No Man's Sky Review

Judging the 2016 release rather than the years of repair that followed, this is a technical marvel wrapped around an empty loop. The procedural generation is real and the mathematics behind it genuinely impressive: eighteen quintillion planets with coherent flora, fauna, terrain and skies, all derived deterministically from a seed rather than stored anywhere. Flying from a planet's surface to open space with no loading screen was not a common trick in 2016 and it still reads well today.

The problem is that generation produces variety without meaning. Once you have scanned three worlds you have seen the grammar, and the loop collapses into mining launch fuel to reach the next identical resource node. The multiplayer described in interviews was simply absent at launch, base building did not exist, and reaching the center of the galaxy paid off nothing. Hello Games then spent years and no additional money making good on all of it, which is admirable, but the game that actually shipped was thin.