7 Reasons No Man's Sky Should Be Considered For Game Of The Year 2016

4. Music Direction

Last of the "it's procedurally generated, wow!" points, but when you've designed a game's score to react in real time to whatever the player is doing, that's pretty damn impressive.

Regardless of if you're slinking through an underwater cave or blasting the holy hell out of some angry dinosaur-looking aliens, the game takes a constant read of whatever 'biome' you're walking around in i.e. which enemies are present, what the weather's like, which items and resources are nearby etc. and pulls from a bank of instrumentation to provide a modular score.

You'll hear guitars and drum flurries kick if you enact a space battle, just as everything will subtly fade away and transition if you evade your pursuers and dock on a nearby freighter.

Again, No Man's Sky's sound design got mangled in the mess that was everything post-launch, but it's just as incredible an achievement as what's on screen.