I'd known for at least a year or so now about the development of two upcoming space sim games, namely "Star Citizen" and "No Man's Sky" and excitedly kept up with their progress towards completions via interviews, E3 presentations and fanboy YouTube vids. But quite unexpectedly I recently learned of another space sim that had also been in development and had been actually commercially released months ago. Elite: Dangerous,
Now I consider myself a pretty savvy gamer and the most important attribute I bring to the table, especially if I'm going to compare my skills to those of the thumb-twitching, video-game weened Millenials (and younger) is the wisdom of experience. Unlike wet-behind-the-ears little twerps too young to have experienced, at the time of their release, iconic games like the ones I praise in these posts...1, 2, 3...I have lived the entire spectrum of the era of video gaming. I've seen them all come and go.
Or so I thought.
To my recollection, before Elite: Dangerous, I'd never heard of the first Elite games starting with the original one way back in 1984. The '90s editions also eluded my sharp eye for news in the industry, even though I had a beloved subscription to PC Gamer at the time and meticulously scanned the shelves of many a computer software store every weekend. Could I have read about it and forgot? Could be. But based on what I've found recently, these games would have been right up my alley. I'm totally weirded out as to why I've apparently not only not heard of them but I know if I had, I would probably have bought them.
It took me only a bit of research to determine this new game was the right one for me and so I bought it and I'm so freakin' lovin' it.
This awesome game is "open world" (though in this game it's "open galaxy" since the entire Milky Way, and its billions of stars are procedurally generated and accessible...wha!), first-person perspective, space flight simulator. It forces you to learn to pilot your ship manually, for the most part, dealing with tricky Newtonian physics, and gives you free reign to determine the best outfitting of your ship (for good or bad) and what tasks you undertake with it (trading, mining, missions for hire, political combat and intrigue, exploration, piracy or bounty hunting.
As you can see in the clip below, I'm currently engaged in bounty hunting. Pretty darn lucrative if you ask me. I can rack up a half million credits in about an hour or so. And not too horribly risky...the security forces you see flying near me keep me relatively safe.
I could go on and on to talk about how addicting this game is. It's so immersive! I have my room darkened and I'm up close to the monitor to pull myself totally into the setting.
If I had the balls to dole out about $350 I could get an Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2 to REALLY get immersed. Videos of players playing with this setup are so exciting to watch as you see how fucking mind-blowing the experience of piloting an actual spacecraft in virtual reality is. Oh it would be nice to buy right now but I'm waiting for the commercial version to go on sale sometime next year. It's reportedly gonna cost as much as $1,200! Ouch! But it would be soooo worth it, I think. Too bad all the millions I have in the game can't be converted into real money.