I'll admit it was childish, but one of the immediately most entertaining discoveries I made about No Man’s Sky NEXT, a huge update from the tiny development team at Hello Games, can be summed up in this tweet:

Gestures are a big part of letting your feelings known in multiplayer games nowadays, from Destiny to Fortnite, but this particular one isn’t deliberate – it’s just an in-game scanning animation manipulated with a quick toggle of the button. But the fact it's possible sums up a lot of NEXT's main feature additions – no, really, stay with me – all of which combine to make a much stronger No Man’s Sky experience. The type that players clearly hoped they would get this time two years ago. It’s been a while coming but Hello Games has done a great job of working toward delivering on the promises they failed to keep back in 2016. While it may not completely deacidify the taste in many players’ mouths – it’s an excellent step in the right direction, and it’s entirely free.

The first big feature is the third-person camera perspective, which finally lets players see their characters and spaceships as they explore this infinite, procedurally generated galaxy. The third-person mode takes a little while to get used to, but it’s conducive to better sightseeing as you plot a course across this colourful, Asimovian space adventure. Choose your avatar’s race as well as the type of gear you’re wearing, and you finally have the ability to customise your playable character in lots of different ways. It gives you a visual identity in a universe that was much in need of player differentiation.

The second and arguably biggest feature included in NEXT is real, thoroughgoing multiplayer components. What was originally a lonely, aimless crawl from planet to planet now has the potential for hours of cooperative or competitive play. Delve deep under the surfaces on mining missions; fly in unison as you dogfight with other combatants both human and non; complete simple but enjoyable joint quests for numerous rewards; or just exchange rude gestures as you muck around exploring. There are smart but simple touches in multiplayer that makes it simple to keep track of your friends in the universe, reducing the busy work of finding them in what is an unthinkably large playable environment.

There’s tons more, though. No Man’s Sky previously added the ability to own frigates – huge, semi-controllable capital ships that you could summon to your position in space before landing on and making use of the terminals within for buying and selling items. Now, you can amass a fleet of up to 50 of these huge ships, as well as command them to complete procedurally generated missions that will in turn net you extra rewards. Summoning your huge fleet just kilometres in front of your own spaceship is an impressive visual spectacle, and your fleet has more options for visual customisation, letting you revel in a sense of ownership as you create a space armada.

Other updates include improved graphical effects like atmospheric smoke and lighting, as well as ringed planets that look absolutely beautiful suspended in the rich cosmological colour palette. There’s more incidental detailing on your ships and on the environment around you, plus it includes an expanded draw distance so you can see further toward the horizon. This makes for exploratory sights of wonder whether you’re roaming on foot or in a cockpit. You can now fly close to the ground, adding to the peril, and there’s expanded base-building mechanics, the latter of which means the construction-focused players can set up camp literally anywhere – even underwater.

It’s fundamentally unchanged in terms of tone, though. That means some players who bounced off the game back in 2016 will be unphased by the new updates, which don’t turn a calm, exploratory space game into a bombastic Bay-esque sensory overload. No Man’s Sky still revels in the monotony of space travel: of how so much of the infinite vacuum is empty, with little of interest to find. With NEXT, Hello Games finds a way to reduce those gaps of nothingness, making wonder and amusement more regular fixtures. The adventure is richer and less cumbersome than before, and those discoveries feel just as impactful when everything slots together in unison; even if it is as simple as standing on a sun-scorched moon, devoid of any sentient life, accidentally being really rude to your friend.

No Man's Sky NEXT is out now for PS4, Xbox One and PC