If you’ve heard of No Man’s Sky, then you’re aware of their chequered past. You might also be aware that earlier this August, British indie developers Hello Games dropped the biggest update yet for their sci-fi space exploration game – Beyond.

After what is popularly considered one of the biggest launch failures in recent years, have Hello Games managed to rise from the ashes of broken promises and misinformation to finally shed their pariah status and bring No Man’s Sky into a positive public light?

Yep.

Key features

No Man’s Sky Online

The first time you enter NMS‘s new online hub, the reworked Anomaly… your game crashes.

But the second time you enter the Anomaly… you crash again, except this time when you log back in your entire awesome cliffside glass house, that you poured hours of blood, sweat and tears into, has been deleted. Not funny guys.

Every <bug> procedural

But the third time, after moving on from the massive base-shaped hole in your heart cliff, wiping away your tears and resolving to trust again, you might make it to the landing pad. Of course actually landing your ship is a whole new obstacle, as just after Beyond launched it was not uncommon to see ships break-dancing all over the Anomaly.

Anomalous behaviour detected

Very funny, until you’re piloting the ship that decides it would rather be a Beyblade than land. VR players have also reported vomit-inducing dizziness… I lied, it’s still funny.

However, with these nasty bugs now squashed, it’s time to leave the safety of your ship. The Anomaly is essentially No Man’s Sky‘s equivalent of Destiny’s Tower; an interactive social hub that supports up to 16 players. You can handily warp in the entire station at a whim wherever you are in space, granting you unprecedented access to all the glossy new online features implemented in Beyond. Having played the update since its launch, the novelty of having a dedicated space to socialise with other players still hasn’t worn off – thanks in no small part to the awesome community.

The Nexus

The first thing you’ll likely come across, after you’ve done the rounds and peeped out your peers’ ships, is the giant hologram in the middle of the hub. This is the Nexus and it’s where you’ll be picking up or joining missions to embark on with your fellow travellers.

The Nexus in all its glory, complete with enslaved robot eye.

Missions come in various forms, from collecting ancient bones to constructing outposts. Keep an eye on the rewards for each, as sometimes you’ll be rewarded items rather than currency for completion – if it’s cold, hard cash you’re after then these are your best bet, as it’s not uncommon to see Cryo Pumps or Fusion Accelerants as rewards, which will fetch you a tidy 1,500,000 each. Otherwise, you’ll usually be running missions for nanites or units. Or glory, if that’s your thing.

Ignore the mission to collect poo, you want the Accelerant.

It’s also worth noting that quite often the mission will teleport you to another previously undiscovered system when you leave the Anomaly, which allowed me to cheese out an Indium Drive before I’d even thought about building its predecessors, thanks to the game warping me to an Emeril system for a mission. Stonks.

Blueprint vendors

Another welcome addition to the reworked Anomaly, the new blueprint vendors will offer you all the recipes you need to craft crucial technologies for your ship, exocraft, multi-tool and exosuit, all in one handy space. There is also a construction terminal from which you can research all of the base-building components in the shiny new tech tree. But more on that later.

The burgeoning hub of the Anomaly.

Unlike the vendors of NMS past, these guys will only offer blueprints for craftable tech in exchange for your hard-earned nanites. If you’re looking to pick up upgrade modules for your tech, you’ll want to visit the old vendors in space stations.

No Man’s Sky 2.0

Hello Games added so much to the game in the huge package of ‘2.0,’ that addressing each individual feature in-depth would require typing a number of words exceeding my mental fortitude. For the sake of my smol bren and being as concise as possible, I’ve compressed the list down to include the features that I’ve personally found the most relevant.

Research trees

Breathing new life into what was otherwise a very confusing and convoluted system, the new research trees are much more akin to something we would expect to see in a contemporary game.

Rather than the seeming randomness of yesteryear, we now have the ability to see all our potential research prospects and map out our own path with our salvaged tech. Like, you know, a normal game.

Just one of many tabs in the new research terminal.

Whilst reworking the research system, HG were kind enough to throw in a few new technologies. Most of these are new base-building parts in the form of industrial and power units – such as inverters, proximity switches and wires – with a few oddballs, like the Translator and Survey Device.

I still have absolutely no idea how the former works – apparently, it will fill in a few words that you haven’t learnt when talking to aliens but if that is the case, there’s no indication it’s working at all. Good luck figuring that one out, as there’s very limited explanation in the game’s catalogue too. With over 700 new alien words added, though, let’s hope it is doing something.

If it could translate this cryptic catalogue entry for me, that would be awesome.

The latter serves as an alternate mode to your existing analysis visor and allows you to survey for deep-level mineral, gas or geothermal deposits. These are a new source of resources added in Beyond and follow the same grading system as basically everything else in the game, C-Class being worst and S-Class being best.

Base-building

Now that your much-loved base/home has been unceremoniously deleted from the universe, it’s time to rise from the ashes and start anew. Thankfully, with a slew of new base parts and the intuitive new research tree, reclaiming your foothold on the interstellar frontier couldn’t be easier.

In the grungy aftermath of the loss of my previous base, the Black Temple was born.

HG have also added a new snap-preview feature, which allows you to see all the potential snap options for the part you’re trying to place down. Gone are the days of spinning around until you find the nanometre window where your part lines up the way you want it to. Praise the sun.

The main bulk of the new base parts come in the form of power and industry; with a whole bunch of generators, logic gates and switches added, players have already been coming up with some amazing contraptions. Someone even engineered a computer.

Unfortunately, with my tiny pea-brain, the most I’ve managed to accomplish is wiring up my industrial farm and base lights. However, despite a fair amount of criticism that the new power mechanics are unnecessarily convoluted, even the smallest light-bulb moments have left me with a real sense of satisfaction.

Greetings, programs!

If it’s money on your mind then look no further than the new industrial parts – specifically the Mineral Extractor and Supply Depot. Currently the best way to make millions of credits with very little effort, if you have dreams of being a rich boy space-sheikh and flying around in a shiny S-Class ship, you’ll want to find a planet with Activated Indium in a blue star system. From here you’ll want to scan for a solid deposit of the good stuff and build as many extractors and depots as you can afford, plundering the poor unsuspecting planet of all its natural deposits. Space-sheikh style.

Need more pylons.

The best thing about the industrial parts is that, once you’ve powered and connected everything up, it’s completely automated. Your extractors will continue to run in real-time, meaning that with enough depots you can leave them to farm overnight and wake up to a fat stack of Activated Indium. For context, a full stack (9999) at the time of writing is worth ~9,500,000. Big stonks.

Discovery page

When HG dropped the patch notes for Beyond, there was so much to sift through that I completely missed the part about the updated discovery page. However, playing through the game, it’s amazing just how much quality-of-life improvement such a comparatively minor feature can bring.

Whilst on the discovery tab, you can now see a miniaturised model of the system you’re currently in, giving you a much more comprehensive view of the system right off the bat. Furthermore, when you actually select a planet you’ve visited, the fauna tab will now show you where each creature on the planet resides.

Handily, this also applies to undiscovered fauna. Finally, you can see where that one elusive beast, that’s been running rings around you since you settled on the planet, lives. Chances are it was hiding either in a cave or deep underwater, somewhere you would never have found it. And now you can hunt it into extinction and harvest its remains. Hakuna Matata.

Cooking

If there’s a reason you’ll want to harvest the elusive, one-of-a-kind, endangered alien on your planet, it’s to present its delicious, tender liver to Space-Chef Ramsay. Obviously.

“You used so much oil, the U.S. is trying to invade the plate!”

With the newly added Nutrient Processor, you can turn alien bits into all kinds of food and either eat them or take them to one of the Anomaly’s new residents, Space Ramsay. Space Ramsay is every bit as unforgiving as Earth Ramsay and will happily berate you for your efforts until you bring him a dish worthy of his time.

When my Fermented Fruit isn’t good enough.

Taming

If you’re angling for a more pacifistic playthrough, then alien husbandry might be more up your alley. With the addition of creature bait and milking stations, the stage is set for you to fulfil your dreams of becoming an alien rancher on a faraway planet. Kind of.

As it stands, there is no way to ‘hard-tame’ any of the creatures you encounter; that is to say, after feeding them their desired bait, they’ll let you mount them and milk them, then when you’re finished they’ll hurriedly grab their coats and leave while mumbling something about needing to catch a bus.

I’m not sure how, but it’s flying.

Whilst I found this immeasurably disappointing – gone are my dreams of housing an interstellar zoo – the thing that confuses me the most is the aliens’ diets. For some reason, every single bait recipe requires faecium. It’s exactly what you think it is. You feed them basic creature pellets, collect their poo, then cook it up with some berries or wheat or (at this point it’s really arbitrary because you’re feeding them their own poo) whatever and they’ll eat it up. Why Sean? Why?

One number 32a coming up.

Regardless, when you’ve fed Mr. Alien a poop sandwich and he’s lapped it up gratefully – you sadistic monster – you’ll be able to ride him around for a bit before milking him dry. Alien abuse isn’t cool.

Planetary charts

Another new addition to space stations – besides the sparkly new ramp that you’re obviously going to use when you permanently have a jetpack attached to your back – is the cartographer. A completely unnecessary waste of… whatever his kind breathe, the cartographer will take your hard-earned Navigation Data and painstakingly convert it into Planetary Charts, one unit at a time.

Don’t be disarmed by his friendliness. This man is Satan.

If, like myself, you had a surplus of Navigation Data stockpiled before Beyond dropped, then the stations’ newest residents will quickly become the bane of your life. Rendering the Signal Booster nigh-on obsolete, Planetary Charts can just be used straight from your inventory, cutting out the middle man.

This all sounds great in theory, however after exchanging 40 Navigation Data, one at a time, when the menu automatically closes after you’ve exchanged each one forcing you to go through the whole dialogue each time, the cartographer begins to wear a little thin on you. But wait, there’s more.

After putting you through menu-hell for 20 minutes, rather than allowing you to choose which kind of structure you would like to search for, which would actually make Planetary Charts a clear upgrade to their predecessor and not a complete waste of time, the type of chart you get is completely random dependent upon what station you’re in.

#JusticeForSignalBooster

Looking for distress signals? Too bad, alien artifacts in this station. Looking for a secure frequency? Well, too bad, distress signals here. You literally have to jump from system to system, wasting your warp fuel, on the chance you’ll find a cartographer that has the charts you’re after. It is utterly nonsensical. My least favourite part of the whole update. Rant over.

Quality of life improvements

Being clumped together as ‘gameplay balance’ in Beyond’s patch notes, these are some of the most overlooked changes, but also some that I’m most grateful for.

Finally, our collective prayers to the big man Murray in regards to inventory space have been answered. Raw materials can now be stored in stacks as large as 9999, all the way up from 250 pre-Beyond. This makes a huge difference to all aspects of the game, from trading – being able to carry 40x more raw materials (such as Activated Indium) per stack – to base building – no more running out of Ferrite Dust halfway through your build.

I told you so.

If you do happen to run out of Ferrite Dust, the new [mining beam upgrade] for the Mining Beam has you covered, granting you +50% to all resources mined. Combined with the new Mining Beam rework – your beam becomes more powerful, and therefore mines quicker, the closer it is to overheating – farming resources feels much less grindy. The new overheat mechanics help to keep you from getting bored, by playing the hot potato mini-game of trying to keep your beam in the red for as long as possible, without actually overheating it.

No Man’s Sky VR

Unfortunately, being a poor peasant boy with barely an ear of corn to his name, current-generation virtual reality systems are just slightly out of my reach. I do, however, have it on good authority from the privileged bourgeoisie who possess such a system that NMS VR is, indeed, very cool.

While I understand that there are still a few creases to iron out – the update’s launch was mired in bugs – general feedback of the game’s implementation of VR has been overwhelmingly positive. This is largely thanks to Hello Games reworking most of the current game for VR-compatibility, which included scaling up ship sizes and reworking cockpits to offer a more authentic VR experience. I’m not jealous.

This means that VR rich boys are able to play with us destitutes and we can only look on in abject envy as their VR avatars flip us off and wildly flail their arms around, before hopping into a very shiny, very expensive ship, leaving us to eat their virtual moon-dust.

TL;DR

No Man’s Sky, in its current state, is a very good game. Hello Games have made an absolutely amazing comeback from the brink of a controversial launch that could have easily spelled the end of the game.

While I have no doubt that many AAA studios out there would’ve turned this into a merciless bait-and-switch (looking at you, EA), taking our money and vanishing off the face of the earth in lieu of all the negative reviews the game received at launch, Hello Games stuck with it.

Hello Games are clawing their way back from Overwhelmingly Negative reviews.

It’s this persistence and unrelenting commitment that really demonstrates their love for the game they’ve created. Despite the sheer amount of adversity they faced from day 1, HG kept their heads down and got to work. They remained involved with the small community that stuck by them, listened to what they said and slowly that community grew.

With the release of Next, HG’s last big update, players were already coming back to give the game another go, myself included. Most of us liked what we saw and we stuck around. When Beyond dropped, it was off to a ropey start. Numerous crashes and bugs left half of the game unplayable and, not sure if I’ve already mentioned this but my whole base was deleted. Not bitter.

However, the studio’s ethos has remained as unwaveringly resolute as it ever has been and they worked tirelessly around the clock to squash these bugs. Releasing daily patches and hotfixes, within a week the vast majority of the game’s big bugs had been weened out. They embody an unprecedented level of pride and passion in their work and for this reason alone, everybody should consider buying No Man’s Sky to support these incredible developers.

That’s all, folks.