8 Video Games That Totally Fell Apart After Incredible Openings

7. No Man's Sky

The epitome of designing a game around one core ethos, but not being able to inject enough systems underneath to keep it afloat, the opening hours of No Man's Sky are phenomenal.

Crash-landed on a randomly-generated landscape with only whirring warning lights and the need to scavenge for parts for company, you'll quickly become accustomed to your own private hellscape, slowly working out how to leave the surface. This can take hours in itself if your starting planet's resources aren't up to snuff, but thanks to a combination of clumsy interface options and crafting components, reassembling your broken ship's parts actually feels like a survivor getting ready for the big blast off.

Then you do. You leave the planet. Clouds come and go as the blackness of space floods in. Distant vessels come into view, you see cargo ships ferrying items from port to port, you see space stations, asteroids, even other planets.

"This.is.BRILLIANT" you think - until you realise all that's left is to do is all that again. Systems break, you repair them, planets come and go. Eventually you'll happen upon a 'story path' which offers up some existential thoughts on the somewhat futile nature of exploration versus reward, and you wonder what the hell it was all meant to be about in the first place.

Then, if you play for another 60+ hours, you'll hit the centre of the galaxy, where all that happens is the game resets itself entirely, so you do EVERYTHING again, with zero reward whatsoever. Seriously, it's just shockingly bad.