Hi all. So today we're closing in on 10 million viewers on our YouTube channel
in just over two years. A fantastic number and thank you so much for your
support.
As this is a commemorative video as it were,
I thought what better way to kind of remember this time
and to go back to one of the first games I ever played but tell you about
its new incarnation for 2014. That game
of course is Elite, one of those games which has a flag in the ground of gaming history
as being one of the first
to achieve, well, three-dimensional graphics
even if it was using very basic polygons. Elite was a forerunner for practically
every game we have today. Everyone owes their
lineage to what Elite delivered in 1986,
and so with Elite Dangerous now
available as an early access title, what better way
than to take a first look at what Elite Dangerous is going to deliver.
So first of all, what is Elite? Well quite simply
you can do anything you choose. Become a pirate, a bounty hunter, a
trader or fight for one of the factions earning credits
for destroying enemy ships. The world is entirely up to you and it's populated
with hundreds of millions of planets, each one
able to support a range of different activities.
Now this is a game that doesn't hold your hand.
It's not intended to. It does throw you in at the deep end,
you literally appear in your ship, outside a space station and then it's all
for you to figure out on your own.
How do you pilot your ship? How do you land your ship? How do you engage in combat?
All of these are things you'll have to discover. Now the game is
early access, it's currently running at beta 3 and so there's a lot of time yet for the
developers to add in tutorials and everything like that
but in some respects I hope they don't because part of the charm of
Elite is finding your own way in this universe,
attempting to work out how not to blow yourself up
in the first five minutes of combat. Everything in this game
rewards you for your own experience, for
learning the ropes as you go, making mistakes and starting over again
and that sense of accomplishment you get when you do
land for the first time at a space station completely manually because there is no
auto dock or autopilot in this game,
is phenomenal. You feel like you're living in this world
because the smallest mistake can cost you dearly.
Now Elite is running on its own unique
engine created in-house by the developers and it shows.
This is an engine which feels purpose built to deliver
a huge galaxy a massive number of planets,
star systems and so on for you to explore all
with grand scale. In this game you will have to fly between planets and that
takes time.
You'll have to use hyperspace as well in order to move between
the various star clusters. Combat in this game
feels tight and efficient, even if the weapons at times in the earlier part of the game
before you can
buy some new ones, feel a little underwhelming. This is a game you have to
stick with
if you want to get the best out in it I can really see the learning curve here is
going to put a lot of players off,
certainly during this initial beta phase but I would say stick with it
but also involve yourself in the Elite Dangerous community as well.
Everybody's in the same boat as it were or starship in this case
and everyone has a desire to progress through the game
and to learn the ropes. Do ask questions this game is massive
and just trying to wrap your head around some of the most basic things like
how exactly do you navigate between stars is going to take a bit of time to
understand.
Tutorials make a big difference here as does relying on the community to help
point out the error of
your ways. Elite is currently available for £50 as an early access from
their website.
A premium over the targeted price when they officially launch
but it is well worth it at this stage. The game is huge and has a massive amount of
content
and there's more stuff planned to be rolled out over this next six month period or so.
Overall Elite Dangerous is shaping up to be one of the greatest
space games we have ever had, potentially one of the most in depth games
ever created. Certainly this raises big questions for Star Citizen and
how they are actually going to respond to what Elite is bringing. Because right now
Elite is the whole package and it's playable today.
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and please like and comment on these videos as well. We love to chat.