Drizzlehell
Banned
Star Citizen remains in development, and it's been so long that even meme'ing on that game got old a few years ago. Now it's just a pathetic joke and only the most die-hard fanboys still cling to the hope that this will ever turn into something that's worth playing.
No Man's Sky redeemed itself in the end and it's a decent game but it doesn't really feel like an actual space trading and simulator game. It's more like a survival crafting game in space. It definitely doesn't carry the torch of those classic games like the original Elite series, Wing Commander: Privateer, or the X series.
Speaking of, we also got X4: Foundations a few years ago, and in typical X fashion, it was and largely remains a very robust and deep game that's also pretty much impenetrable for most players. It's very much a game only for the most hardcore fans of the genre. And being an X game it's also very much the same euro jank that it always was, albeit more competently put together than the disastrous X: Rebirth.
And then we have Elite: Dangerous.
After many years of post-launch updates and a number of expansions, it finally managed to realize the idea of a dream game that was seeded in my brain when I first started hearing rumors about all those space sims that started development in the early 2010s and for a while were going head-to-head in a race for the throne of THE best space sim revival game.
My history with this game was kinda tumultuous, though. I remember being so excited by the idea of being dropped into this huge universe full of limitless potential for adventure and discovery. I was so hyped that I preemptively started seeking out alternatives that were already available on the market at the time, just to satiate my thirst for space exploration. I dropped dozens of hours into games like Freelancer, DarkStar One, and even the aforementioned X: Rebirth - each unique and fun in its own way but always failing to deliver the kind of freedom and level of immersion that I was looking for.
A couple of years went by, and both SC and NMS were still nowhere to be found. But then I kept seeing all those YouTube videos from guys like Scott Manley who kept gushing over the realism and presentation of Elite: Dangerous in the early access versions, and my hype was almost going through the roof whenever I listened to him talk about it. Luckily, it was also the first game of that whole bunch to see an official 1.0 release, so I ravenously lunged at it as soon as it dropped on Steam, even though I could barely rub two coins together during that period of my life. I didn't care, I had to play this game. And in a lot of ways, it justified a lot of that hype that I built up in my head for it. The presentation was stunning, the scale and realism of the world were completely mind-blowing, and the gameplay struck a perfect balance between complexity and newbie-friendliness. It does require a lot of patience to get the hang of all of its systems and mechanics and you also need to pay a lot of attention to what you're doing if you want to avoid fatal mistakes but, at the same time, it feels intuitive enough that it's actually really engaging and fun to learn. Like a well-designed piece of machinery that takes time to master but doesn't blow up in your face every 30 minutes due to poor mechanical construction. So I kept having a nerd-off after nerd-off about stuff like realistic Newtonian physics and faithful recreation of various celestial bodies, and I was in complete awe of the vast, almost incomprehensibly huge galaxy while exploring various regions of the Milky Way. This included a lengthy trip to Horse Head Nebula (which is now sadly locked behind a number of the in-game system permits) or a very costly attempt at reaching Sagittarius A, which ultimately ended in catastrophic failure. Discovering the dangers of exploration and space trucking, often by trial and error, was great fun.
But then the honeymoon period was over. Slowly but surely I started realizing just how much grinding it took to get anywhere in this game, and after weeks upon weeks of exploration my wealth was still nowhere near enough to upgrade to a more beefy ship and try my hand at actual bounty hunting. Maybe I should've tried doing some mining but at that point, I just didn't have the patience anymore. I started to grow more and more frustrated with the lack of variety and complete inability to leave the pilot's seat. So, after those first few hundred hours, it was time to shelve the game for the time being, at least until the rumored expansions would come out.
What came next was hugely disappointing and prompted me to write my first couple of Steam reviews that were filled with vitriol and resentment. Frontier rolled out the first big expansion to the game which, contrary to what was promised during the Kickstarter campaign, had a price tag on it, and not only that, it was the same price tag as the game that I already paid for a couple of years prior. It felt like a bit of a slap in the face and combined with the general unpleasantness of the elitist community that grew around this game, only amplified whatever negative feelings I had about it. Suddenly all the negatives - the shallow, AI-generated world-building, the repetitive missions, the merciless grind - took precedence in my eyes and I was no longer interested in playing this game at all.
It took a couple more years and some discount hunting before I got over myself, though, and I eventually tried the Horizons expansion. And yeah, it somewhat managed to rekindle that old passion for the game. Getting behind the wheel of the SRV and discovering new things on planet surfaces added an extra layer of mystique and injected some much-needed variety and fun into the experience. Combined with an expanded mission roster, major rebalancing of the economy, the addition of a few new toys to your spacefaring arsenal, and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements - I was back in. Hook, line, and sinker. The absolutely enthralling encounters with Thargoids were only the icing on the cake. The game still felt a bit shallow overall, and it didn't manage to make a significant enough leap to bring it closer to my original dream of a perfect space game, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.
And then the Odyssey expansion came along. The dream game was so close to being completed that I could almost smell it. Unfortunately, however, instead of being a slam dunk, it kinda just dropped like a soft wet turd, and the smell turned out to be that of yet another disappointment. The overwhelmingly negative reception that it got was a clear message that I should avoid it for the time being. But now, 2 years later, I finally decided to give it a shot and I'm pleased to say that it's basically everything that I expected. Now, with the ability to put my feet on the ground and explore this universe through the eyes of my character instead of through the canopy of my starship's cockpit, Elite: Dangerous finally feels like the game that I was dreaming about for the past 10 years.
Of course, it's still not perfect. The so-called sandbox still feels rather static, most likely due to the sheer size of the simulation and the inherent difficulty to make any dynamic changes that are happening in the galaxy to be readily apparent. There are also many features that are sorely missing from this game that could make it feel more lively and community-driven. Imagine if they'd give players the ability to set up their own outposts on uncharted worlds and even create their own economies and power dynamics. Basically the stuff that games like EVE Online are known for, except set in a game that's actually fun to play and doesn't have a psychotic learning curve. Unfortunately, all Odyssey offers in terms of livening this universe up, are a few extra locations that you can visit on foot, all of which are filled with the same generic NPCs that either sit around and do nothing or serve as mission dispensers with the same ChatGPT-generated lines of dialogue that are repeated ad nauseam. Sadly, this is not enough to make this universe feel like it's a living, breathing world.
So, that's the one last thing that I'm hoping will get expanded upon in the future in order to make this game 100% perfect in my eyes. To make this simulated world feel like a real place.
But at least as far as gameplay and audio-visual presentation goes, we got there. It's everything that I ever hoped for and I don't think you can find a better game in this vein on the market today.
No Man's Sky redeemed itself in the end and it's a decent game but it doesn't really feel like an actual space trading and simulator game. It's more like a survival crafting game in space. It definitely doesn't carry the torch of those classic games like the original Elite series, Wing Commander: Privateer, or the X series.
Speaking of, we also got X4: Foundations a few years ago, and in typical X fashion, it was and largely remains a very robust and deep game that's also pretty much impenetrable for most players. It's very much a game only for the most hardcore fans of the genre. And being an X game it's also very much the same euro jank that it always was, albeit more competently put together than the disastrous X: Rebirth.
And then we have Elite: Dangerous.
After many years of post-launch updates and a number of expansions, it finally managed to realize the idea of a dream game that was seeded in my brain when I first started hearing rumors about all those space sims that started development in the early 2010s and for a while were going head-to-head in a race for the throne of THE best space sim revival game.
My history with this game was kinda tumultuous, though. I remember being so excited by the idea of being dropped into this huge universe full of limitless potential for adventure and discovery. I was so hyped that I preemptively started seeking out alternatives that were already available on the market at the time, just to satiate my thirst for space exploration. I dropped dozens of hours into games like Freelancer, DarkStar One, and even the aforementioned X: Rebirth - each unique and fun in its own way but always failing to deliver the kind of freedom and level of immersion that I was looking for.
A couple of years went by, and both SC and NMS were still nowhere to be found. But then I kept seeing all those YouTube videos from guys like Scott Manley who kept gushing over the realism and presentation of Elite: Dangerous in the early access versions, and my hype was almost going through the roof whenever I listened to him talk about it. Luckily, it was also the first game of that whole bunch to see an official 1.0 release, so I ravenously lunged at it as soon as it dropped on Steam, even though I could barely rub two coins together during that period of my life. I didn't care, I had to play this game. And in a lot of ways, it justified a lot of that hype that I built up in my head for it. The presentation was stunning, the scale and realism of the world were completely mind-blowing, and the gameplay struck a perfect balance between complexity and newbie-friendliness. It does require a lot of patience to get the hang of all of its systems and mechanics and you also need to pay a lot of attention to what you're doing if you want to avoid fatal mistakes but, at the same time, it feels intuitive enough that it's actually really engaging and fun to learn. Like a well-designed piece of machinery that takes time to master but doesn't blow up in your face every 30 minutes due to poor mechanical construction. So I kept having a nerd-off after nerd-off about stuff like realistic Newtonian physics and faithful recreation of various celestial bodies, and I was in complete awe of the vast, almost incomprehensibly huge galaxy while exploring various regions of the Milky Way. This included a lengthy trip to Horse Head Nebula (which is now sadly locked behind a number of the in-game system permits) or a very costly attempt at reaching Sagittarius A, which ultimately ended in catastrophic failure. Discovering the dangers of exploration and space trucking, often by trial and error, was great fun.
But then the honeymoon period was over. Slowly but surely I started realizing just how much grinding it took to get anywhere in this game, and after weeks upon weeks of exploration my wealth was still nowhere near enough to upgrade to a more beefy ship and try my hand at actual bounty hunting. Maybe I should've tried doing some mining but at that point, I just didn't have the patience anymore. I started to grow more and more frustrated with the lack of variety and complete inability to leave the pilot's seat. So, after those first few hundred hours, it was time to shelve the game for the time being, at least until the rumored expansions would come out.
What came next was hugely disappointing and prompted me to write my first couple of Steam reviews that were filled with vitriol and resentment. Frontier rolled out the first big expansion to the game which, contrary to what was promised during the Kickstarter campaign, had a price tag on it, and not only that, it was the same price tag as the game that I already paid for a couple of years prior. It felt like a bit of a slap in the face and combined with the general unpleasantness of the elitist community that grew around this game, only amplified whatever negative feelings I had about it. Suddenly all the negatives - the shallow, AI-generated world-building, the repetitive missions, the merciless grind - took precedence in my eyes and I was no longer interested in playing this game at all.
It took a couple more years and some discount hunting before I got over myself, though, and I eventually tried the Horizons expansion. And yeah, it somewhat managed to rekindle that old passion for the game. Getting behind the wheel of the SRV and discovering new things on planet surfaces added an extra layer of mystique and injected some much-needed variety and fun into the experience. Combined with an expanded mission roster, major rebalancing of the economy, the addition of a few new toys to your spacefaring arsenal, and a bunch of quality-of-life improvements - I was back in. Hook, line, and sinker. The absolutely enthralling encounters with Thargoids were only the icing on the cake. The game still felt a bit shallow overall, and it didn't manage to make a significant enough leap to bring it closer to my original dream of a perfect space game, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.
And then the Odyssey expansion came along. The dream game was so close to being completed that I could almost smell it. Unfortunately, however, instead of being a slam dunk, it kinda just dropped like a soft wet turd, and the smell turned out to be that of yet another disappointment. The overwhelmingly negative reception that it got was a clear message that I should avoid it for the time being. But now, 2 years later, I finally decided to give it a shot and I'm pleased to say that it's basically everything that I expected. Now, with the ability to put my feet on the ground and explore this universe through the eyes of my character instead of through the canopy of my starship's cockpit, Elite: Dangerous finally feels like the game that I was dreaming about for the past 10 years.
Of course, it's still not perfect. The so-called sandbox still feels rather static, most likely due to the sheer size of the simulation and the inherent difficulty to make any dynamic changes that are happening in the galaxy to be readily apparent. There are also many features that are sorely missing from this game that could make it feel more lively and community-driven. Imagine if they'd give players the ability to set up their own outposts on uncharted worlds and even create their own economies and power dynamics. Basically the stuff that games like EVE Online are known for, except set in a game that's actually fun to play and doesn't have a psychotic learning curve. Unfortunately, all Odyssey offers in terms of livening this universe up, are a few extra locations that you can visit on foot, all of which are filled with the same generic NPCs that either sit around and do nothing or serve as mission dispensers with the same ChatGPT-generated lines of dialogue that are repeated ad nauseam. Sadly, this is not enough to make this universe feel like it's a living, breathing world.
So, that's the one last thing that I'm hoping will get expanded upon in the future in order to make this game 100% perfect in my eyes. To make this simulated world feel like a real place.
But at least as far as gameplay and audio-visual presentation goes, we got there. It's everything that I ever hoped for and I don't think you can find a better game in this vein on the market today.
Thank you for listening to my TEDx talk.
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