‣ 8.5/10 – Biggest gaming comeback in history.

‣ Thoughts: We all know the story of No Man’s Sky and how it became an amazing game. I’m just here to confirm that: game good. I have tried to play this title about 10 times throughout the years and it just never grabbed my attention. But finally, after like 30 free expansions I got hooked.

It is difficult to surmise what I liked from my experience, but something about simply traveling across the galaxies and exploring all the whacky combinations of flora and fauna just scratched that random itch in my gaming brain. What truly surprised me is how well written and interesting the story was. Having all these existential questions get thrown at me really made me think. The journey felt personal and worth the hassle.

Although No Man’s Sky still feels undercooked in some of its aspects and has plenty of bugs and glitches the overall package is still fantastic. I truly think this is one of the best sandbox games I’ve tried in recent years. My only major complaint is the lack of multiplayer (it exists but on a very basic level). There is such a perfect foundation for amazing co-op missions but most of them boil down to people being in the same place, doing their own missions. I guess it matched what the story tried to tell but ruining the online aspect of your game for the sake of breaking a 4th wall is ridiculous.

If you have never tried this title because of its reputation, I strongly suggest you give it a chance. The base building feels odd, but like anything in here once you play around with it, everything comes together and feels rewarding. Units received.

This game is the true open-universe experience. The game makes an incredible effort into giving every single planet something unique but not off-putting. The exploration and loading times are pretty much non-existent and more than once have I been shocked by how well the game made it seem like I was really exploring a completely different universe. The amount of stars not to mention planets is completely unimaginable. There are millions (literally) of solar systems. I tried exploring all the universe in the interface map and I couldn't see even a 0.001% of all there was in 30 minutes of just moving around the map. Being able to be the first person to truly discover something in a videogame is an amazing experience and this game really rewards you for it. This game is a must try, an amazing experience.

No mans sky is one of the few examples of a game that had a bad launch and actually made a recovery. Over the 8 years since the games initial release, no mans sky has received numerous free content updates containing a variety of new things to do which makes the game feel full of life. The story of NMS is nothing to write home about, it's a pretty generic scifi plot but that can easily be ignored due to how fun the gameplay is. All in all, no mans sky is definitely worth a play in 2024 thanks to its many free updates since launch which make for the definitive space exploration game.

So I've played this in many iterations since it came out, and feel like it has gotten better with their updates, with more stuff to do and a greater variety of interesting things to view. It is genuinely fun to fly around, for some amount of time to collect materials, play with base building stuff and just view some beautiful and baffling worlds. It is not a great game in terms of its progression and mission hooks, as you get to see some extra interesting stuff, but not much that makes it worth it. the VR mode, while reducing the visuals is still an extra positive feature that play to strengths of the game's exploration, flying, and chill vibes(though it's a little wonkier to control on index).

I do plan on returning to this, and I will absolutely be flying around but as far as the core "game" parts instead of interplanetary nature walk, I'm pretty done with it.

This kind of game is typically not my thing. I usually prefer games with more of a focus over pure sandbox, but here I am 60 hours deep and I've really enjoyed my time with it.

Despite many of the gameplay systems being very surface level, No Man's Sky has kept me hooked with the intangible desire to just keep exploring. The planets are more often than not quite beautiful and cohesive, which is impressive given that they are all procedurally generated.

My main complaint is that ship v ship battles are insanely simplistic, which to me is a big part of the fantasy of space exploration. Does this kind of game need super deep combat? Not necessarily, but it would be very welcome. Hope this is part of a future update (which are all free by the way).

Overall, the game is really good. Excited for any future updates and to see how Light No Fire turns out. Glad Hello Games stuck with their game and came out the other side more successful than ever.