One of the eeriest things about No Man's Sky is that we don't know who or what we are. It's impossible to see your in-game avatar, and since it looks unlikely the game supports in-world multiplayer (at the moment, anyway), we might not ever catch a glimpse of ourselves.

So it's lucky that a data miner, one Hugo Peters, has unearthed what appears to be a 3D model of the player-character. As posted on NeoGAF, it's a fairly rote looking astronaut boasting a jetpack and some kind of computer system on his / her chest. We don't know that it's the right model, but it could be, right?

Or maybe this is the model:

Other interesting stuff has been exhumed from the code. For instance, there's a Half-Life 2 logo in a folder marked "Tests", which definitely doesn't mean Half-Life 3 is confirmed. Meanwhile, some folders indicate that the game was being prototyped for the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, demonstrating just how long it's been in development.

Various other models were found, including what appears to be a bloated shark, a rocket ship, and some kind of squid. The whole dump can be found over here, but there's sure to be more stuff soon.

No Man's Sky didn't have a spectacular launch last week, with many users experiencing niggling performance issues, and some unable to play the game at all. Following an early patch the next one is still a work in progress, but if you're finding the game unplayable in its current state you can access it right now.

As per an official Hello Games missive, the new patch addresses the jittery framerate, fixes the inability to effectively alt-tab back into the game, and turns Gsync off by default (it's currently the opposite). Meanwhile, the patch ushers in improved AMD Phenom support, improved mouse performance and better performance on CPUs with less than four threads.

If you're able to play the game satisfactorily already, don't rush ahead and install this patch as it's still classified 'experimental'. If you're having issues but they can be addressed by these workarounds, the studio advises that you do that, instead of install the patch.

Still, if your game is well and truly borked, right click on No Man's Sky in Steam, hit Properties and then Betas, and join it with the code '3xperimental'.

Chris is currently preparing his review of No Man's Sky, and you can read about his progress over here. So far, it's the biggest Steam launch of the year, with over 212,000 concurrent players playing at once.

Well, it's here at last: the PC version of No Man's Sky. Indie developer Hello Games recently released their space exploration and survival game, in which you travel a procedurally generated galaxy visiting planets, moons, and space stations, gathering resources, discovering alien lifeforms, and improving your starship and weapons in an attempt to reach the galactic core (or follow your own self-determined path). It's got a wonderful, pulpy sci-fi look and great music and sound design, but alongside the free-form adventure and exploration there's also a lot of repetitive tasks and some poorly-thought out menus and systems.

After spending a few days with a PS4 copy of No Man's Sky I've put 15 hours into the PC version. I'm going to continue to play before I finalize this review, but these are my thoughts after about a week of combined play.

Performance-wise, I know there have been some serious issues for a number of players. Crashes, screen-tearing, framerate dips and stalls, and so forth. A patch has already been issued, but many players are still reporting problems. I didn't start playing the PC version until after that first patch, and overall I've had mostly decent performance. On my PC (Intel i5-6600K @ 3.50 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980), playing in a borderless window with everything maxed, I get a solid 55-65 FPS just about all the time, though I do experience occasional and brief dips down to 20-30 or so, at seemingly random times.

I haven't experienced any crashes, which is nice because while playing the PS4 version earlier in the week, it crashed more than once. For me, at least, the PC version has been perfectly stable, and with the borderless window alt-tabbing in and out isn't a problem.

I'm feeling the absence of a few PC-specific features. I can't figure out a way to free look while flying my ship with the mouse and keyboard, though while using a controller you can turn your head and look around (a little bit at least) with one of the analog sticks. Having to turn my ship to the left to see what's on my left is pretty annoying, so I'm hoping they'll patch this in.

Also, the 'Scan For Discoveries' option when looking at the galaxy map doesn't seem to do anything, and while my controls are set to hide the UI when I press the 'H' key, it doesn't, so whenever I want to take an uncluttered screenshot I have to turn off the UI in the menu, then turn it back on again. Also annoying.

In terms of my enjoyment of playing NMS, I'm finding that it comes and goes. There are sessions that feel like nothing more than repetitive grind for resources, constant interruptions to re-charge my space suit, weapon batteries, and starship drives, and trips down to planets that are either too toxic to want to spend time on or too uninteresting to bother with.

At other times I find myself having fun, mostly upon finding an attractive planet that doesn't want to immediately scorch, irradiate, or drench me with alkaline rain. I spent several hours on a single planet this morning its weather was described as 'drizzle' and took my time exploring, cataloging all its plants and creatures, learning tidbits of alien languages, and comfortably straying further from my ship than I ever had before. While I didn't see anything jaw-dropping or discover anything mind-blowing, it was a relaxing and fun excursion.

I have a lot of little gripes about some of the design choices: the inventory system is terrible and NMS feels very heavily centered on endless resource gathering and repetitive crafting chores. But I've also found solid hours of soothing and enjoyable play that help offset those frustrations. Like I said when Tyler and I discussed our time the PS4 version of the game: "I feel like I only complained but I am liking it a bit." That's still true, and even if I wasn't reviewing it, I'd still be playing it.

I've got plenty more of No Man's Sky to explore, and I hope to have a full review a few days from now.