Pilot a giant stomping mech in the new No Man's Sky update

(Image credit: Hello Games)

There are a lot of ways to get around in No Man's Sky: spaceships, living spaceships, submarines, hoverbikes, motorcycles, giant trucks, and dune buggies. You can even tame and ride most of the alien creatures you meet.

But something was missing, n'est-ce pas? And that something was big, stomping mechs.

Well, here they are! No Man's Sky's latest surprise free patch (though completely surprising) is the Exo Mech Update, which adds some lovely looming mechs to the transportation mix. They walk. They jump. They stomp. Hell, with their massive jetpacks, they even fly. They can mine resources while you're piloting them, and I imagine they can probably squash the crap out of a writhing nest of biological horrors, too. You can even summon them to drop from your freighter, Titanfall style. Take a peep at the impressive new mechs in the Exo Mech Update trailer below.

"The Minotaur Exocraft is a unique new exocraft / suit hybrid and introduces a different way to explore planets," says an email from Hello Games, maker of No Man's Sky. "This mechanical walker shields its pilot against hostile environments, providing immunity against hazards such as radioactivity and extreme temperatures. Its defining feature, though, is the freedom of movement it brings to exploration. The Minotaur’s powerful jetpack allows it to soar powerfully through the air, and land on terrain with a satisfying slide."

They look pretty sweet in first-person, too, and I imagine that goes double for piloting them in VR. The Exo Mech update is out today, and along with it comes improvements for the other exocraft like solar panels for daytime power charging and boosted scanning capabilities.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.