Elite: Dangerous Review – The Great Sandbox In The Sky
In my brief time as an Elite: Dangerous starship commander, I’ve seen and done a great many things. I’ve tracked down elusive resources and rushed them to space stations to meet a deadline. I’ve frame-shifted out of normal space mere seconds before enemy fire would have cut through my hull. I’ve gone hunting through space for rebel transmissions and black boxes, only to stumble across a funeral procession.
Elite: Dangerous is special because this all happened without a story campaign connecting each event. Just like previous Elite games, Dangerous drops your spaceship into a lone corner of the galaxy and lets you find your own way in a sandbox universe. At no point will a superior officer to give you a command, and you’ll never see a mission objective directing you somewhere you never planned to go already. The closest thing to assistance you’ll get is when the ship’s computer reminds you to lower your landing gear during docking.
Elite: Dangerous and its old-school sensibilities can be hard to adjust to, and it could have featured some limited narrative to provide context to players. But you can’t deny that its space sim gameplay is just as engaging today as when Elite introduced the concept in 1984.
If you’ve been longing for space sims with modern graphics, or just want to see why everybody’s fussing about them, Elite: Dangerous is a welcome return of the classic franchise.
Elite: Dangerous
Platform: PC
Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Release Date: Dec. 16, 2014
MSRP: $59.99
Available: Elite: Dangerous Store
If you loved the original Elite, or the open-universe space sims it inspired, rest assured that Dangerous will absolutely suck you in. In fact, Dangerous feels more like a next-gen remake than a true sequel, refining and perfecting the classic gameplay within a shiny new graphics engine.
The biggest difference is that players must log into a multiplayer server instead of working from a local save file, but that shouldn’t discourage you too much. Elite is still the exact same single-player experience it always was, even if you spot a few more humans from time to time.
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4 Comments on Elite: Dangerous Review – The Great Sandbox In The Sky
rickshaw
On December 26, 2014 at 3:55 pm
Good score great review This game is very inventive for the time and money spent on it. its shows what space games should be..masterful
THE greatest Game Dev SHAME is CCP (eve online) It never ever listened to its players crys for new ideas for changes ever. even formt he very start they cried out. but CCP was DEATH EARS.
SO CCP are the bad ones in the space race. CCP SO busy trying to play catchup when all they can do now is rehash a total confusion of messups. Some(ccp) game companies just can’t let go and remake another better game from their past experiences. CCP is living prove of patch up world they live in. they would rather play doctor than try and move onto second inclusion to the franchise..you know…something new. Bahhh its far too hard to tell a person to stop when they been doing it for so long.
SO I SAY WELL DONE ELITE DANGEROUS YOU SHOWED THEM! SHOW EM SOME MORE IN 2015
Have a good New years Everyone.
EDBacker
On December 26, 2014 at 5:15 pm
David Braben took £1.5m from Kickstarter backers, failed to deliver the Elite Dangerous game he promised, and then reneged on his commitment to return the money. If you are one of the backers seeking the refund to which you are entitled, join with the others on the mailing list at http://www.elitedangerousrefunds.org.
The Truth
On December 28, 2014 at 10:49 pm
This looks like another whinefest to me. Walls of text! Waah! Offline mode! Waah!
David
On December 30, 2014 at 1:50 pm
This game is getting totally unfair reviews, which isn’t really surprising, since you actually have to play it for more than 5 hours to realize how shallow it actually is. Mainstream game reviewers don’t tend to do that, which is why I for one never pay much attention to these kinds of reviews. The hype this game has garnered also seems to fuel the fire of overly positive first impressions.
Frontier Developments’ dishonesty is something that more and more people seem to realize. The end product they have created is pretty far from what was talked about in the many video diaries and interviews with David Braben during its development, is nothing like the trailer which was used to market it and on some accounts even fails to include features that were promised during the kickstarter campaign. Oh, and where are those “loads” of Mercenary Edition content that were promised on release? Seems they “forgot” about that also.
It might be that E:D is a game with some actual content other than the space sightseeing two years from now. But knowing Frontier Developments, I wouldn’t count on it including half of what they’ve said it will include.