Elite: Dangerous
by Johnathan Irwin
reviewed on PC
There's Always A Bigger Fish
This is a game where death has consequence. As long as you play your cards right, you can hopefully avoid a crippling blow landing you right back at square one. Even still, death is not an easy pill to swallow. My first death came to me while I was out traversing an unexplored system, looking for the black box of a ship that had been destroyed on behalf of my employer back at the Dalton Gateway. After spending 3 hours looking for it, but having no luck, it was time to call it a night and return back to the starport to at the very least sell everything else I'd found. That's when he appeared.
Pulling me out of supercruise, I came face to face with a much better equipped player. He attempted to make contact after firing a warning shot across my ship, I knew he was after my cargo. About ten minutes of cat and mouse ensued, after I'd narrowly escaped him once. The second time he caught me, there was no warning shot. My engines were disabled after my shields had been brought down, and my ship was blown into oblivion. I stared at my screen, feeling the color drain from my face. All the work... all the time... it was gone. In an instant. Thankfully, I had enough credits saved up to easily replace my ship, but the time and effort I'd put into the last couple hours had been for nothing.
You know what though? That's okay! Sure, in that moment it was disheartening but afterwards a little grin crept across my face. My only choice was to get in my new ship, and get back out there! The galaxy is a place of variety, you're going to run into friends and enemies. NPCs and Players, it doesn't matter, they all have a different agenda. The players of course, even moreso.
Elite: Awesome
That could easily become a nickname for this title, now that space simulators are coming back swinging. At launch, Elite: Dangerous has quickly become an addiction for those who want a blend of action, downtime, excitement and frustration. It is not for the faint of heart in the slightest. At the moment, there are glitches and game issues here and there both major and minor but Frontier Developments has been working relatively quickly to deal with them, and it seems as though there are improvements daily. Looking forward to the future, it's going to be a long and interesting flight seeing where Elite: Dangerous ends up years down the line. With so much on the table to start, and so many ideas that they want to put into motion, this title has launched itself out into the galaxy and it's bringing a frenzy of eager pilots along with it. It may not be perfect, but for something so ambitious it's off to a pretty grand start.
9.0
fun score
Pros
Complex controls, in depth ship customization options, ability to pursue your advancements your own way, massive galaxy to explore, death actually holds consequences.
Cons
A few major glitches/game issues at present, training missions don't cover some very important content.