Update March 2024: It's been my intention to update this review for nigh-on two years now. When I first wrote this review back in 2018 the NEXT update had dropped which compelled me to pick up NMS and needless to say I was disappointed and put off by the grind and the simplistic gameplay loop.

However, since then I have gone back to NMS a handful of times and found myself enjoying it far more thanks to the years of non-stop major updates by Hello Games and their expeditions which eliminate much of the grind (most of the time).

While each content update has varied in quality and depth, the cumulative effect has been to give NMS the variety it so desperately needed. Now with yet another major update I am finally updating this review. I am keeping the original below for reference but I cannot, in good conscience, leave my negative review unchanged. No Man's Sky is truly a labor of love for Hello Games and they deserve nothing but praise for remaining steadfast in their support of this game.

NMS may never unseat your personal favorite space trading sim, but it is a technical and artistic achievement that brings thousands of players together to play and explore this ginormous universe that HG has created. It's not the deepest space sim, nor does it aim for realism, but it's fun and, in the end, isn't that why we play games?

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No Man's Sky is the first game in a decade or more of gaming that I truly regret purchasing. I have always had a soft spot for space exploration / trading / combat games - Elite on DOS was one of the first games I ever played on PC - and No Man's Sky, despite its very rough launch (and overblown promises) has been on my radar. My intrigue piqued with the NEXT update and I decide to jump in with both feet only to find myself falling into a pit of quicksand.

The game is beautiful, and no doubt countless screenshots from the developers and community are great at evoking the wonder and sense of scale that NMS gives you very early on. But then as you play, the curtain is slowly pulled back to reveal a very shallow and unsatisfying gaming experience.

Firstly, let me just say of all the open world, survival games on the market that I've played, NMS has got to have one of the WORST introductions of any game in its class. Unlike Minecraft or 7 Days to Die (or many others), where you are dropped in a relatively safe area and encouraged to collect resources in order to craft the necessary tools to open up the rest of the game to you, NMS literally throws you to the wolves. You're dropped on an environmentally hostile planet with limited oxygen and life support which need O2 and sodium to recharge, you also need basic metal to repair your tools and your ship (until then you're essentially grounded), which you're told to mine with your mining laser.

Oh okay, simple enough. Except if you mine for more than 30 seconds, uh oh, here comes an insidious sentinel robot (which inhabit every planet you're on), which almost immediately begins to attack you if you mine too much. Naturally your first instinct is to fight back, doing so will reward you with two more robots bearing down on your position. Fighting them unleashes another wave of robots, this time three and so forth. So basically the lesson to be gleamed from all this is: don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight. Run.

So you run. And you run. And you run (♫♪so far away♪♫). and then you hide, and then you mine, and then you run some more until you've fixed your ship. But your running isn't over yet because then you're treated with a never-ending breadcrumb trail of quests and hints on unveiling the inner mysteries of the game, something to do with ancient aliens called Anomaly (or something like that) and getting to the galactic center.

So you travel from one planet to another, you upgrade your ship, you engage in some space combat, but after a dozen hours or more it all starts to feel the same. Almost every planet is inhabited by procedurally generated animals (along with aforementioned sentinels). Space is peppered with conveniently (if unrealistically) placed asteroid fields which you will eventually mine, but the mining isn't for making money not really, it's just another means for producing things for the carrot-on-the-stick you're chasing.

This grind - and yes, NMS is extremely grindy for what is essentially a single-player game - wouldn't be so bad if the other aspects of the game were at least interesting. But trading in the game is relatively pointless. Mining is an extremely tedious test of your patience. Space combat is a joke, as even tough enemies seem to just seem to flight in tight circles while taking grazing shots at you. Character interaction is almost nil in the early-to-mid game because you have to learn each alien species' language, so any exchanges with them are purely guessing games of "pick the right response."

And for a space game NMS has one of the worst navigational systems I've ever seen in the genre, as it is almost non-existent; the system that is there becomes awash in numerous, sometimes dozens, of floating markers that you need to somehow hover over and tag and fly toward. The Discovery tab they have for naming/uploading systems to the discovery service is useless for navigation. So if you want to see how many planets are in a particular system their names and what is on those planets -- well good luck with that buddy -- because you literally have to spin in space and look at each planet manually and then fly there.

Ultimately, NMS' gameplay loop of mine/crafting/exploration is fundamentally flawed. Dozens of hours in other open world / survival / crafting games makes you feel like you've accomplished something; you might have a fort or home to be proud of, perhaps a working resource farm of some sort, you have amassed some nice weapons that help you fight off enemies.

I get none of this from NMS. I have 20-30 hours in the game now and I feel like I'm still chasing the next clue while wandering through another random system whose importance is meaningless in the vast sea of stars that make up NMS' galaxy. Part of me just wants to uninstall now and hope a future update fixes this. Part of me wants to go back to see if I can finally unlock one piece of the puzzle but the interminable grinding makes it feel more like a chore than an adventure.

5/10 -- wait for a sale if you really must play No Man's Sky but otherwise skip it until the developers fix its fundamental flaws.

Update March 2024: It's been my intention to update this review for nigh-on two years now. When I first wrote this review back in 2018 the NEXT update had dropped which compelled me to pick up NMS and needless to say I was disappointed and put off by the grind and the simplistic gameplay loop. However, since then I have gone back to NMS a handful of times and found myself enjoying it far more thanks to the years of non-stop major updates by Hello Games and their expeditions which eliminate much of the grind (most of the time). While each content update has varied in quality and depth, the cumulative effect has been to give NMS the variety it so desperately needed. Now with yet another major update I am finally updating this review. I am keeping the original below for reference but I cannot, in good conscience, leave my negative review unchanged. No Man's Sky is truly a labor of love for Hello Games and they deserve nothing but praise for remaining steadfast in their support of this game. NMS may never unseat your personal favorite space trading sim, but it is a technical and artistic achievement that brings thousands of players together to play and explore this ginormous universe that HG has created. It's not the deepest space sim, nor does it aim for realism, but it's fun and, in the end, isn't that why we play games? ______________________________________________________________ No Man's Sky is the first game in a decade or more of gaming that I truly regret purchasing. I have always had a soft spot for space exploration / trading / combat games - Elite on DOS was one of the first games I ever played on PC - and No Man's Sky, despite its very rough launch (and overblown promises) has been on my radar. My intrigue piqued with the NEXT update and I decide to jump in with both feet only to find myself falling into a pit of quicksand. The game is beautiful, and no doubt countless screenshots from the developers and community are great at evoking the wonder and sense of scale that NMS gives you very early on. But then as you play, the curtain is slowly pulled back to reveal a very shallow and unsatisfying gaming experience. Firstly, let me just say of all the open world, survival games on the market that I've played, NMS has got to have one of the WORST introductions of any game in its class. Unlike Minecraft or 7 Days to Die (or many others), where you are dropped in a relatively safe area and encouraged to collect resources in order to craft the necessary tools to open up the rest of the game to you, NMS literally throws you to the wolves. You're dropped on an environmentally hostile planet with limited oxygen and life support which need O2 and sodium to recharge, you also need basic metal to repair your tools and your ship (until then you're essentially grounded), which you're told to mine with your mining laser. Oh okay, simple enough. Except if you mine for more than 30 seconds, uh oh, here comes an insidious sentinel robot (which inhabit every planet you're on), which almost immediately begins to attack you if you mine too much. Naturally your first instinct is to fight back, doing so will reward you with two more robots bearing down on your position. Fighting them unleashes another wave of robots, this time three and so forth. So basically the lesson to be gleamed from all this is: don't fucking fight. Run. So you run. And you run. And you run (♫♪so far away♪♫). and then you hide, and then you mine, and then you run some more until you've fixed your ship. But your running isn't over yet because then you're treated with a never-ending breadcrumb trail of quests and hints on unveiling the inner mysteries of the game, something to do with ancient aliens called Anomaly (or something like that) and getting to the galactic center. So you travel from one planet to another, you upgrade your ship, you engage in some space combat, but after a dozen hours or more it all starts to feel the same. Almost every planet is inhabited by procedurally generated animals (along with aforementioned sentinels). Space is peppered with conveniently (if unrealistically) placed asteroid fields which you will eventually mine, but the mining isn't for making money not really, it's just another means for producing things for the carrot-on-the-stick you're chasing. This grind - and yes, NMS is extremely grindy for what is essentially a single-player game - wouldn't be so bad if the other aspects of the game were at least interesting. But trading in the game is relatively pointless. Mining is an extremely tedious test of your patience. Space combat is a joke, as even tough enemies seem to just seem to flight in tight circles while taking grazing shots at you. Character interaction is almost nil in the early-to-mid game because you have to learn each alien species' language, so any exchanges with them are purely guessing games of "pick the right response." And for a space game NMS has one of the worst navigational systems I've ever seen in the genre, as it is almost non-existent; the system that is there becomes awash in numerous, sometimes dozens, of floating markers that you need to somehow hover over and tag and fly toward. The Discovery tab they have for naming/uploading systems to the discovery service is useless for navigation. So if you want to see how many planets are in a particular system their names and what is on those planets -- well good luck with that buddy -- because you literally have to spin in space and look at each planet manually and then fly there. Ultimately, NMS' gameplay loop of mine/crafting/exploration is fundamentally flawed. Dozens of hours in other open world / survival / crafting games makes you feel like you've accomplished something; you might have a fort or home to be proud of, perhaps a working resource farm of some sort, you have amassed some nice weapons that help you fight off enemies. I get none of this from NMS. I have 20-30 hours in the game now and I feel like I'm still chasing the next clue while wandering through another random system whose importance is meaningless in the vast sea of stars that make up NMS' galaxy. Part of me just wants to uninstall now and hope a future update fixes this. Part of me wants to go back to see if I can finally unlock one piece of the puzzle but the interminable grinding makes it feel more like a chore than an adventure. 5/10 -- wait for a sale if you really must play No Man's Sky but otherwise skip it until the developers fix its fundamental flaws.