Favourite computer games of all time. [2]

{{Yeah Earth is in there. One of the nice things I like about it is that unlike most sci-fi games, tv and film, if you look carefully you will see the coastlines are not quite the same- Scotlands lost a bit from the west and north coast line, England has fens and flooded areas in the east and Norway has become cut off form mainland Europe- due to higher sea levels in the future. }}





'do any of the planets have noticeable atmospheres?'- Forest

No, not yet. You can only go down to planets with no or very thin atmospheres. You cant land on inhabited planets, or ones with atmospheres, or go into the clouds of gas giants.
But the game is in constant development with new updates at regular intervals adding new features, tweaking old ones ect- the next update 2.3 is due next month which will brig custom avatars and the ability to co-pilot ships with friends (so you could crew your bigger ship with all friends which should be fun) among its new features.

I dont expect going down to planets with atmospheres- and therefore plant/animal/civilisation on them is a long way off- as Braben and his team say there is no point unless there is actually game stuff to do when you get there and a point to it.
He has a point- you could land on all planet types in Frontier: First Encounters, the last of the original Elite trilogy of games back in the day- and mighty impressive it was too- but all there was besides the impressive sense of scale and visuals when you got down was a space port, that acted exactly like a port in space does- the upshot of which is after awhile unless you have to you tended not to bother landing on planets because gamewise all you needed to do was get to a station, and sell your stuff, or whatever you were there for, and it was much quicker and easier to do that in space.
So stuff on the ground has to offer something you cant do elsewhere. Even if it did look impressive (heres a vid I made ages ago which is the old Elite First Encounters engine which fans have given a retexture make over too- but otherwise you're looking at the original game engine here under the hood- all thats different is the texturing of objects.)



Right now they are still expanding on the stuff that is there now on the planet types you can go down onto.
If I had to make a guess at it I would say that volumetric clouds for gas giants will arrive before planets with atmospheres are made landable.
And I would expect atmosphere planets will probably be part of the next big pack they sell- the current one Horizons introduced planetary landing, power play and a host of other stuff.

So far how its worked- though this might change is originally it was Elite Dangerous- which you bought as a game normal sort of game price- then came Horizons which you bought as a season pass- this gave you Horizons and all the updates for Horizons- Horizons has been going for over a year now so I consider it good value for money and you automatically get all the updates. There is also no monthly subscription- once you've bought the game thats you.

There are microtransactions of sorts- none of them for anything important more customization if you wan tit- new paint jobs for your ship, bobbleheads for the cockpit that sort of thing and they are not 'in' the game at all so dont intrude, if you want that sort of stuff you go buy it in the shop on the ED website. So when you are actually playing there is no annoying microtransaction screens to remind you its a game that is just trying to get your money!

No one knows what the next expansion will be focused on- maybe being able to walk about your ship or get out at stations, maybe it will be planets with atmospheres made landeable or something no-one expects.}}

Maybe they'll go Doctor Who and add in the next dimension: Time!

{{{ Some more of me playing ED in VR- just taking off from a planet, nosing abut scanning stuff in a quite large system and landing at a different planet.

ps- the galaxy map screen- the blue arrow is me, the orange arrow is my destination- I'm heading roughly to the California Nebula- the line is my current flight plan to its destination- and the place with a cluster of icons is the inhabited bubble- thats where we on earth currently are! pps no one else had ever been to this system before so I am the first to set eyes on it!}}}

Pettytyrant wrote:ps- the galaxy map screen- the blue arrow is me, the orange arrow is my destination- I'm heading roughly to the California Nebula- the line is my current flight plan to its destination-

Oh hey, stop on over when you pass by!

{{{Still not there yet Forest, but getting closer!- heres a short vid after I parked and stretched by legs a bit in the cabin. On the edge of a series of canyons on an ice planet The nebula I'm going to is the one directly overhead- also tried to show the 3d nature of the heads up panels and there's a nice planet out the right window which I was lucky enough to be in the right place at right time for the sun to be giving a lovely light halo. }}}

{{Bit closer yet- the Nebula looks rather nice from here, but this planet is a tad too hot!!! Which is why at the end Im buggering off into the cargo bay for some buckie (sadly scale is not conveyed well, looking at that sun or nebula in VR they look absolutely massive on the horizon) }}}

{{The always entertaining Mars and Spwarks continue their adventures- this time things are a bit, warm... }}}

{{I'm not one for the pc v consoles or pc master-race thing- but this joke from a comments section on youtube did genuinely make me laugh. From user Ahzek Ahriman-}}

'Why did the console player cross the road?'

Spoiler:

{{{ }}

{{Nice fan vid/trailer for ED}}

{{Excellent little vid showcasing ED latest additions in patch 2.3, not least of which is the fantastic new camera options to better appreciate the galaxy with}}

Old meme, but new to me.



Baingil, my sister, and one of my step-brothers have all been playing a lot of Skyrim the past few months so I've absorbed a fair bit about it. Bain was showing me videos of various funny mods and the bear musician one was by far my favorite.

{{ A rather excellent, and somewhat spooky, animation using Elite Dangerous and its new camera system. The story has nothing to do with the game I should add, it just uses the game for the visuals}}

{{Love this sort of thing in Elite Dangerous- first a short background- before ED was released as a game there was a novel. In this novel an old woman called Rebecca, in a hospital, spoke of something she could no longer quite remember the details of, of some mystery, some great danger that her memories had been tampered with about, out in an area of space some 12,000 light years from earth, in a place known as the Formidine Rift.

Once the game was out intrepid commanders took to the hunt to find out what was going on in the Rift. Slowly but surely these players discovered colonies- but long abandoned and some clues alluding to their 'mission' out there.

Some of these players formed groups dedicated to finding out what was going on out there, or had been going on out there, more abandoned colonies were found, more dark hints that things were very not right out here, and no clue as to what happened to the colonists.

A group of players investigating the mystery called The Children of Raxxla just made this startling and rather worrying discovery-



Something bad is coming As someone who spends a lot of time out in the black far from the bubble of civilised space where I can kick back and enjoy the view with a buckie or ten, hopefully I'll be out when it arrives! Whatever it is. }}}

Ooh-hoo-hoo! Nice, unleash the destruction!

{{With the inclusion of the new camera suite to Elite Dangerous they are having a competition for best short film or trailer made using it in game.

Heres two I like. First a trailer, the second one that rather touched me, as an explorer myself I get the odd bond you form with your ship out there in the black all alone }}}





{{Edit add- like this one too, good ending! }}

{{Robo Recall- the most fun arcade game I have played literally in years- its simply fantastic and I cant recommend it enough- just brilliant fun, fun fun!! }}

Dont play video games, but they sure look bloody good.

{{{fallout 4 and Skyrim are both getting the VR treatment. And Doom 3 too- starting to get big triple A games now. Looking good! }}}

Did anyone see any of the new games announced at E3? Few good looking ones in there. The one that seemed most interesting was Anthem. Not sure if it a game promising more than it will deliver or if it will turn out as people think it will.

I will be waiting for Destiny 2. So far, that looks more like what was originally expected from the first title.

{{{Oddly enough aside from VR stuff thing that most excited me was a remake- of the Shadow of Colossus. Normally not to fussed with remakes and just go play the original- but this is an exception as on the older generation playstations it struggled on frame rate and draw distance. And its a game which benefits hugely from the increased draw distances newer machines offer as sheer scale is part of the spectacle. Unless they screw the controls up mightily or something no reason a classic brilliant game shouldn't be even better now.



And a sequel to a classic game was the other big one caught my eye- after about a 15 year week the innovative Beyond Good and Evil is getting its sequel- hard tot ell for the cgi cutscene trailer what the game will be like- the original incorporated a lot of different styles into its narrative- but the very fact its finally coming out is noteworthy in itself.



If you never heard of it here's a trailer for the original game back in the day- still worth digging out for a retro playthrough if you never have.}}

{{Nice little vid on how to find the Voyager probe in ED- but also just a rather nice concise documentary on the probe itself. Very watchable. }}

{{{Adding some livery to my ED Asp Explorer- so if anyone is playing too I should be easy enough to spot! Registry PT-101}}

{{Had a muck about with the new camera stuff in ED. Only I was in VR at the time- this makes it a bit tricky as it only captures a sort of zoomed in centre of frame as it can't capture everything I am seeing in VR obviously- the effect is very much like trying to find the moon with a telescope- a tiny movement at your end and you get a seeming massive movement the other- the upshot is if my head moves a tiny bit it makes for a big movement in the camera. So need to experiment a bit as I think using head movement has some interesting possibilities for shots. If I can stop my head wobbling like an Indian character in a 1970's BBC sitcom that is! }}}