the game for, but it didn't suck. The same goes for Bowling. It wasn't the best Bowling inclusion I have ever seen in a videogame, but the gameplay was totally fine and not sleep-inducing. The best activity in Nebula Realms however was the Pool Billiard Minigame. It's the same experience you could get in a million different free Billiard games online, but it was actually the best time I spent in the game.
I nearly forgot, you could of course also buy your own apartments, actually decorate them and invite some players over. A good feature for sure, if it’s in addition to other well done aspects of the game, which Nebula sadly totally lacked.
To sum it up: The highlights of the gameplay were unremarkable, but totally fine, while most other activities were abysmal. But let's talk a little more about the glitches and technical status of the game. I experienced multiple game breaking glitches during my time with Nebula Realms. Game freezings were a regular occurrence and I even managed to twice trigger a ice sliding glitch, where my character wouldn't be able to walk normally anymore and just slide across the floor without any movement or walk without moving from the spot. What a mess!
Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the constant screen tearing whenever you moved the camera. On PC you could at least battle the screen tearing via V-Sync or some other settings. On the PS4 version (without V-Sync) you were dependent on the mercy of the developers, which meant players were doomed.
Talking about players, I was actually shocked at how many players I encountered in this game. Sure, it wasn't comparable with actually popular games, but when i tested this game with a friend on a weekend about two years ago, we probably saw around 100 players on all rooms combined, which is far more than I would have expected for a 7-year-old relatively unknown game. Pretty shocking that so many players stuck around. Maybe they hung around for nostalgia or the friendships they made ingame.
Worth mentioning is also, that Nebula had one of the worst new player introductions I have ever seen. The game just started without any tutorials, explanations or even a character creation. The smart players probably quit at that point.
Result:
Nebula Realms tried to become the new Playstation Home and in my opinion, failed miserably in the attempt. While I personally wasn't much of a Home player back in the day, it was a much better experience all around. In Nebula Realms you can talk with people, but that isn't much of an accomplishment. The technical status and gameplay activities were plain awful and not worth anybody's time.
You could actually have more fun chatting and talking to somebody while sitting at home and doing nothing else, than to chat and talk to somebody while playing Nebula Realms. Do I need to say more? This game was terrible and it's one of the few games I won't miss after its shutdown. I am a big supporter of videogame preservation, but Nebula Realms teaches us that not everything needs to be saved.
2.5/10
