When I first started hearing a buzz about the current state of No Man’s Sky, I was skeptical. On release, reviewers slammed the game for lacking content (especially promised content, such as multiplayer), repetitive and grindy, predictable and shallow. But now, Steam describes recent reviews as “mostly positive” rather than “overwhelmingly negative.” The game has streamlined gameplay, added different game modes to cater to a wider variety of tastes, added multiplayer and basebuilding, and increased the variety of planets. Despite all of the updates, is the game really worth playing now? Like I said, I was skeptical.

I bit the bullet several weeks ago when the game went on sale for $30. Sixty dollars is a bit too much of a gamble, but I can justify buying a “meh” game for $30. Just this week I finally got around to installing it, in the meantime still skeptical, but also a bit excited. I’ve always loved the heck out of space exploration games (Elite Dangerous in VR is my jam!) and this game added terrestrial exploration to the space exploration I was accustomed to. I was ready.

The load screen of stars flew by as the shaders loaded very verrry verrrrryyyyyy slowly. Much like my computer loading, my character came to very slowly, blinking in the blinding desert light. Who was I? Where was this? Why was I here in this barren wasteland of scorching heat? I had many questions but no answers. Nor did I really have time to ponder existence, as the sun was slowly cooking me in my spacesuit. I had to find some sodium quickly to recharge my suit hazard protection. Despite being on a dirt brown scorched wasteland, minerals and hardy cacti-like plants were scattered throughout the landscape. So I survived, scrounging on what little I could until finding my way to my spaceship. Unsurprisingly it was a broken mess, needing repairs in several places. Repairs, of course, consisted of gathering resources or going to a nearby outpost. After my ship was repaired and fueled up, I blasted up into space and careened towards the real meat of the game.

After taking off and being greeted by a plethora of stars (and the intimidatingly massive galactic map), I headed towards a nearby space station inhabited by sentient frogs named Gek. They taught me some of their language, I upgraded my suit inventory, changed my appearance, picked up some navigation data that some forgetful person left on a table (Is person even a correct term? What does one call a frog anyway? I only know 35 Gek words so I’m hardly an expert on proper etiquette), and even picked up a quest from a random Gekfella (not an official term, just my own endearing nickname for these slimy cuties).

After my brief space station adventure, I headed down to a nearby rocky planet. It had a temperate atmosphere, so hazard protection wasn’t necessary. On that planet, I found some strange box like relics underground, found alien artifacts that taught me more Gek language, gathered rare resources, dug holes in hills for funsies, unearthed buried technology (which you use to unlock blueprints for base building), found outposts, both abandoned and stationed, started building a cute little base, and scanned every plant, animal, and mineral I could find. All this on one tiny planet. Getting anything done in this game is IMPOSSIBLE unless you possess some sort of insanely strong impulse control, which I quite obviously do not. At one point I was trying to gather materials to craft an upgrade for my exosuit. On the way to gather material, I found a crashed freighter, an armored salvage container guarded by three aggressive robots, dug up some ancient ruins , and even followed a particularly interesting creature taking screenshots (the seven foot tall creature had a turtle shell on its back with turtle back legs but antelope front legs with a tiny little head the size of a human hand…I know, right?!), . At some point I completely forgot what I had set out to do in the first place.

I almost wish I had played No Man’s Sky at launch, just so I could comment on how far it has come. This is by far the best survival game I’ve ever played. Gathering resources never feels like a chore, the basebuilding is extremely dynamic (just look up some of the player bases that have been posted to various forums), and getting upgrades feels extremely rewarding. Actual space flying and combat feels a bit clunky, but I’m used to the intuitive nature of using a HOTUS ( Hands On Throttle-And-Stick for any non ubernerds reading – its like a joystick but also with a throttle lever) but am currently using an xbox controller (turns out HOTUSs are pretty useless for on foot exploration, who’d have thought?). So far the exploration is still interesting even after 20 hours. Having a procedurally generated universe, I can see how planets might start to look similar eventually. My hope is with the upcoming Beyond update they add additional variety to the planets, keeping everything cool and fresh.

No Man’s Sky isn’t a sandbox game. It’s a massive beach of a game, sand stretching as far as the eye can see, teal waters lapping at the shore. So sit back, relax, have a mojito (or a margarita if you prefer) and enjoy the adventure.