Sci-fi survival sim No Man’s Sky watch the launch of the next big update today and it’s about making things easier and doing them the way you want. Key to this are custom game modes, auto-save, dynamic difficulty, and inventory streamlining. There’s also a new relaxation mode for the especially cold among us. Check out the updated trailer below for a recap and some small space shots.
Alright, I’ll deal with this now. While I love learning about the gaps in No Man’s Sky, the bloody cursor always pisses me off in its menus. That’s why I was so excited to see Hello Games say that it has been improved for gamepad play. The less unwieldy cursor is part of the Waypoint update to the game, aimed at improving ease of use and quality of life. For example, scanning with an analytical display glass is now faster, so it’s more efficient to discover new content.
People other than myself will be more interested to know that there are now custom game mode options, from simple difficulty presets to the really confusing stuff regarding how the economy works. economy, survival and combat. You can make fuel usage really expensive to mimic the real world, or change the availability of scarce goods to mimic the real world again. Or make natural resource settings scarce, to mimic the real world even more.
If you want less reminders of how crappy stuff is, there’s a relax mode. That reduces danger and abrasion, but leaves all the story, survival and combat in place. Dynamic difficulty settings mean you can shuffle the challenge up or down, even for existing saves. The inventory has also been overhauled and expanded, so it’s easier to collect and retrieve later.
In addition, reducing with Waypoint is an option to enable AMD FSR 2 to increase image quality and frame rate. Looks like a lot of changes to No Man’s Sky in this update because there are stars in the galaxy – rename save, edit visual effects, swap rockets for semi-auto – so I will not cover it all here. You can read the full patch notes for the Waypoint 4.0 update here.
No Man’s Sky is available from Steam, GOG and Microsoft Store for £40 / $60/€55. It’s also on PC Game Pass and launches today for the Nintendo Switch.
