No Man’s Sky is something of an anomaly. It was one of the most anticipated games of the PS4 console generation, only to be met with a sad-trumpet-sound of a launch. But that didn’t mean Sean Murray and the crew of scrappy nerfherders at Hello Games were ready to throw in the towel. No, they cut off communication with the outside world, rolled up their sleeves, and got back to work. They were going to fix this thing.
The result is one of the most fascinating, atmospheric space sandboxes the gaming world has ever seen. And No Man’s Sky just keeps getting better.
The Desolation update (Update 2.6 for you math nerds) adds elements of horror and mystery pulled straight out of movies like Alien and Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (oh, and if you’ve never seen Sunshine, drop whatever you’re doing and go watch it — it’s incredible).
The premise is that there are now derelict freighters rotting in the far-reaches of space, waiting for you to discover them. If you manage to board one, you’ll find mountains of scrap to collect, balls of mystery to unravel, and perilous dangers to overcome, such as rogue security systems and hyper-aggressive alien swarms. While you can search No Man’s Sky‘s almost-endless universe for these freighters on your own, lucky adventurers will find scrappers who will give them coordinates of a specific wreck.
If that’s not good enough, player-owned freighters have gotten a massive overhaul. Exteriors can now be customized, and the freighter upgrade system has gotten more robust. Best of all, you can now build a teleporter on your freighter. Finally.
This comes with some quality-of-life upgrades, better lighting effects, new story events, more multiplayer quests, and, of course, bug fixes.
You can read the full patch notes on the official No Man’s Sky website.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost four years since the disastrous, embarrassing launch of No Man’s Sky. It’s even harder to believe that Hello Games is still not done making it a better game with every single update.
