Drift through space from galaxy to galaxy. Hunt some of the most brutal bounty targets in the universe. Join a faction and help stabilize the war for power. Become one of the biggest pirates with a fleet of the highest tech spaceships you can get your hands on. Or just be a space courier and collect and live upon your mountain of credits. The possibilities are endless within Elite Dangerous and you can literally do whatever you feel like.

Developed and published by Frontier Developments, Elite Dangerous was an open “space” flight simulator with a heavy focus on RPG, MMO, and exploration, but with the release of the latest and greatest DLC, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, the developers have further evolved this already super in-depth space exploration game and added some awesome FPS elements.

With the launch of Odyssey, all the news articles I read talked about massive performance issues and bugs that rendered the highly anticipated release unplayable for the majority of the fanbase. So either my mid-tier gaming rig performed better than expected or I was just really lucky. The gameplay was smooth and the game itself performed well. I didn’t suffer any crashes or glitches/bugs for that matter.

My adventures started with me attempting to help out some researcher with stealing some data, which ended up in a gunfight and going to space jail before hunting down space pirates in high combat areas and making massive bank to spend on new weapons and ships. I then attempted to sway a Faction war by helping the galactic squadron fight off their enemies for control of a military outpost, which… we lost… and I went happily on my way back to hunting down those space-pirate scumbags. Before I knew it 6 hours had passed and it was mid-afternoon. The ability that this game possesses to pull you in and captivate you for hours on end is amazing as there is always something to do or explore.

Spacecraft control was tedious on mouse and keyboard, but after a few hours of trying to correct my mid-space burnouts, I slowly got the hang of it. If you aren’t used to playing flying simulators on a mouse and keyboard I would HIGHLY recommend using a controller or a joystick. There were so many controls to try and remember for flying the ship that I constantly found myself drifting while googling “how to use cargo scoop” and various other questions that weren’t covered in the extremely basic tutorial, although this is understandable as most things you don’t need to use until later in the game.

The first-person exploration control was seamless and played extremely smoothly like most FPS games I’ve played before. The gunplay was great and the riskiness of each gunfight had me trying to strategically plan out my next steps in firefights. When exploring outside of your space ship each planet has varying atmospheric conditions which can hinder your exploration extremely quickly if you don’t have the correct gear. With your suit, you can activate a shield in a gunfight, use your torch and other gadgets to hack into classified areas in settlements, but do so at your own peril.

If your suit runs out of energy your life support will be shut off or your torch will give away your position while infiltrating the surrounding NPCs and settlement defenses will turn on you. Strategy is the thin line between life and death. After playing games such as No Man’s Sky and Astroneer, the planetary designs left a bitter taste in my mouth with the majority of planets just being barren cold lonely rocks, and when finding settlements they had a very copy/paste feel to them.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in space and can’t wait to play more and see where Frontier Developments takes this game!

Written by: Bigfoot