Hey everyone, I'm a big player of Space Games of all forms, and this mini-genre (or 'theme', if you prefer) really has a TON of range and depth, and is a very fertile ground for indie and unique projects. I was recently playing a game called Avorion, after owning it for years without ever really engaging with it, and I've gotten hooked, and sunken 100+ hours into it in a couple weeks. That made me think about the variety of really cool games in this space, and about people who might not know some of these, or might be interested in a space-game junkie's thoughts on them (I am TooManySpaceGames on Steam, feel free to friend me). Note that I am not going to include games that you can no longer legally acquire, or which cannot run on modern hardware or OSes (sorry, Freelancer).
Without further ado, here are my Top-5 "AAA" Space Games:
5. No Man's Sky
A well-known comeback story in gaming, No Man's Sky debuted at E3 2014, and then released in 2018 with MUCH less in features than both the E3 trailer, and than what developers had directly promised in interviews. Hello Games (the creators) have since then spent the subsequent 6 years releasing very large updates- all free- that have taken the game beyond parity with the original promises.
It is a third-person RPG, that also features ship combat (though imo this is its weakest area), interacting with alien races (with a great language-learning system), ship/weapon/outfit customization, base-building, running NPC colonies, missions, etc. There's a LOT to do. If you enjoy large open worlds and exploration, it offers that in spades. It can be played solo or online, and there are live-service-esque features like timed events that give unique ships, outfits, modules, etc, all free.
NMS deserves special mention to the insane numbers that it can earnestly claim, with a total system count of 2.2 TRILLION possible solar systems, 18 quintillion possible planets and moons total. I say "possible" because everything is procedurally-generated, so they are only tracking essentially metadata about systems that have been visited, and most systems will never even be visited. It is still wild to think about.
4. Stellaris
An(other) RTS-4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game from Paradox, Stellaris offers TONS of customization options (including mods), but at the cost of, well, high cost for the many DLCs. It is infinitely replayable, and very customizable in how you want the universe to be set up. It's tough to find AAA RTS-4X games in the space game realm, and other contenders like Endless Space 1/2 just don't have the breadth that Stellaris does.
Stellaris has a high focus on randomized events, narrative events, and overarching story lines. As an example, you may get a notification that an asteroid was spotted heading towards a planet, but when you send a fleet of ships to destroy it, discover that the asteroid is actually a monument built by an ancient race. You would then need to decide what to do with it, with various potential outcomes (e.g. destroy it, put it into orbit as a tourist destination, move it so it passes by the planet and goes on its way, etc).
Or you may find a giant derelict ringworld, or dyson sphere, or or deep-space scanning antenna, and be able to rebuild them and use them as a colony. Or you may invent a cool new warp drive, only to find that activating it alerts some inter-dimensional being to your presence, who then invades. Lots of cool narrative beyond the usual 4X "fight other groups for territory", though that is the meat of the game.
3. Eve Online
A game that you either love or hate, Eve is (in)famous for its player-centric and adversarial nature. It receives a lot of very unjust (imo) criticisms for being unplayable as a solo player or small group (patently false; I've run small group Corps, and have been playing it solo for the past 4-5ish years). It is really a sandbox, where you can attempt to do anything you want, with relatively few restrictions. It also has a truly player-driven economy, where the ships you fly, the guns and modules you equip, and the ammunition you shoot, were all built by players, from materials they mined from asteroids (and moons and planets) or farmed from NPCs.
I ran several corporations in "wormhole space"/ "j-space", which is basically an entire set of hundreds of star systems (in addition to the several thousand systems of "k-space", or "empire space" that the universe map covers) that are only accessible through ephemeral wormholes, and which have unique and cool properties. I later joined a medium-sized "Nullsec" alliance, and was part of a major series of wars between large alliances, mostly working as a Fleet Commander (FC) for stealth-bomber "blops" (black-ops) drops. After that I shifted over to solo-building capital ships to sell to large Nullsec corporations. Even after playing since 2011, I haven't touched all the various systems in Eve.
2. X4: Foundations
I only really got into the X series with X4, though I had owned X3 for many years, and failed several times to get hooked by it. To put it simply, the X series are first-person 4X games, where economic simulation is a really key focus. You can mine, build components, build ships, build stations, fight stuff, sell the stuff you build to NPCs, watch the NPCs fight stuff using the stuff you sold to them, etc. You can influence the actually-simulated outcomes of wars between NPC factions through economics, which is really cool. For instance, in one game I wanted one faction (Split) to take over a bunch of another faction's (Teladi) space, so I bought lots of shipbuilding materials FROM the Teladi at high cost to myself, and sold them to the Split to use or used them myself, which very quickly resulted in the Teladi being unable to replenish their fleets, and the Split taking over several Teladi systems.
There are no limits on what you can own (fleets, stations, etc) so you can absolutely build up a massive faction and eventually take over the entire universe.
1. Mass Effect Series
Rather than call out one specific game, I think Mass Effect merits mention as a unified body (including Andromeda). Mass Effect is a third-person RPG space opera, following a mostly linear storyline (unlike my usual propensity towards large sandboxes). It includes 3 'mainline' games, and one spin-off (Andromeda, that focuses more on open-world exploration than 1-3). It is a truly phenomenal series, though it struggles to hold up gameplay-wise the further we get from its release. Its writing manages to be both very human and very epic, with a cast of close-knit and memorable characters, while also managing to feel like you are having a wide-ranging impact on the world. It never feels like you're "along for the ride" in these events, which is a pitfall that many RPGs fall into (*cough* Bethesda games post-Morrowind *cough*).
If you are a fan of BG3, or DA:I (and somehow haven't played ME), this is right up your alley.
If playing it is too daunting, especially given its age, there are videos on YouTube that condense the story and events down into a mini-movie (though this obviously loses the personal choice aspect).
Honorable Mentions: Starfield, Star Citizen, and by popular demand, Elite: Dangerous
I hesitated to include these, as there is a lot of very negative reaction out there towards the first 2, and I have personal bad blood with E:D, but I feel that not to include them would be remiss towards any serious discussion of AAA space games, and everyone was (rightfully) pointing out the omission of E:D.
Starfield is of course Bethesda's reskin of their Creation Engine games... IN SPACE! Highly-anticipated, it received both very fair and very unfair criticism upon its release. Now that the Creation Kit (modding tools) are in players' hands, it has me very optimistic that it will turn into the kind of wide-AND-deep RPG we all wanted.
If you have not played a Bethesda game before... do not start here.
Start with Morrowind.
Or (for everyone who rolled their eyes reading that), start with Fallout 4. Both are much better introductions to Bethesda games. And no, New Vegas is not a Bethesda game, and the fact that Obsidian was able to eat their lunch with their own engine should not dissuade you from appreciating their actual games on their own merits (and demerits). So also play New Vegas, but don't do that in lieu of playing actual Bethesda games.
Star Citizen is a MMO space sim from Chris Roberts, the creator of Freelancer and the Wing Commander series, famous in part for Mark Hamill's starring role back in the heyday of FMV games. Star Citizen is the multiplayer MMO world counterpart to Squadron42, a singleplayer space action game that they are also currently developing (which stars a LOT of big-name actors), but which is not yet open for players to test.
Star Citizen is a sandbox, that shares much in game design structure with especially Eve Online, though that is a highly-sensitive and argued subject in the SC community. It is incredibly impressive, with about the best graphics you'll see in a video game, and in its incredible technical capabilities (like actually traversing a solar system from planet surface, to space, to planet seamlessly, sans loading screens. It it still very much in-development, and there is a lot of criticism over its funding model (they are not publisher-backed, but instead crowdfunded, first on Kickstarter, and now via ship sales). They host free-fly events regularly, so you can always try it for free, and the entry-level game packs (it's not subscription-based) give you the game + 1 ship start at ~$45.
It's worth mentioning because it is the closest thing to a true space sim out there. You really do just get dropped on a planet with whatever starting ship you have, a little money, and are turned loose to do what you want. I have had an ongoing debate with my wife about whether sandbox sims are the true final goal of all games (my opinion), and SC is a really incredible achievement even in its in-development state, as a sandbox sim.
Elite: Dangerous is a sandbox Spaceflight Sim from Frontier Games and founder David Braben, who famously made the original Elite games (which are generally considered to be largely responsible for Space Sim games as a genre), played in an online or offline world. It is incredibly expansive, only second to No Man's Sky in number of solar systems to explore, and at least somewhat based on actual scientific survey data about many of the systems, which is pretty cool. The original Elite (1984) was a space trading game, and Elite: Dangerous is still at its core about this.
It has very snappy, sometimes very unforgiving combat, and has expanded since launch to include things like planetary landings, FPS combat, and a bunch of other content, though it is all a separate purchase from the base game, under the title "Horizons". I cannot personally comment on Horizons content, as I only played the original game.
If you really like very realistic solar systems, and a much more 'laid back' experience of just Zen-jumping your way across the galaxy, E:D is a great option.
Anyways... let me know what you think!
What other AAA space games do you love? What do you think of those on this list?
I'll be making parts 2 and 3 going over Medium and Small games soon, so if you enjoyed this, stay tuned!
I like Starfield, but as you point out, unless "space game" means "space-themed", it's really not the same genre as some of the other games in here. It has space combat, but it's little more than a minigame. It's not trying to be a space combat-oriented game. It does have some zero-gravity first-person-shooting combat sequences, which is kinda nifty, but
Of course, the same apply to Stellaris -- it's a 4x game that's space-themed.
I haven't played Mass Effect, but my understanding is that something similar would apply.
For me, the genre has more to do with games being comparable than the theme.
So, if I were gonna compare top games, I think I'd maybe do space 4x games, space combat games (and maybe subdivide those into Newtonian and non-Newtonian physics), and first-person games set in the far future, maybe a few other divisions (e.g. I'd certainly call Kerbal Space Project a good "space-themed game", though it's not a combat game). I've enjoyed all those sorts of games, but I'd be hard put to compare a game in one genre to the other...it's like asking "what's better, a steak or a banana split?".
Non-Newtonian space combat flight games
This refers to games where you're flying something that works kind of like an aerodynamic fighter in an atmosphere, but in space. If you turn, your spacecraft moves like flying in a fluid, and your whole spacecraft's velocity changes.
This was a really big genre in the late-90s and early-2000s, but it saw a major dropoff over time. It was also big in TV series an movies -- stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars.
It's not really a "hard space sim", but it has a lot of conventions aimed at making it pretty and exciting. Some conventions in the genre:
Space looks a lot like the kind of false-color photos that NASA puts out (note that other genres are not immune to this either).
Often has "Star Wars lasers", which are visible, slow, and make sounds going by.
Sound transmits through space, so you get explosions and such being audible.
Fighters play a major role, and combat typically takes place at extremely close ranges (relative to our best guesses at what real-life space combat would look like), in World-War-2-style dogfights. The job the human has is usually in significant part the same as a WW2 pilot would have in a dogfight, lining up the weapons, maybe managing "ship energy" or some other such system. There are likely missiles, but these are used at close range, and don't have high-off-boresight targeting. There's typically some kind of CIWS or flare-countering-infrared-homing-missile analog.
Forward-mounted weapons are common, though usually not exclusive.
There's usually some form of "warp drive" to deal with the kind of distances in space in a meaningful amount of time.
The pilot is usually in an environment analogous to a 20th-century air-breathing jet fighter: there are glass windows looking out on space, and visual identification of targets plays a real role.
Carriers often show up.
There are often torpedoes or analogs -- hard-hitting weapons that move more-slowly.
It's often the case that there's some form of energy shield which can readily-regenerate and blocks a certain amount of weapons fire.
Tractor beams often show up.
Usually issues like utilizing gravity wells or something don't play a major role in the game.
It's common to have some form of engine sound. Engines often look a lot like rocket engines -- like, there's visible combustion products coming out the back and a roaring sound; sometimes you'll have ion thruster-looking things.
The "space trading" genre is probably a subgenre of this; I don't know of any "space trading" games that don't also have space combat as an element.
I think that the genre is in significant part a mix of American cultural elements from the WW2-to-maybe-post-Vietnam era. A lot of the stuff is analogous to carrier combat plus having futuristic-themed forms of weapons common in air-to-air combat in the 20th century.
Those are all conventions developed over time by Hollywood and comic books and video games to make games work and appealing. Some of them work pretty-differently from reality (or what our best guesses are as to likely future space combat). But they're pretty fun (at least, in my opinion).
I miss this genre, myself -- there are a relatively-few games that have come out recently, and personally, I think that it's people missing games in the genre that drove Star Citizen's funding. I think that one reason that it was such a big deal in the late-90s was the confluence of cultural elements and the fact that space can be relatively-cheap to render, compared to atmospheric combat flight sims; you don't need a lot of texture memory to make things look good, and hardware was often kinda limited then.
Newtonian space combat flight sim
This is a bit more of a catch-all, but it generally eschews some or all of the above (particularly the "flying through space is like flying through fluid") and focuses more on the "hard sim" side.
4x space game
This is a strategy genre; space isn't really critical other than in that there are many isolated, habitable worlds to conquer.
Master of Orion and similar fall into this genre.
Space RTS
Not a lot of entrants here, but I think that Homeworld permitting for the use of a third dimension does meaningfully change the RTS genre.
Space sim
I'm not aware of a lot of games in this genre, but I can't really fit Kerbal Space Project into another category, and it's undeniably a space game.
Space-themed games
I'm kind of using this as a catch-all, but there are games in many genres that are set in the future and have space as a theme, but play pretty much analogously to games set in a present-day theme. Maybe there's a bit of stuff that they pull in that wouldn't happen in a present-day setting (e.g. Starfield's zero-g FPS combat), but you could basically reskin most of the game and have it play the same way in a present- or past-setting.
There's also a few "fleet command" games. These aren't really "combat flight sims" like the above, because the player isn't experiencing a flight sim from the ship, but like the "space RTS" genre, the third dimension really alters the dynamics. Maybe they're somewhat-analogous to a naval fleet combat sim.
The only example of this genre that I've played would be Nebulous: Fleet Command, but I understand that there are a few more out there.