Gaming Elite Dangerous Review

Yeah, I mean, the upgrade edition is just a boxed version of the game for those that have a copy and want a physical disk..... you didn't think you were getting the whole game for a tenner on launch day did you, when the digital version costs 3 times that??

 

daaamn. how come i've never heard of this. grabbing it once i'm at home.

 

It's good you understand I'm aiming for 144+ FPS at 2560x1440, and with ultra/extreme settings. Hence my excited bowel movements in anticipation of returning to Elite after playng the original at release.

 

No, it's still nearly impossible to read text via the DK2. The 1080p resolution upgrade was useful, but it looks like 1440p or possibly higher are needed in the consumer release to get things nice and sharp. You're right though, DK2 is a pretty good tech demo and ED makes good use of it. I just wouldn't want to use DK2 to actually play long term.

 

what?? I paid £45 for it! they then changed to `upgrade edition` not the FULL game I paid for! now the link I used it gone and has been replaced.

you are aware they offered the full game on dvd without account to buy, don't you to buy??

https://twitter.com/elitedangerous/status/538007091794161664

that's the one I bought , but now I am linked to

https://store.elitedangerous.com/elite-dangerous-cat/elite-dangerous-boxed-upgrade.html

I never said I was buying the game for a tenner

 

It's good to hear I've probably got it set up right and it will be good to see Elite on DK2 even if it's too pixelm. Fingers crossed the consumer DK will be that res you mention or even higher.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. Some of this is fixable, but there are some deeper problems.

I have an interest in this because I played Frontier endlessly, and once rather unguardedly stated that all they needed to do was create Frontier with an online element. I now freely admit that this was a bad idea. The problem is that the galaxy is so huge, you'll simply never meet another player character. The entire purpose of an online multiplayer game is so that you can get complex, interesting behaviour from the other players that you can't easily get from an AI. I've read comments from the developers where they're actually resisting features, such as player-to-player financial transactions, which would encourage player interaction. They're crazy.

The core problem is that the 100 billion star systems sounds sexy on the box art, but it doesn't actually work very well as a video game. I'd rather have a few dozen well-realised systems where some player interaction is possible.

Gameplay basically boils down to either combat, or flying from point to point in your spaceship, which is dull as ditchwater because they obviously can't duplicate the accelerated-time feature of Frontier. This has all become fractionally more interesting really just in the last couple of updates because of the increased opportunities for combat along the way, but that really just focuses attention on the lack of PvP combat. The AI combat is OK, but beyond the fine detail it isn't really anything more complex than we had in Wing Commander in the early 90s. I was hoping it'd have the full blown hard-Newtonian physics of Frontier, but by making it (effectively, mainly) an atmospheric flight model, they've lost a lot of uniqueness.

Also, I can't possibly disagree more with the idea that it looks beautiful. They're limited by the fact that the player must spend a lot of time staring at a starfield and a load of spheres, but they've made some really odd lighting decisions. Often the shadow side of one's own spacecraft looks darker than space, which looks subjectively wrong and is, from an optical physics point of view, completely absurd. And their in-house engine doesn't know how to do antialiasing properly. It's crawling with jaggies - and I'm running it on a GTX 980, maxed, with 2:1 DSR. I can't exactly throw much more hardware at the thing.

And no planetary landings. The degree of procedural generation is generally underwhelming, with very limited kit-o-parts space stations and landing bays which are all effectively identical except for very minor finishing details. I never get to say "Ah, pad 39A at Aulin is a pain, it's right next to the tower cranes."

Okay, I'll stop moaning. It's got promise. It's got a bit of personality. Their hearts are in the right place and it is probably reasonable for a $1.5 million game. That's not exactly a triple-A budget these days and that does go a long way to excusing many of my concerns. In some ways I'm probably a bit disappointed because it doesn't have everything I wanted it to, from procedurally generated cities to fly around to procedurally generated bars with procedurally generated shady characters from whom to obtain missions. I wish it had all that. But right now, it isn't finished. If they keep throwing this level of development at it for the next year to eighteen months, especially if we get roamable space station interiors and cities on planets, it could end up something quite special, though I suspect that would take more resources than the developers will ever have. Even right now, if you're into it, as the reviewer clearly was, it has its moments. It's a bit like a book. In a book, your brain has to provide the visual effects. In ED, your brain has to provide the wider universe, the meaning and the story. If your brain does that, and I suspect you won't have any choice as to whether your brain does that, it'll work for you. Otherwise, there's a certain sense of seeing the fnords, and realising that a lot of it is just waiting for numbers to wind down.

Still, I think it's massively premature to call it a 94% game.

 

No worries. You will receive a full version of the game on physical media. Install on your dad's PC, then create a (free) account on the website for him, and use that to log in via the launcher. Presto.

 

I can't help but thinking that you are expecting things from this game that Elite II: Frontier did not even have, and weren't missed at the time --although wished for. People expect Elite: Dangerous to be the fulfilment of a long wish list of features from Elite: Frontier and that is a long list with big features. I am not sure it is fair to expect all that to be realised in the first two years on a £1.5 million budget. I think we'll have to be a bit patient.

 

You're probably right in all of that. For the resources applied, it's reasonable. Couple of things I wouldn't have done, but there are identifiable reasons for them.

 

Yeah, I think that Frontier focused a lot on the flight model and overall feel/experience of flying in space, and in doing so possibly did not yet get around to other important elements such as the MMO aspect. There has been a desire to avoid some of the less desirable dynamics of Eve Online, but this seems to have directed their thinking towards how it shouldn't work rather than should.

 

In its unfinished state it's score seems high. Randomly generated missions is something other games have tried before and they all end up the same way. Explore this or kill this as. Star Trek online was slaughtered for this been a feature at all.

It's a fun game to play in bursts is it the greatest ever space game which the review score would indicate. Personally don't think it is.

 

Exactly. It's the core mechanics on which to hang future content, and until Frontier decide to share their plans in detail about the future it's hard to predict what is going to happen.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-12-22-elite-dangerous-review
Eurogamer hit the nail on the head in their review (which funnily enough gets 8/10) when they say "These are the immediate pleasures of Elite: Dangerous, and they're pretty intoxicating. They're just not quite enough to fully mask the repetitive nature of the mechanics underneath, nor the game's often distracting disregard for new players."

It does make me wonder how long you played for, Rick? I understand you want to give it a higher score because it's a lovely game, but 94% is pushing perfection, which ED currently isn't.

 

That's kinda problematic because the last time they overpromised they got into quite a sticky spot. I suspect that they are still working out themselves what they can do and how they are going to do it.

 

A decent review Rick, although as much as I love the game and have been playing it since May, 94% is probably too high at the moment. 80% or so would be mine right now, mainly because the multiplayer aspects of it are really poorly done at the moment and not due to be resolved until early 2015. Once those are in it would be up to 85%, maybe 90% depending how they do it.

I couldn't disagree more strongly with you about the last shot to kill point, which they have now changed by the way, and basically the change is much worse than leaving it alone, totally immersion breaking the way they implemented the change of rules and in general just adds to the dumbing down of it.

But I digress.

Great game, good review and I can see me playing it for a long time to come. The comments from another user about interplanetary landings, and wandering around in your ship are all expansion packs to come in the future and have always been planned that way since I joined the Kickstarter a long time ago.

Merry Xmas all.

 

Oh and it is 400 billion not 100 billions star systems by the way...

 

The game looks good. I'm old enough to remember playing the original on my ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro years and years ago. It was an amazing experience; the open world game play and wire-frame 3D graphics were at that time new developments, which I'd never experienced in a game before. Loved it. I'm tempted by this new game.

 

Another overyhyped shallow game for graphics whores. Starts with grind, ends with monotonous repetition. Disappointed, and also predictable

 

Bahahahaha.

Christ.