Although I never played Elite back in the day, I was a huge fan of Freespace and FS2, and thought I'd never play a better space sim game than those two. I also spent a great deal of time playing Descent, and amassed about 100,000 kills online in Descent 3 before it died out.
Two years ago, I was so enthused about resurrecting 6DOF gameplay, I single-handedly rescued a 6DOF game from their failed kickstarter, with a fortune in cash. That game was Retrovirus. But I overestimated the attraction of the old 6DOF FPS game genre, and as a result lost an awful lot more than just my faith in Descent players.
I am happy to report that ED is a game worthy of my attention (very few are!), and dusting off my old Extreme 3D Pro to play. I even ordered a CH Pro Throttle to use with the game. I would have ordered an X55, but the amount of trouble people seem to have with them makes that a poor idea I think! The old 3D Pro works amazingly well with the game, and I have no trouble at all co-ordinating my attacks with the stick, and tracking people with TrackIR across all 3 screens.
However, the game does have issues, and I thought I'd record my impressions here.
I was extremely impressed with how easy it was to get the game running in eyefinity at 5348x1050 and with TrackIR enabled! Two thumbs up there.
However, the scheme used to select controller inputs is extremely poor, and needs a HUGE redesign. The lack for support for things like the Space Navigator is also poor. When trying to import and use a Voice Attack profile, with many hundreds of commands (inc Galactapedia) I was forced to spend in excess of 6 hours configuring my controls and matching them to non-standard controls in VA. Not your fault - but very frustrating.
I'm surprised Voice Attack (or equivalent) is not a built-in part of the game. It should be.
Not sure if I'm getting the full 7.1 sound experience in the game: does it REALLY supply a proper set of 7.1 positional sounds? Ah well, I am sure it will at some stage. My sound system is a significantly larger investment than all my PC gear combined, with 3 power amplifiers plus the Sub. One day I'll post some pics of my battlestation.
The controls to use the left and right panel UI are arcane to the point of madness. I am only flying the training missions, but I can't access either left or right panel contents no matter how hard I try. All I can do is view the cover of each which pops up when I look left or right with TrackIR. *sigh*
I'm sure I will figure it out in time.
I am extremely happy with the performance of the game, as with everything maxed out at 5348x1050 I'm getting a solid 60 FPS with an old i5 @ 3.1, 8GB of vanilla RAM and a spanky Asus R9 290 Direct CU II.
The in-game sounds are brilliant, and they come through my HiFi 7.1 system in vibrant detail. Couldn't ask for more and my only possible grizzle is that the sound of the ship going very slowly sounds a bit groany. But hey - I can live with that.
I love the radar, and the HUD, and the controls seem totally intuitive once you get over the initial shock (and horror) that Yaw might as well not even exist in the game! Truly, I thought something was broken when I first started flying. Spent ages checking the Joystick axes out!
I understand why it's like that, and it took me all of 5 minutes to accept I have to roll and then pull up to turn tightly. I did however, wonder why I had real trouble getting a ship into my reticle when I was using Roll as a part of my aiming. It wasn't until I stopped dead, and tested the Roll axis that I found it started to yaw as I started to roll! No freaking wonder!
Whoever made THAT a default option needs his face slapped.
Once I disabled yaw-on-roll or whatever it's called, I was able to instantly become very accurate with the 3D Pro, and the Pulse Laser combo. Surprisingly so! Whatever work was done to the way the joystick is implemented in the game - well, that is superb work, and it is a joy to use - no pun intended!
The Visuals are very groovy too - and many sacrifices to playability mean realism takes a back seat to fun - and I am all for that.
One thing which DOES annoy though, is the way the Coriolis effect magically disappears when we fly into a station. That is simply mind-numbingly bad, and breaks physics shockingly. A rotating station with a dock in the center will in reality, have the dock rotate counter the station spin, so that docking is performed in a stationary dock. The speed at which the dock spins is nowhere near enough to generate a centripetal force great enough to be of use to anyone. Certainly not enough to support cars driving inside the dock.
I think I understand why the history of Elite makes the station design and the way it spins part of the lore - but it is still terribly bad design in my view.
I wonder what sort of magic keeps air in the dock? Best not to ask too many questions about a game, I suppose, and just try to suspend my disbelief.
I thought lone and hard about whether to buy Star Citizen, but the crazy pricing over there put me off, and I am already playing the DayZ Standalone Alpha, and I think that is enough alpha testing for one guy!
One thing which is slightly disappointing using TrackIR is the tiny amount of zoom I have. It's not even as far as if I could lean forward in my seat in real life.
Let's ignore the design of fighters, or the fact that fighters exist at all - because in reality, the entire concept of a space fighter is out-and-out stupid. Space battles (if they ever take place) will be between capital ships at distances of light seconds, but that wouldn't make for a decent first person experience.
The WWII dogfighting seems to translate very well to the ED universe, but I think I will spend the vast majority of my time exploring and trading, and leave the combat to the young guys. I am so old, I fart dust.
Flight Assist off mode is a welcome addition to the gameplay, and while complex maneuvers are out of the question for me right now, I can turn it off and in combat and that adds a great twist to the ordinary "planes in air" model.
Using it strategically is going to be a real challenge to understand the combinations and permutations of normal and combative navigation. Suffice it to say right now, you don't ever want to engage Free Flight when a target's reticle is anywhere near you!
I can see that skilful use of both normal and free flight mode is going to make the top-level of 1v1 combat very hard indeed, as the skills required will rapidly escalate to crazy levels.
I am a bit mystified as to the server situation online - and seem to simply be assigned to one - but I know nothing of where it is - what my ping to it is (I'm in New Zealand, so it is likely to be high) or what effect ping is going to have in online combat situations. I am a bit worried about the lack of ability to choose a server, and log in, so that I can meet up with other people, and explore or fight in a team.
I haven't seen anything about the netcode of the game, and I would like to learn a lot more about it. The people who understand the netcode invariably have a HUGE advantage over those who do not - UNLESS the code is so good it almost breaks the laws of physics.
Anyway, I am greatly looking forward to future developments of the game, and to expanding my skills along with the game, and to have a heap of fun in the process.
Thanks for the game: I think it was worth the $300 I spent by the time I had bought Voice Attack, Galactapedia and a CH Pro Trottle and I am pretty sure I will have a whale of a time online.
