Space explorers in Hello Games’s No Man’s Sky can now experience the pleasure of finding ancient alien religious sites, then ramping off them in a giant spacebike while hootin’ and/or hollerin’. The Akira-meets-Popemobile beauty above is the Pilgrim, a new Exocraft added in today’s vehicle-focused update. Players wanting to take it for a spin should check out their nearest Blueprint Analyser, and look for the Pilgrim Geobay, along with a new device allowing you to summon ground vehicles anywhere on a planet’s surface. Check out the full patch 1.63 notes here.

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As well as finding No Man’s Sky a relaxing exploration sim to play, I ve especially enjoyed hearing about all the weird and wonderful corners of the universe that other players have stumbled upon. Now, Hello Games have made it much easier to find those stories. Released with the latest update, the Galactic Atlas allows anyone to explore fan-submitted points of interest. And I can t stop poking around in it.

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Most studios would be content with a re-launch of their game making it a massively played best-seller, but Hello Games have more planned for their procedural space sandbox, No Man’s Sky. The studio have their first season of community events planned out, and the first, detailed in this official blog post, goes live today.

Buckle your swashes and put an eyepatch on your space-helmet, as there’s a hunt on for buried treasure in a remote corner of the galaxy. It’s not a massive undertaking, but should help bring its community together in search of underground loot and some extra cosmetic items, with more goodies coming in the following weeks.

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OK! OK! Look, thank you, yes, yes, I know, thank you. Yes, it’s very exciting that I’m here with this week’s Steam Charts, but come on, please, sit down now, that’s really enough. Oh, come on, all of you, you’re lovely, but it’s only little me. Goodness gracious! (more…)

Welcome to the Award Winning Steam Charts! Yes, you heard that right! I wrote “Award Winning”! It hasn’t technically won any awards, but since everyone can agree it should have, it seems like it would almost be lying not> to write it. But enough about how bloody brilliant I am, here are the top grossing games on your Steams this week. (more…)

Space exploration sim No Man s Sky recently added both multiplayer and third-person perspective, along with a host of other changes for its Next update. To me, the mere presence of character models seemed innocuous at first, but it s quickly become one of my favourite things about the game.

The character customisation, which can be accessed on any space station, isn t particularly detailed, but it doesn t need to be. The main thing is that you now have a tangible presence in the universe, and just enough control over what that presence looks like.

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Then the bus EXPLODED. Hello, this is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, and we are here to talk about the best game openings and intros. Whether they are cold opens or slow burns, we love a good first impression. (more…)

Words are ill-equipped to describe how dull this week’s Steam Charts truly are. Read on to see how I combat that. But also, thank goodness there’s at least the interesting feature that Plunkbat has, for the first time since it shot to the top of the charts on its release, dropped to third place. Its year-long grip on the top spot was beginning to waver in recent weeks, increasingly finding itself at #2 in the face of a big new release. Now its weakening dominance has seen it slip another spot down. Could Plunkles be seeing its rule coming to an end?

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A pilot in planet-hopping space sim No Man s Sky is offering a big reward to the first person who finds a specific ship and sends them the co-ordinates. The reward is 200 million units for a ship that looks like this, according to a bounty posted on Reddit by player “Avaslash”. There s also a possible bonus of 20 million spacequid if it has the exact bits and bobs laid out in the bounty, and a further 50 million bonus for anyone who finds the ship within 2 weeks. The ship-seeker is willing to pay so much because the recent update to the rock-lasering sci-fi game messed up their favourite spacecraft. And they want it back. (more…)

Update: GOG are now offering refunds to anyone who owns NMS there, even if they’re beyond the 30-day guarantee. GOG take great, finger-pointing pains to say that “Hello Games chose not to offer refunds over missing game content to our users” and this is “entirely at GOG’s own cost”. I have found it’s often best to brew a cuppa, have a ciggy, or stroll walk round the block before making snippy proclamations.>

Space pootler No Man’s Sky added online multiplayer in its long-awaited Next update yesterday, but what I’d missed–and don’t remember hearing about in advance?–is that this is only for the Steam version of No Man’s Sky. Citizens of the stars who bought the game DRM-free on GOG have received much of the Next update, with all its prettying-up and frigate fleets and new missions and whatnot, but not multiplayer. Online play is not in the GOG version yet, and isn’t expected until “later this year.”

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