It's so easy to get hung up on the little stuff with games--texture pop, feature disappointment, a feeling of malaise brought about by wanting perfection--and this game is certainly a great example. Here we have an astounding mathematical simulation of a galaxy and people are angry about what's not there.

For me, the point of games is what they make me feel and think about. And what I love about No Man's Sky is that it is about choice, exploration, learning, and discovery in a way most games fail to be.

When I start a game, I am trying to find purpose. On my verdant, peaceful first world, technicolor grasses covering rolling hills and natural arches, I loved seeing my objectives shift.

First, I had to learn what I needed to learn. Giving the player a choice between guide or no guide is not new, but I love the story context of the Atlas, this somewhat menacing creator that wishes to guide me and makes me feel like a dumb pawn. The game seems to be saying, "Yes, you can follow the tutorial, but we're going to comment about your lack of free will and adherence to the divine."

Good teachers guide students without doing it for them. No Man's Sky says, hey, fix your ship, you need these things, here's how to ping--but it does not give you a way point to plutonium. What is especially powerful about this game is that it allows the player to feel autonomous and smart while subtly helping me. That is incredibly hard to pull off.

More important, though, is what the game makes me feel overall--not just respected and challenged, but that my purpose is to learn, not destroy.

The sentinels, as a ruined monolith of the Korvax told me, exist to stop destruction. They will murder me to stop me from destroying, changing, anything. That motivation and the resultant wariness toward wanton killing or even mining is distinctive and valuable. It says to the player "this is a world to admire and move through, not destroy" and that's beautiful.

All games have messages and implications. No Man's Sky encourages growth through moderated exploration and actively punishes wanton destruction.

Games often nowadays try to make us consider the nature of the violence we do in them while still making that violence enjoyable. Uncharted 4 says "No, adventure bad--here's the most beautiful places to do it in and fun gun play, though." And shooting sentinels isn't unpleasant in No Man's Sky--the bolt caster makes a neat noise, they explode into valuable materials, and they are pretty easy to skirt. But it feels empty, like a waste of time that wasn't necessary, like a mistake. It's a wanted system where I actually don't want to be wanted. The planets where sentinels are prevalent are not fun playgrounds of destruction, but terrifying places where I cower in caves as dogs search for me after I mined some gold.

Creating an enemy who, so far, I admire rather than despise, is amazing. The great potential evil of human space exploration is that we learn nothing from the colonization of earth, the destruction of species and races of humans for the sake of greater profit, land, and power. I love that Hello Games built a galaxy where such destruction is anathema to goodness.

What is good in No Man's Sky is acquiring knowledge. The game becomes somewhat easier with tech upgrades, but all of those are pointless without purpose. And purpose, brilliantly, is found through a thoughtful combination of language acquisition, logic puzzles, and context clues. I have barely started into the narrative of Atlas, but learning of the Korvax, a race that I first thought had cool helmets, then learned of the convergence, and now know as energy beings that inhabit metal husks to speak to lower lifeforms like me--that minor journey has been amazing.

No Man's Sky doesn't have a major exposition scene where I'm introduced to the three (?) races and their politics. I just found my first Gek on the fifth system I've gone to. Before, I just thought a random Gek object was a reference to a long extinct race, I assumed the Korvax were it--how could they not be when I've only learned 50 of their words?

The great power of astro-physics is that feeling of being a tiny race of apes in a infinite universe of existence. The little blue dot picture showed us that Earth is just another world out in the vastness of space. I'm sure that other space games I haven't played have made this feeling real, but No Man's Sky is my first. I feel like a random being barely navigating the vastness, a speck looking for my next ship while planets of herbivores feast on icy grounds.

The game gives the player choices--be a trader and use the land sparingly, be an explorer and observe its wonders only, or destroy the land, it's protectors, and it's people to gain power. Endemic in all of these is the fact that choosing to destroy is choosing to make everything harder and face an endless enemy that cannot truly be defeated. The best way to survive in this game is moderation, intelligence, deliberate exploration, and patience.

The Korvax feel inspired by Buddhism, with tests of faith based on suffering and patience. This game is seemingly built around the tenets of that faith--it's about feeling small, making moderate impact, and seeing suffering as necessary.

I will return to this game often as a place to explore and learn--verbs that excite me more than destruction ever could.