No Man's Sky Finally Achieves This Coveted Feat On Steam After 8 Years

No Man's Sky made some big promises before its release on PC and PS4 in 2016, showing off trailers of incredible alien creatures and unfathomable landscapes. But when gamers landed on their first planets, they found there really wasn't much to do. The game's reviews tanked, but Hello Games didn't give up. Now, eight years later, No Man's Sky has reached an important milestone on Steam with an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating.

Steam keeps track of review scores for all time, as well as just recent reviews. The "All Reviews" score is "Very Positive," which is itself a major achievement given where NMS started. However, the more important metric these days is recent reviews. Unfortunately, too many games launch with serious bugs or missing features that drag down the reviews. Most gamers don't update their reviews, so the recent score gives you a better idea of the game you'll get when purchasing.

At launch, No Man's Sky was a bit of a mess. The game's pitch was that players could explore a huge universe with diverse planets, creatures, and quests. However, the procedurally generated worlds ended up looking a lot alike, and players sharing this online world could barely interact. So, the game quickly accumulated negative reviews on Steam, reaching the dreaded "Overwhelmingly Negative" status.

Any game haunted by that alarmingly red label will have a hard time getting sales, but Hello Games has worked consistently over the years to improve No Man's Sky. The in-game resources and ships were completely revamped, planets got many more points of interest, and the developers designed entirely new gameplay mechanics to make the universe more fun.

Many of the changes that brought gamers back feel a bit like Minecraft in space. At launch, collecting resources was just a way to get from one planet to the next, but now you can collect materials to build bases, space stations, and even massive capital ships to explore the stars. The moral of the story is that people like building things. If you want to build something in No Man's Sky, it's on sale for $23.99 currently, down from its initial $60 price tag.