Elite Dangerous has been out for years on PC and Xbox One and is finally coming to PlayStation 4. Now many of you probably never heard of this, and that doesn’t surprise me, only reason i know of it is a friend told me about it. How did he hear about it? You guessed it, someone told him about it. Now i am not going to lie to you, this game is one hell of a grind. The tutorial can take legitimately hours to to do just enough to have a solid foundation to play the game. Now that sounds like a lot, but when you look at what the game is it is unavoidable. It is a MASSIVE space simulator, an ever changing economy, wars between multiple factions and a 1:1 galaxy to explore. Yes that is right, there are billions of stars and planets to visit once you get the hang of the learning curve where you can see beautiful views such as the ones below
Now don’t let these views fool you, the world is as dangerous as it is gorgeous, not just NPC pirates, other players can and will attack you to steal your cargo and if you have a wanted tag on you its basically one huge bulls eye on your back. That being said the galaxy is so immense you may never see other players, in my 25 hours with the game I have only seen 3, one of which was my friend showing off his far more advanced ship. There are also player groups within the game that basically started themselves. One that damn near seems like a secret society do nothing more than Explore the galaxy investigating rumors of alien artifact and wreckage, which you are free to do on your own. A different group known as the fuel rats are probably the heroes for the explorer. Run out of gas, get in touch with the fuel rats and they will bring you some fuel. I’ve never needed them but I am told they have a website that you can visit and request help.
The Elite Dangerous community is at time very hard to approach for new people on PC, at least that is the rumor, however on Xbox I have never had an issue with griefers or people just being a pain i the ass. There are some things you have to be warned about, and i do not mean to scare you off. I have already reserved my copy of the game and will be starting all over again on PS4 when it launches June 27th.
So here is the cold hard truth, this game requires a large time commitment to truly enjoy. Between the tutorials and getting the hang of things easily the first 20 hours is training just to upgrade your ship a bit and learn to stop crashing while trying to land. Jumping from system to system us easy, but traveling in the system to planets and take some practice and patience. Upgrading your ship from the standard sidewinder to something with greater traveling ability, combat skill, mining ability or whatever else it is you want will takes hours, and that’s just to get a decent ship, the higher tier ships can take closer to 100 hours and many even longer. This is not a game for people that want a quick to play game. You can play it for an hour here and there, absolutely, but there is no quick route to new ships or locations.
With all that being said I do think it is one of the more ambitious titles in recent memory, that any sci fi fan should at least check out on Youtube. I highly recommend either Scott Manley or Obsideon Ant, both of which i will link video for at the bottom. As always, thanks for joining me, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
