No Man's Sky (3/5)

Exploring can be fun in itself, but a game without goals, no matter how impressive the game, can quickly become a repetitive exercise in boredom. However, No Man's Sky keeps you busy with two fundamental goals. The first goal is the one that will dominate your time in the game: survival. To survive, you'll need to keep your exosuit powered up with resources such as carbon or--I'm not kidding--plutonium. The stuff can be found with a little exploration on any planet, and harvested quickly with your laser mining tool. Resources will also be necessary for fueling your starship and keeping your multi-tool and boltcaster charged. Sometimes, you'll come across rare mineral deposits, such as gold, platinum, or new minerals even more highly valued. You can aggressively extract the resources you want or need, but there's something about the act that almost suggests you're destroying the natural order of things. These subtle pangs of guilt could be caused by the small, robotic sentry drones that fly around, slowly patrolling on every planet. If you spend too much time harvesting a particular resource and the drones catch you in the act, they'll open fire and call other drones. I have yet to uncover the mystery of the drones (Why are they there, and who put them there?), but that leads to the other goal...