No Man’s Sky NEXT Review: Is It Worth Going Back?

For the last two years, No Man's Sky was largely a game about how big space is, and how simultaneously cool and boring it is to explore. While we liked it at the time, not everyone who had purchased the game was thrilled, and its developers Hello Games have spent the last two years deploying large, universe-changing updates: adding a more substantive story, the ability to build bases, and countless other tweaks large and small. This summer, however, marks its biggest update yet. Dubbed No Man's Sky NEXT, it's essentially version 2.0, a soft relaunch of the game that brings it closer in line with the expectations many had for it. For many, the biggest of these changes is multiplayer: Now you can explore the game's unprecedented vastness with up to three friends. So of course we strapped back into our starships to check it all out.

Joshua Rivera, GQ contributor: So, let me just start by saying that I really, really hated playing No Man's Sky with you guys the first time out. As someone who liked the game from day one but found it better to only play occasionally, I loved the solitude of it all, the rhythms of finding the resources I needed to improve my ship, my multitool, and see more of what the game's abstract story had to offer. And then you guys show up, just crashing my very chill space zen studio, making jokes and talking all the time and trying to do all sorts of shit that isn't the shit that I need to do. I don't need this stress in my life.

Scott Meslow, GQ culture critic: Well, if you’re not interested in a pointless stress simulator, you’re playing the wrong game. Cards on the table: I am one of the people who did not care for No Man’s Sky 1.0 when it launched a couple of years ago. I put about four hours into it, decided the gameplay was too clunky and the goals were too obtuse, and never touched it again. So at first, logging back on felt a little bit like attending a high school reunion: Yes, I remember this—but it doesn’t mean I missed it, or that I’m all that happy to see it again.

No Man’s Sky NEXT opens with a choice: You can continue the quest you began in the original version of the game, with all the resources you acquired—or you can start fresh. Which did you pick?

Joshua: Oh, I booted up my old save. This isn't the first time the game has tweaked its opening hours, and I had already restarted the last time the game changed up its intro—maybe a year ago? But more importantly, half of what you do in No Man's Sky is still collecting stuff, so I wanted the slight boost that having all my old stuff on hand would give me.

But I would push back on your suggestion that the game is stressful. It's definitely tedious—there's still not a whole lot of variety—and it's still certainly obtuse. But I'm fine with that. The story has much more of a spine than it did when you played at launch, but the game is still mostly interested in directionless exploration, and in players finding their own fun or reason for playing. That's cool to me, but the lack of direction seems to frustrate you. Why's that?

Scott: Look, man, I just want to jet around the galaxy with my buddies. And while the best moments in No Man’s Sky indulge that fantasy, it also has one foot firmly planted in the simulator genre.

Let me give you an example of what I don’t like about No Man’s Sky. Let’s say I’m in a particularly boring corner of the galaxy—burned-out desert planets devoid of any life forms, irradiated wastelands that my spacesuit can only tolerate for a minute or two—so I decide to warp to another area. To do that, I need to build a Warp Cell. To build a Warp Cell, I need to build Antimatter and Antimatter Housing. To do that, I need to land on a planet and use my mining laser to mine oxygen and ferrite dust, and build a refiner that can turn metal and carbon into chromatic metal and condensed carbon.

So I do that. And it’s a pain in the ass, and it takes like an hour. And then I try to take off. And discover that my Launch Thruster is empty, and I can’t even go back into space until I mine some uranium. And then I turn off my Playstation because honestly, who has the time for all this bullshit?

If you play long enough, all of this menu-hopping and crafting becomes second nature. But to me, the game’s fussy systems get in the way of everything that’s coolest about it. And just to be clear: I don’t think that means No Man’s Sky is a bad game. It’s just not the space exploration game that I’m looking for. (And the game-breaking glitches—one of which robbed me of a cool freighter I saved from space pirates—definitely didn’t help.)

But if there’s one thing about NEXT that dramatically improved my overall No Man’s Sky experience, it’s playing with my friends. Now that we’ve spent a while wrapping our heads around multiplayer together, have you come around? Or would you still prefer to play No Man’s Sky as Solo: A Joshua Rivera Story?

Joshua: Eventually, I got over it, and didn't mind having you folks around. Part of it was that, in later sessions, we all knew what we were doing, instead of fumbling our way through space and its many menus, and we could just decide on a thing to do together. Like, "Hey, let's go check out this downed freighter," or helping you fight off some space pirates, or—in probably the highlight of our time playing—building a dumb house together. Playing with other people is also funny in a way that I don't think is intentional. No Man's Sky is built with the serene solo experience in mind, all of its flora and fauna are there to give you impressive vistas but not much else. Watching Kevin jump around shooting alien dinosaurs as a coked-up tiny lizard-man is extremely funny, as is that time he just dug a huge moat around your ship. I don't really have it in me to role-play a misanthropic space tourist, but I will happily watch someone else do it.

Scott: And that’s why, despite my real and ongoing misgivings about all the annoying shit No Man’s Sky makes you do, I’ve mostly come around on it. The multiplayer has a practical function; when I don’t have enough uranium for my Launch Thruster, one of you transfers a handful from your stash so I don’t have to waste time mining it. But more than that, the multiplayer functions as a low-key hang for you and your friends—like a party chat with an outer space-themed screensaver attached. With your buddies around, the aimlessness of No Man’s Sky becomes an asset, because there’s not enough going on to get in the way of your friend group’s natural bullshitting.

And No Man’s Sky is wise enough to give you the tools to make your tiny corner of this massive galaxy feel like your own. Take the brand-new character customizer, which allowed us to turn our squad into a bunch of dumpy little off-brand Ninja Turtles. Or the time Kevin and I touched down on a planet to complete one of many, many new missions by separately killing a bunch of innocent animals. There are still weird hiccups in the experience—I don’t understand why the game won’t let us sign up for the exact same missions, which would foster some genuinely interesting collaboration in our gang—but for me, it was a striking improvement over stumbling around the galaxy alone.

Joshua: And while I agree with you, Scott, I still think of solo play as the primary way to play No Man's Sky. It's what you should think of when you're deciding whether or not to buy this game: Does the idea of wandering through a vast galaxy, collecting resources, plotting your way through an opaque story, and building cool stuff whenever you feel like it appeal to you? Then go for it. Playing with pals isn't going to salvage the game for you. It's true that it's better with friends, but so is the DMV, or filing taxes. It's a fun diversion, a way to mix things up, and ultimately too clunky to consistently do. There are other games better suited to playing exclusively with others. Like Final Fantasy XV: Multiplayer Expansion—Comrades.