For players of a sci-fi leaning the wait until No Man’s Sky finally arrives has been a painful one. Numerous delays coupled with wondering whether it was ever even going to come to PC has been enough to cause even the sanest minds to construct rickety spaceships in their back gardens in the hopes of one day blasting off. The best way to wait though has been to tuck into the already glorious space sims out there, with three reigning supreme over all - Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and EVE Online.
Elite Dangerous is the re-imagining of a genuine classic. The team at Frontier have been hellbent on delivering content update after content update with this space-faring trading sim. The huge universe can theoretically occupy you for hundreds of hours, and it’s only gotten bigger with the arrivals of Arena and Horizons.
Then there’s the small matter of Star Citizen. The highest grossing crowdfunded game of all time, Star Citizen is a behemoth of a title. From small beginnings it’s legitimately become a AAA giant. The only problem left now is for Cloud Imperium Games to bring its many parts together into a cohesive whole. Star Citizen has stuck in pre-release for years now, but for those looking after the most incredibly in-depth space simulator, there really is no other quite like it.
Which brings me on to the mighty EVE Online. Often disparagingly referred to as spreadsheet simulator, EVE Online has been an MMO juggernaut for over 13 years. This seemingly unassuming persistent online world has played host to some of the grandest battles ever seen in videogames. Thousands of real life dollars have been lost in an instant in huge wars between rival factions, with tales of some going as far as trekking to enemy leader’s houses and cutting their power supplies at crucial moments. EVE Online is for the one-game players amongst us, those who commit thousands of hours to playing a single game.
So which of these gaming supernovas is your favourite? Do you prefer EVE Online’s hands off approach? Elite Dangerous’ sci-fi trading and action? Or the sheer ambition of what’s being attempted with Star Citizen? Let us know!
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The spiritual successor to Freelancer, Star Citizen, will be the best without a doubt. Freelancer was an outstanding game for it's time, yet Microsoft made them cut a lot of content out.
Now the same visionary has free reign. It's going to be good.
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I would say Star Citizen but a recent revision to their refund policy raises a big red flag to me.
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Star Citizen will be the game where I will spend the last days of my life, currently Im a 43 years old gamer, married with wife and kids, I hope that when I get more old wish to have the health to keep playing this game till the end.
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I've really enjoyed Elite: Dangerous since I got it last year. Most of the "epic moments" I've encountered in video games have happened in Elite. It's an amazing feeling going from Sidewinder > Eagle > Cobra > Diamondback > Asp > Python. Each ship is it's own reward. Once you hit the "end game", the fun drops quite a bit. Without doing Powerplay (which most players aren't interested in as far as I'm aware) there really isn't much to do. Even the new engineers update has hit a bad note with majority of the players.
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I'd love to try Star Citizen but I'm hesitant to do so because I dislike the way it's developed. The main thing I dislike is the flight model. It just doesn't look fun. Maybe I'll try it one day because it really looks amazing. Eve Online, I've tried and really didn't like it. I really don't think you can compare Eve to Elite and Star Citizen though. They're vastly different types of games.
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I agree with you on the comparison, it's like comparing CoD to ARMA. Also, what don't you like about the flight model in SC, is it the simulation approach or what? just curious.
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Pool isnt working
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Still Playing Star Citizen, amazing game community are amazing too. Hope everyone could give the Sim a try
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If they optimise it very good, then many people might try it, otherwise no, hardly.
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I am getting pretty good fps, for now while not being optimized it is running pretty well. Running it maxed out myself lowest 40 average 70 fps for now. Also the game is in Alpha and has not even yet been touched in optimization everything is still being added in. Look at Arma for example Alpha Arma had the worse optimization. Arma Beta to now is so optimized you would think it was made by different developers
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I love star citizen! but wait how are you getting 70 fps, the universe servers are still server bound fps (at least as of last week), or do you mean in the drone sim?
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configs you can change to your hearts delight, sadly you are right about the fps in servers
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havnt played it in awhile, got bored easy without mic chat. Have they added it yet?
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I like Eve but my favorite is freelancer.
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Indeed, Freelancer is one of the few games that if loaded it up right now i could play it all day.
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FTW!
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There still isn't anything better than Freelancer! (Not counting Star Citizen yet)
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I know its not listed but Rebel Galaxy is a pretty good Space Themed game.
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EVE Online is such a massively interesting and immersing game. When you get into it, it literally feels like a different world. It makes you dream about the future and makes you want to be part of it.
However, the learning curve is so steep and so extremely slow that it (quite literally) takes years to get anywhere, and you can lose it all in a blink. It's nigh impossible to casually step into
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Elite dangerous was amazing when i first bought it but after a few weeks i realized how little it could keep me entertained. Then i came back with the war update which was pretty cool but at that time i couldn't really sink more time into it. Then they announced landing on planets which sounded cool but they wanted another 45 dollars for it and looking at the game play it looked utterly boring and empty.
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^This, this is how i feel.
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Same, the potential is huge but it just keeps asking for money...
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wait, is Star Citizen playable ?
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Neither. No man's sky for me!
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I loved Star Trek online while I played it... played for around a year and a half... making it one of the few MMOs I seen as worthy enough to invest a big chunk of time in.... I thought it was an amazing game for the time, and probably still is..... and... much like No Mans Sky... The planets are procedurally generated
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I really am looking forward to when SC atleast goes into beta, I just hope it makes it there.