No Man's Sky

What hackers pick instead

• Kerbal Space ProgramPeople recommend it as a fun, hands-on way to learn orbital mechanics and spaceflight basics, especially for students. Critics say its physics engine is old and janky, and it has never been fully updated.24recommend
• StarflightPlayers praise its vast galaxy of free exploration and the story woven through it, and some call it a forerunner of No Man's Sky. No criticism was recorded.17recommend
• Elite DangerousPraised as a hardcore space sim with a 1:1 Milky Way and VR support. Caveats: boredom over long play and a heavy headset.15recommend
• Star CitizenRecommended for its ambitious, immersive space vision and good performance on Linux and FPS. Main caveat: years of delays, bugs and an unfinished beta state.11recommend
• Wing CommanderPeople recommend it for its exciting story and graphics, though critics say the late Amiga port was technically inferior and it ran poorly on newer PCs.7recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 244 comments. Each links to the original.

1. NMS is a great example of a developer who was devoted to their customer base, kept updating the game for free, and saw great market success in return.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

2. No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 are actually proof you can have an awful launch and still pivot into a large player base

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

3. It's a great game to play with friends. Explore, find cool animals, and most of all - build your fantasy space home.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

4. It's a very cool and ambitious project, but there's fundamentally nothing substantial to it in terms of gameplay.

   Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

5. The gameplay is completely engaging and this update looks like it fills in even more spaces than were hoped for.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

6. Hello Games offered a mountain of content that's right in the bullseye center of game's core vibe and identity

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

7. NMS is still a great fun space game to play, the lore / back story of each faction is quite bleak though

   Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

8. It's a completely different game, it just doesn't look like it if you picked back up where you left off.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

9. I got many hours of enjoyment out of a game I paid maybe $20 for. It's a hell of an entertainment deal.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

10. Wouldn't a better example be No Man's Sky, if we're talking procedural gen and eventually a good game.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying”

11. No Man's Sky got better as they were more intentional with their content. The game has more substance

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying”

12. Every expedition is like a whole new DLC, but they've released every single one of them for free.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

13. I just bought No Man's Sky on a Steam sale a few months ago and have been having a blast with it

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

14. they had pre-made videos sold off as actual gameplay and the worlds and space were very shallow.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

15. Hello Games did add multiplayer and held pretty close to the original vision that was offered

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

16. If you lean on it too heavily then yes, you will just have 10,000 variations on plain oatmeal

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

17. They've done an incredible job fleshing out the universe, giving us new things we can build

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

18. it is a good game at this point, they continued to add to it at a steady pace since launch

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

19. People build some seriously intricate bases and it really makes the worlds feel lived in.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

20. The game always looks far more dramatic in the trailers than it actually is in practice.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

21. the actual depth never feels that much deeper. It feels like the shallow pond got wider.

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

22. They added an actual story, a huge quest hub, unique items, tons of stuff to do really.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

23. The fact that he (and the team) just keeps on working on the game is truly commendable

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

24. Probably better than most given how quickly they're able to push out updates this big.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

25. it's not a quest game it's a building game and it's all about building bases and ships

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

26. I also recently came back to it and liked the story and progression system a lot more

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

27. it does feel a bit too relaxed for the kind of experience I'm typically looking for

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

28. the founder of the studio claiming it had multiplayer when it very clearly didn't

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

29. It's even worse when you see the exact same animal asset but scaled differently with a different color hue on a completely different planet.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

30. Obviously NMS's original marketing was bonkers and capitalised on saying technically true things in ways to mislead large numbers of people.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

31. the game is terribly easy. All that extra content you're implying is there, I find to be very shallow, unchallenging, and unrewarding

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

32. it still feels like a well polished demo to me. The interactions with intelligent beings are very repetitive and boring.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

33. They've added so many interesting things, yet last time I played it felt there wasn't much of anything to do with them.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

34. each planet is just lifeless, and it's basically the same few square kilometres copy and pasted over the whole planet

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “My Ten Years in No Man's Sky”

35. after visiting a few systems and a bunch of planets, you kinda saw everything the procedural generation has to offer

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

36. put in about two hours before uninstalling again. Mile wide and inch deep is exactly the way to describe it.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

37. Everything feels insignificant to me, every interaction is like the one before and the one that comes next.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

38. its combat is meh, and it is a sandbox with procedurally generated planets made of limited types of biomes

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Descent, Ported to the Web”

39. NMS either takes too long to get to a part of the game where stakes become relevant, or doesn't have any.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”

40. The planet variety is disappointing. And the prefab 'locations of interest' get really, really boring.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”