It's still just a single star system with 5 planets and the dev team is using the whole "we're doing something nobody ever has done before, literally blazing the trail for massive space simulation."
And people eat it up.
The funniest part is Elite Dangerous is coming out with walking on planets/combat and it looks as good, or even better, than SC and they just started working on it within the past year.
I haven't played it but Elite Dangerous is really cool, the fact they introduced an NPC alien faction into the galaxy organically and without fanfare so the first few players to encounter them were written off as lying was super interesting
Ah but that's because Elite Dangerous is an actual game. Could've made way more money by being vapourware. Idiots. That said space trucking in Elite Dangerous was very fun. I remember setting up a crazy system with Google Cardboard to use VR in game, and it was great.
as someone that used to just aimlessly explore in space engine i really want to play elite. i'm going to wait until the planet walking expansion and might finally dive in
No Man's Sky is pretty fun now. If you haven't looked into it in a while, might be worth checking out.
my finger hovered over it when i saw it on sale a few months ago after reading about the changes. i may check it out after all!
It's a lot more casual that Elite. If you're looking to close the curtains, light some candles, open a spread-sheet, whip out a fat fucking HOTAS and spacetruck all god damn night long -- and who could blame you? -- it won't scratch that itch.
But the spacetruckin' ain't bad either! The exploration, dog-fighting, base building, buggy driving, mech suit, stuff in between is pretty fun too. The work they put into the game since release is kinda great. And not a penny charged for DLC while they did it is pretty admirable, imo.
You know this sparked a thought in my mind; it's a bit like Pascal's wager (basically; the reward of going to Heaven is so enormous that the only rational decision is to believe in God just in case) in that if you hype the reward up to be so world-changing, you can get people to risk more and more simply by selling it
...I guess that's just a fancy way of saying snake oil salesman or something, but yeah, promise something will literally change the entire world as we know it and not only will people throw endless cash at it, but call people who cast a critical eye on it morons
"We have a stunted pop culture malaise that hasn’t changed much for decades of recycled nostalgia that keeps coming back again and again"
This is called Lost Future, where capitalism keeps selling us things we remember from the past, because all of the creative energy has burned out and been taken over by venture capital. Mark Fisher had a great essay on the topic (although he was more concerned about the UK music scene, his analysis applies to pop culture in general).
Here's a great video about Hauntology and Lost Futures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSvUqhZcbVgLove this analysis. I still can't believe I pledged for this game on Kickstarter like a decade ago and it's still not even close to having an actual release date. I have to respect the grift; at this point it's legendary status.
I'm so glad I was still broke from the great recession at the time the original kickstarters began, and by the time I could afford anything the grift was obvious.
Star Citizen is gamings Pyramid Scheme. The company will be got for embezzlement or something eventually.
Meanwhile Elite: Dangerous is slowly but surely releasing content that consistently improves the game while keeping their goals and promises reasonable.
The game's really cool if you treat it like Euro Truck Simulator and don't get too obsessive with min-maxing/meta-game, which most games encourage. It encourages this a little too. The whole faction/engineer grind is massive and it can get tiring chasing that stuff, but treating it like a game where you're doing basic tasks in space and listen to music, podcasts, etc. is a really nice experience.
The community seemed all right from what I've seen. There are groups like the Fuel Rats you you can contact to come save you if you're stranded or run out of fuel and stuff.
People make fun of YandereDev, but I'd be hard pressed to find the qualitative differences between him and the Star Citizen team.
the inevitable consequences of piracy
I already know what this will be about, but link?
