Taken on its own terms, No Man’s Sky can be a relaxing, if somewhat hollow experience. But even I, the sort of person that chin-stroke-y tree admiration simulators were built for, get totally bummed out every time an invisible barrier stops me from ploughing my ship into a planet.
The Lowflight mod by modder Hytek does away with that barrier entirely. With it installed, you can glide as far down as you please. In the noble pursuit of science, I recorded the above video of me ramming my ship’s nose into unforgiving earth like a beetle who’s forgotten how directions work. Check it out.
You can soar between rock formations, trees, and caves, and even take a dip in the water. Alternatively, you can fly right into all of those things and die. Freedom is, after all, defined as having the option to do whatever you want, which usually means a lot of stupid shit. Bummer you don’t get a cool explosion for your troubles, but life goes on. Well, kinda.
As you might have noticed, you can’t do much to flora and fauna from your ship. Sorry folks (*cough* Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton *cough*), no mining Heridium from the comfort of your cockpit.
I’m still pretty happy this mod exists, though. I don’t know about you, but when I first saw the (in)famous No Man’s Sky demo with the ship taking off and landing on a different planet, the pristine fantasy that blossomed in my mind included hella dodging between rocks, trees, and mountains. It also included dick monsters. I was heartbroken, then, to see that the final game only delivered on one of those things.