No Man's Sky – Switch Performance Review
Creating an entire universe of stars and planets is no mean feat, but Hello Games did just that in the 2016 game No Man’s Sky. However, as monumental a challenge as that was, getting the same universe into the comparatively itty bitty memory and hardware budget of the Nintendo Switch is nothing short of galactic.
The Switch continued Nintendo’s trend of finding success within its own market, and has enjoyed those riches with the most third-party games of all its consoles. Many of those ports presented an uphill battle given the Switch’s limited processing power, but with No Man’s Sky the obstacles are a little larger. Despite those reservations, we have been given the full-Monty in either mobile or docked mode – intergalactic travel, endless planet discovery, and harvesting are all on the menu, as well as space stations, battles, and multiple modes all thanks to the recent Waypoint v4.0 update patch – bringing the Switch version in line with all other formats, including PC.
That is, aside from two key areas, which are both performance related. Multiplayer is possibly the biggest omission, but the game is largely played solo anyway so it’s not the worst thing to miss. The other is large settlements, which again is due to the same technical/performance constraints. As such, from a content perspective the team at Hello Games has miraculously condensed everything into this tiny form factor but avoided watering it down. As you would now expect though, that has come with some specific changes and reductions.
It must be stressed that despite all of these areas, and likely even more, the game loses none of its wonder and charm. Volumetric clouds still cover the planet's atmosphere, weather storms flood in and fill the screen, a
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