No Man's Sky

I originally purchased No Man's Sky on day one for PS4. While the game had a large number of things that desperately needed improvement, I think I went in with a better understanding that the game would be pretty barren. I was one of the few who wasn't disappointed but always wanted more. I put in 100+ hours initially. Even though I enjoyed my time, the community was completely right to be upset with what was discussed in some interviews and the initial trailers vs what we got. Then the updates started coming out. I expected some improvement before they killed off the game. I've never been so happy to be wrong. The game got better and better with every update. I came back to it several times and loved seeing the improvements. I purchased the game on Steam after NEXT came out, and put in another 50+ hours. Hello Games has shown the industry how to handle bad launches. Ultimately, even when devs are more consistently accurate than Hello Games was before launch, there are going to be games with significant issues. Sometimes it will be bugs, sometimes mechanics won't click, there will always be something. You can either drop the games support, milk it for cash, or do what Hello Games did. Stand by your product and continue to improve it and make things right. Now with Beyond, we are getting more significant multiplayer, VR, and so much more. Multiplayer alone expands it well beyond the scope of the original game. Vulkan support will really help some people get much better performance, the new base building mechanics give a mix of minecraft and Factorio/Satisfactory gameplay, you can tame and ride animals. Oh, and the best part about all of these updates. Completely free. There is no lootboxes or microtransactions. No paid expansions. They are strictly monetizing via game sales and nothing more. Which is how it should be done. I have so much respect for Hello Games for sticking with it, and making things right at no cost. Something the industry should learn from.

I seem too be one of the few people that AREN'T experiencing any performance issues. I own an GTX 970 and my game runs 60+fps pretty much constantly. (On the highest settings.) Performance stuff aside, the game is fun. FOR ME! I have visited about 20 planets by now and not a single one looked similar to the others. It might just be my luck considering other peoples experience when it comes to planet variety. I actually found "the grind" pretty fun, because when I traveled from planet to planet I often came across side missions that distract me for one or two hours. For example , I was asked by a computer to decrypt a code and once I did it lead me too a wrecked ship. So my conclusion is... I like it. But you might not.

No Man's Sky is no longer the mess it was at launch. I honestly believe that in it's current iteration, this game fulfills all of it's promises. It is features a truly infinite multi verse and yet a single planet is so vast and so full of things to do that you could choose to never leave it. It runs great on my hardware without any issues and in my 20hr of play time i have not encountered a single bug. Give this game a chance because it deserves it. It delivers an experience that no other game on the market does at the moment. Each time something in this universe generated (like a planet, a species, a space ship etc.) you have the option to upload it to a central database and it becomes a permanent fixture of this ever expanding world. It's like a hundred thousand computers are simlutaneous creating this digital universe that is only getting richer by amazing, totally free updates that Hello Games are releasing on at a very face pace. I love this game, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. This is my game of the year 2018.

A lot of the negative reviews are from 2016, and this game earned those reviews back then. However, as of 2020 there have been some seriously massive updates to the game that have fixed or at least smoothed out a lot of the problems. Hello Games took their customers' complaints seriously and, without implementing a monthly charge or any micro-transactions at all, took one of the biggest flops and turned it into one of the biggest successes with a seriously dedicated player base. It has been called "Minecraft for adults" and they're not wrong. With the new base building options you can spend hours perfecting your own private lair, mining operation, farm, etc. There are literally hundreds of billions of proceduraly-generated planets across 256 galaxies to explore. The new multiplayer elements make gaming with a friend easy, and the weekend community quests give everyone an excuse to meet up and play together (or against each other!). The optimization has been improved, there's a little more variability now, and the developers are still working hard to release new updates, bug fixes, and community events all without charging you an extra dime in the process. Now is a great time to check it out, but after your 200th straight hour playing the game, don't say I didn't warn you.