No Man’s Sky represents the complete antithesis of the modern game industry.
It launched as a PS4 console exclusive with lots of fanfare, only to receive middling reviews and disappoint a large swathe of its hopeful space-faring playerbase. But then, over nearly a decade of updates and patches, it has grown into an open world survival/crafting juggernaut, rivaling any other game in the genre. Its once-minimalist and maybe even plodding universe is now home to a vast collection of mechanics and systems, a robust multiplayer mode, and ever-evolving visuals. The developers at Hello Games did all of this without charging for any of it, and without any kind of ongoing live service content that tries to pry additional money from its players.
After all those updates, it’s still not a game for everyone. It’s distinctly for those who are already fans of it, or for those with an open mind ready for a slower-paced time that’s more concerned with fiddly systems over action set pieces. It’s a thoughtful, drawn out, more chill experience than you might be expecting from its promises of grand space battles, exploration, and weird alien discoveries. But even if it’s not entirely for you, it probably has something…
