5 Best Space Games To Play On PC (2022)

The best space games allow us to venture out into the great unknown. From exploring distant lands to piloting our very own space ships, and experiencing memorable stories among the stars, there are so many adventures out there to experience. Here are out top picks for the 5 best space games to play on PC in 2022.

1. Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Mass Effect is one of the greatest pieces of sci-fi literature of our generation. Yes, literature. The fact that it’s also a playable experience is really just the icing on the cake. With this edition not only are you getting 3 games, but you’re also getting 3 of the best games ever made. That being said the first game has aged a bit and the AI was and still is awful in that game. The story, characters, and world, however, more than make up for any minor flaws.

What makes the story great is throughout the games, the player is presented with many situations that don't just have a straightforward answer. Instead, it creates a grey area that really makes you think about the choice you're about to make and how it will impact the story later. The characters are the best part of the games, each of them is unique with their own backstories, flaws, and how they can interact with Shepard.

Gameplay-wise, ME1 was actually much closer to a traditional RPG. The way you spec'd a character and the party members you brought were paramount to success — putting points into specific weapons types increased your accuracy and damage. In ME 2 and 3, only skills are leveled into, no longer weapon types—dictated rather by class. Which essentially boil down to three types: Adept, Soldier and Engineer. Specialists in Biotics, Combat and Tech respectively.

2. No Man's Sky

One of my favorite games of all time. I have 'wasted' an embarrassing number of hours in this Sky. It is not a game for those who like a strong story or those who need a strong sense of direction. It truly shines as a kind of "chose your own adventure" game.

Do you want to just see how far you can explore and how many planets you can discover and name after your cat? You can do that. And while there is more than a little repetition in the plants and animals found on those planets, there is enough variety to keep it interesting. I have a rather extensive folder of the very different and exotic animals I have discovered in my travels including a cute teddy bear creature as tall as a building and others that you can ride just for the fun of it.

Do you want to just try to find and upgrade the best ships in the galaxies to add to your collection on board your premium freighter that you finally found? You can do that. I have spent hours just looking for the best crashed ships that I can nab for free. It is like a galactic treasure hunt to find (and then upgrade) the most beautiful rides until you have a collection that Jay Leno would be envious of.

Or maybe you dream of building the most luxurious, extensive, elaborate and just plain kick-ass base (or twenty of them) that anyone in this reality has ever seen? You can do that. In fact, you can build one that reaches into the sky, is underground, is under the oceans, on top of a mountain with a gorgeous view. And if you build more than one, you can travel to all of your vast real estate holdings in the blink of an eye thanks to the magic of portals.

3. Kerbal Space Program

Kerbal Space Program is essentially NASA by trial and error. All the fun of building things and launching them into space, without the hassle of acquiring funding or the responsibility of having to return people to Earth safely.

The Kerbals are a race of little green humanoids who love space. More than anything else, they want to go there. You can get them there by designing rockets and space planes of near-unlimited complexity, and testing them out. Some of your designs will succeed, and some will experience a "rapid unplanned vehicle disassembly." But that's half the fun.

Once you get the hang of getting things off the ground, you can really start to see how incredibly in-depth this game is. There is an entire solar system modeled here, with 7 planets and a bunch of moons orbiting them, giving you tons to do -- enough for hundreds of hours of play. As of this writing, I'm over 100 hours spent in-game, and the furthest I've gotten from Kerbin (the Earth-analog starting planet) is Eve, one of the nearest planets (and even then, I was forced to watch helplessly as the craft crashed into the surface, having spent all of its fuel on the voyage there).

The game's physics are -- while scaled down for difficulty's sake -- actually fairly realistic. I never realized how little I knew about the physics involved in orbits until I started figuring out how to save fuel during launch by focusing more on horizontal velocity. Before long, I was looking up how to do gravity assists to get to other planets, and looking up actual rocket science formulas, trying to understand the principles behind them in order to improve my designs.

4. Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) contains some excellent games, some great games, and an okay game. All of these are high quality AAA experiences whose combined value far exceeds the price tag of the MCC by virtue of their quality storytelling, considerable replay value and enjoyable gameplay. Unfortunately, the MCC has suffered various networking issues since launch, which still come and go.

All titles featured in the MCC have been updated to use the same menus, settings, controls, and other features, in order to create a smooth, consistent experience.

Across the six entries contained in the MCC, various gameplay details and mechanics are added, changed and removed. Consistent across all entries, however, is the distinctive Halo gameplay feel, which can be described as somewhat old-fashioned, with many weapons fired only from the hip, no sprint function (in most titles), floaty gravity and no parkour/traversal system. It is, however, smooth, precise and enjoyable. Nothing else plays quite like Halo.

Featuring six games released between 2001-2012, the visual experience understandably varies, though the first and second games have been remastered (in 2011 and 2014, respectively) to bring them in line with later titles. All of the featured titles had impressive visuals at their time of release, and all can still deliver a beautiful view or breathtaking display of scale. Similar can be said of the audio design, barring, arguably, that of Halo 4.

5. Dyson Sphere Program

The Dyson Sphere Program is a production line factory style game, very much in the same vein as Factorio. For anyone who hasn't played a game in this genre before, it is all about mining a resource, then creating a component with it, then transporting that component to another device to manufacture a more complex component - all with a view to automating it all and making some great machine that reaches the end goal of the game.

Comparisons will be inevitable with all 'factory' games (Factorio, Satisfactory, Factory Town, Shapez.io, Production Line and more), but Factorio is its nearest comparison. The good news is that there is totally room in your library for both (well, for ALL of them...). While both games offer exactly what makes this genre great, they are both sufficiently different that you could play both simultaneously and not feel that one is better than the other, or one replaces the other.

Dyson's futuristic vibe is rendered in much better graphics than Factorio's slightly more pixelated, flatter rendering and the scope of Dyson is much, much bigger given its space exploration and bigger, much more satisfying end goal, and there is no enemy at all, but Factorio has a gritty steampunk vibe to it with a hostile planet that truly feels atmospheric and alien, huge maps with mass transport solutions, the level of danger is greater and is more granular in the amount of components you will need to make, the gameplay automation much more detailed and complex, and modding can give you a totally different game all over again.