Elite: Dangerous (2014)

Elite Dangerous is an ambitious science-fiction space simulator featuring an actual-size replica of our very own Milky Way Galaxy. It offers the player the promise of buying and selling a variety of highly customizeable space ships to bounty hunt, pirate, mine, trade, work for political factions and explore the planets, asteroid belts and stars all over the galaxy populated by both other real human characters and a complicated background simulation system with a complete economy and wars.

While the premise sounded extremely enticing to someone like me, someone who has sunk too much time into games like No Man's Sky and Star Citizen, I found myself very quickly losing interest in Elite Dangerous's gameplay loops due to how repetitive, boring, and unintuitive they were. Most disappointing was in a game about exploring space, just how same-y and procedurally generated everything was, and that's coming from a guy with 300 hours logged in No Man's Sky. I think all but the most dedicated flight simulation enthusiasts will find Elite Dangerous a slog that wears it's promising premise thin within 10-20 hours of playtime.

Gameplay

In Elite Dangerous, you play as a pilot free to do whatever you want in this wide universe. Most players will involve themselves in taking jobs from different employers at space centers, fulfilling those contracts, often with a bonus for completing the job in a limited amount of time. These jobs can be bounty hunting, piracy, mining, trading, supplh procurement, courier services, and exploration. Doing these jobs earns you money which you use to buy bigger and better shps, which you use to take harder, better paying jobs, which you take to make more money which you use to buy bogger and better ships which... you get the picture. All of that is all very well and good. That loop lies at the heart of many simulation games. The problem is that after about 10 hours of playtime, I found that the game had very little new to offer. I found that the jobs all felt very similar to one another, and that each star system was nearly identical to each other, no matter what procedurally generated information about the system I was told. I found that in doing these jobs I gained money and reputation too slowly to keep the rewards of unlocking new ships to keep me interested, and as I mentioned, it's not like seeing new star systems was it's own reward. What was worse was that sometimes I would die, or even worse, to prison -always for accidentally breaking a rule I didn't know existed, like speeding in a space station-- and I'd lose a ton of time and money invested and have to fly some insane distance and to 7-12 system jumps to get back to where I was.

Of the gameplay loops I did explore before I gave up on the game, bounty hunting was really the only interesting one. Flying around in space combat shooting down pirates as I tried out new weapons and fighting methods was thrilling. Every other mission style was bland or convoluted, especially exploration, which I was originally most excited about considering my time with No Man's Sky. Make no mistake. There is no "on foot" in this game. The entirety of the game takes place while your character sits in a cockpit chair. Exploration similarly allows you to pilot a moon rover on a variety of identical looking rocky barren planets, scan a building, and run away. That's it. Salvage, mining, trading, and procurement were all equally boring . As boring as these jobs were (besides bounty hunting) Nothing made me lose interest in the game faster though than flying at high speed (faster than light) in order to get to where I needed to go to do my missions. Doing this was as fun as watching paint dry. I would literally get out my phone and check the news or respond to texts while waiting usually 2-3 minutes but sometimes 10-15 minutes in virtual silence to get to where I needed to go. Just absolutely truly mind-numbing gameplay.

Narrative

As this is a simulation, there is no narrative to speak of exactly. Your story is what you make of it as a pilot. However there is in this game a very well realized lore to this setting with a highly detailed political history all explorable via the in-game codex reminiscent of Mass Effect complete with voice narration. This was an extremely compelling part of the game and one of the few highlights of my time with it. I only wish there was a more narrative structure to the game as a whole. I think the game could definitely use many more stoey missions which gradually introduce different job types. It's clear this was not a creative priority for the developers but I can't help but feel that with a little bit more direction and reason to invest myself in the universe, I could've spent some more time with this game.

Aesthetics

For all of it's flaws, I can't really complain about Elite Dangerous's visual aesthetics. While this game does have somewhat dated visuals (original release was 11 years ago) and does not compare favorably to star citizen and No Man's Sky in terms of fidelity, it does have a very consistent, lived in industrial sci-fi aesthetic that was fun to see and analyze. Ships look sleak and manufacturers have their own visual language. Space stations are really cool looking but there is a noticeable lack in variety with regards to landeable planets, which lack structures except for the very odd port or purpose. Other planets supposedly house cities and oceans, but these are not explorable, and the game will prevent you from entering their atmosphere. The biggest problem than with the game isn't what they did design but rather what they didn't. There simply isn't enough variety here to hold the average players attention after they've seen everything there is to see.

Sound design is mostly under utilized. Ship weapons lack a noticeable impactful sound quality though the alarms and notifications sound effects that play when your ship takes damage or someone is trying to contact you are all appropriate. There is no music in the game, a huge missed potential in my opinion. Actually there is one. An excerpt from a ballet piece plays identically each and every time you are landing in a starport, no doubt a reference eto 2001: A Space Odyssey. That piece gets old fast, and was another reason I quit the game. I found myself playing my newly discovered synth-wave over Spotify just to fill the silence during long FTL flights, so at least one positive came out of this experience.

Score: 2/5

A 2/5 game is one that, while not a complete disaster, has many serious flaws that prevent it from being recommendable to other players. While some dedicated fans may find enjoyment out of it, the game lacks identifiable popular appeal even among gaming enthusiasts. In a word, a 2/5 game is "disappointing" or "bad".

Well, what a f*king waste of time. After a brief tutorial in which you learn how to fly, attack and navigate between systems, you are left loose to make a living as a space trucker. Except that you don't know anything and nothing is explained at all.

The mission board if full with mining missions; ok, then let's do some mining. How do you do that? The pilot handbook is vague and unhelpful but I manage to get that you need to go to asteroids and blast them. I go and start to shoot and nothing happens. Back to the pilot handbook.. maybe I need to get a mining laser? Back to the station, get two mining lasers. The handbook also mentions a refinery, but it's under "optional" and I don't find one in any menu, so let's go. Again back to the asteroid field, try to shoot it with the lasers. No, you're in the wrong mode.. what? Ok, after fiddling with menus I somehow manage to get them working. Shoot. Yey! some debris I can catch, how do I do that? The handbook says it's automatic... oh I need to open the cargo scoop. How? Again fiddle with buttons and menus until I manage to open it. Shoot again, debris... nothing happens. Huh, perhaps I need to press A to lock onto the debris. Shoot, lock... "Refinery required". (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

In my second gaming session I finally realised how to buy a refinery. I got one and went to finally start mining. I even did the mining simulation, which taught me how I need to capture enough minerals for my refinery to... refine it. I get there, shoot the thing, get the mineral and now I get the cryptic message that the resources are unallocated. WTF does that mean? No fucking idea and the game didn't tell me about it in the tutorial.

Look, the long stretches of travel I can take. They are not necessary and the "realism" argument is hilarious in a game with FTL, but fine. Complicated systems are also fine. But at least give me some semblance of tutorial that's actually useful. If you're going to throw a bunch of mining missions, then tutorialise them correctly.

And the same goes for missions that require to travel beyond what my starter ship is able to travel. A game the size of the Milky Way my ass. I spent hours going back and forward between the same two systems hauling fish (no joke). Also, I had to use a third-party website to know where to buy fish. That was my first mission and I had to leave the game to complete it. I guess the galaxy map had that information? Who knows, the galaxy map is a mess of icons that are not explained.

I played for almost 4 hours and I did practically nothing of import and gained no insight in how to navigate this world.

Basically this game is an absolute disaster for beginners. Right from the start you're given the choice between two ships that look identical and have identical numbers but have different names and there's absolutely zero guidance of what they are. Again, I had to minimise the game and google something even before starting the game proper.

As for travelling, it sucks. Everything is automated so gameplay is limited to select destination, turn autopilot, wait to get there. You could fly manual, I guess, but then it's just point to destination, throttle up, wait to get near it and throttle down.

So yeah, kind of a disappointment. I was expecting a kind of Flight Simulator in space and got this boring mess of overcomplicated and underexplained nonsense.

I'm sorry but this game is hot garbage.

Intro

ED is a space sim. You start as a lowly pilot in a basic fighter and you can engage in trading, shuttling, combat, mining and exploration. It takes place in a gigantic game world. You can play solor or in a galaxy with others.

The Good

• Ship design is actually quite interesting with all the modules and stuff.
• Everything seems fairly realistic.

The Bad

• Everything seems fairly realistic.
• This means everything takes forever.
• Galactic travel is incredibly tedious. You have to jump from sector to sector, there are no jumpgates.
• Most of space is empty, the same goes for ED. Content is spread out widely within sectors.
• Sector travel is incredibly tedious. You have to somehow figure out where your destination is, enable your FTL drive and only then you can enable the FTL auto pilot.
• I had 2-3 CTDs, a mission to turn in items didn't work until i left the sector and i had trouble getting new missions at one point.
• The galaxy map is just bizarre, after 7 hours i still have no idea how it works without using the search function.
• The sector map is also vague. Still have no idea how to even see my current target on it.
• Without using an online database it is impossible to find stuff.
• Switching modules between ships is a pain.
• The game mixes menu controls. Some are keyboard only, some require the mouse. It's really clunky.
• No quests, just generic missions.
• You can only control one ship at a time.
• Too many pointless controls (e.g. deploy cargo scoop).
• Starting a game requires several manual selections.

Conclusion

In 2008 Egosoft released X3:TC, one of my favourite games of all time. It takes a while to get started but after a while you can set up automated traders to make money for you. This allows you to focus on combat, building stations and doing quests. In ED you have to do everything yourself, you can't build stations, there are no quests and travelling takes forever because there are no jumpgates.

I played this for 7 hours and 19 minutes. Most of that time i was fighting with menus and watching the game move my ship around while checking the news on my phone. Everything takes forever and there's no point to it because you can't really "build" something. You can only do generic, randomly generated missions that boost your money/reputation so you can do other generic, randomly generated missions. What an utter waste of a cool concept and what an utter waste of my time.