Lobster
The Freeman
- Joined
- May 6, 2003
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Since the release of Spacewar in 1962 the idea of two human players performing a death defying dance of shrapnel and energy in the black emptiness of space has captivated man, woman and child in all corners of the world. Even the remotest Inuit people of northern Greenland spend 98% of their free time dreaming of performing an out-of-control slip-strafe with limited fuel, and a cracked cockpit.
For a long time the genre sat proudly in the spotlight with series like X-Wing, Tie Fighter and Wing Commander scratching the primal itch for zero gravity dog fighting throughout the 90s. Come the 2000s however things changed significantly, and while there have been a few good releases over the last decade, none seem to have truly captured the feeling of cutting edge ambition that the genre once promised.
With the rise of indie development and crowd funding, things are looking up! Here are five different games aiming to -relaunch- the space combat genre in 2014.
STAR CITIZEN
The first game on the list has to be the one that typifies the entire concept. The insanely ambitious project from the creator of Wing Commander and Freespace (Chris Roberts) has great plans, and a gigantic sum of money to make them happen. Having raised over 20 million dollars in crowd funding, and with the total budget estimated to be around 35 million.
The game is hoping to create a high fidelity open world with more than 100 hand crafted star systems filled with cities and space stations, all of which will be explorable on foot using the latest version of the Cry engine.
Immersive first person animations. Fully interactive ships filled with moving parts. Highly detailed facial animation connected to player web cameras. A realistic simulated damage model, and most importantly: photo-realistic fish tanks!
Star Citizen will be a persistent online game with no subscription fee, but will feature a fully integrated singleplayer campaign that can be played cooperatively, and an outside world consisting of a vast player-driven society; with a shifting trading economy, free form combat, and dynamic balance of power.
ELITE: DANGEROUS
The original 1984 Elite pretty much invented the concept of open world games. Putting you in the pilot seat of a crappy starter ship and letting you go out in any direction you chose; seeking fame, fortune, and an inevitable grave. The game famously included millions of explorable star systems on a single floppy disk, made possible using procedural generation.
(The sequel Frontier also caused me to wear out the keyboard on my Amiga 500)
The new Elite game is finally seeing the light of day after a decade long journey of stop/start development. Much of the core concept is similar to Star Citizen, but the thing that most sets Elite: Dangerous apart is the focus on procedural generation, with the game promising 100 billion star systems created using real world data from the night sky.
Creator David Braben views Dangerous as the last Elite game that will ever need to exist; a long term project that will go from an initial release featuring a multiplayer version of everything that was available in previous Elite games. Followed by expansions that will include fully explorable planets, ship boardings, and dogfighting among the volumetric clouds of gas giants.
The competition between Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous has so far been pleasing to watch, with both communities maintaining a great deal of respect for one another. Braben and Roberts have both appeared in joint interviews discussing the death (and impending rebirth) of the genre, and the crowd funding model for both games.
There is some speculation that the strong Alpha test of Elite has led to Star Citizen postponing it's dogfight beta in order to make improvements to areas such as sound presentation. Personally I believe competition is good in a situation like this, and it raises my hopes that the two games will become stronger for it.
NO MAN'S SKY
We don't know much about this one yet, other than its from the creators of Joe Danger, and its a stylized mixture of Elite, Spore and Minecraft, with hundreds of procedurally generated planetary ecosystems, and destructible environments.
EVE: VALKYRIE
Valkyrie was originally shown as an Oculus Rift demonstration at the Eve Fanfest last year, but is now on its way to becoming a full game. It seems unclear to what extent the game will connect with the main world of Eve Online, following the fairly lackluster launch of DUST 314 on Playstation. CCP are a company of big ambitious ideas, and while they may not always achieve everything they set out to achieve, I certainly wont write anything off just yet.
So far the game looks to be pretty great to look at, and the companies commitment to visual detail in the past certainly keeps me wanting to see more.
STRIKE VECTOR
While technically not "space" combat, the physics and concept of Strike Vector are along the same lines, with ships fighting amongst atmospheric clouds, and floating industrial platforms. The makers (a small 9 person team) describe the game as a "new kind of first person shooter" essentialy trying to do for zero gravity ship combat what Quake 3 once did for the FPS. With an emphasis on high speed and responsive arcade feedback in a multiplayer team deathmatch.
I have high hopes for the new era of publisher-free space sim development, and while every game listed here could still crash and burn, the very fact that something like Star Citizen is even being attempted makes me incredibly happy.
Fly safe!
For a long time the genre sat proudly in the spotlight with series like X-Wing, Tie Fighter and Wing Commander scratching the primal itch for zero gravity dog fighting throughout the 90s. Come the 2000s however things changed significantly, and while there have been a few good releases over the last decade, none seem to have truly captured the feeling of cutting edge ambition that the genre once promised.
With the rise of indie development and crowd funding, things are looking up! Here are five different games aiming to -relaunch- the space combat genre in 2014.
STAR CITIZEN
The first game on the list has to be the one that typifies the entire concept. The insanely ambitious project from the creator of Wing Commander and Freespace (Chris Roberts) has great plans, and a gigantic sum of money to make them happen. Having raised over 20 million dollars in crowd funding, and with the total budget estimated to be around 35 million.
The game is hoping to create a high fidelity open world with more than 100 hand crafted star systems filled with cities and space stations, all of which will be explorable on foot using the latest version of the Cry engine.
Immersive first person animations. Fully interactive ships filled with moving parts. Highly detailed facial animation connected to player web cameras. A realistic simulated damage model, and most importantly: photo-realistic fish tanks!
Star Citizen will be a persistent online game with no subscription fee, but will feature a fully integrated singleplayer campaign that can be played cooperatively, and an outside world consisting of a vast player-driven society; with a shifting trading economy, free form combat, and dynamic balance of power.
ELITE: DANGEROUS
The original 1984 Elite pretty much invented the concept of open world games. Putting you in the pilot seat of a crappy starter ship and letting you go out in any direction you chose; seeking fame, fortune, and an inevitable grave. The game famously included millions of explorable star systems on a single floppy disk, made possible using procedural generation.
(The sequel Frontier also caused me to wear out the keyboard on my Amiga 500)
The new Elite game is finally seeing the light of day after a decade long journey of stop/start development. Much of the core concept is similar to Star Citizen, but the thing that most sets Elite: Dangerous apart is the focus on procedural generation, with the game promising 100 billion star systems created using real world data from the night sky.
Creator David Braben views Dangerous as the last Elite game that will ever need to exist; a long term project that will go from an initial release featuring a multiplayer version of everything that was available in previous Elite games. Followed by expansions that will include fully explorable planets, ship boardings, and dogfighting among the volumetric clouds of gas giants.
The competition between Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous has so far been pleasing to watch, with both communities maintaining a great deal of respect for one another. Braben and Roberts have both appeared in joint interviews discussing the death (and impending rebirth) of the genre, and the crowd funding model for both games.
There is some speculation that the strong Alpha test of Elite has led to Star Citizen postponing it's dogfight beta in order to make improvements to areas such as sound presentation. Personally I believe competition is good in a situation like this, and it raises my hopes that the two games will become stronger for it.
NO MAN'S SKY
We don't know much about this one yet, other than its from the creators of Joe Danger, and its a stylized mixture of Elite, Spore and Minecraft, with hundreds of procedurally generated planetary ecosystems, and destructible environments.
EVE: VALKYRIE
Valkyrie was originally shown as an Oculus Rift demonstration at the Eve Fanfest last year, but is now on its way to becoming a full game. It seems unclear to what extent the game will connect with the main world of Eve Online, following the fairly lackluster launch of DUST 314 on Playstation. CCP are a company of big ambitious ideas, and while they may not always achieve everything they set out to achieve, I certainly wont write anything off just yet.
So far the game looks to be pretty great to look at, and the companies commitment to visual detail in the past certainly keeps me wanting to see more.
STRIKE VECTOR
While technically not "space" combat, the physics and concept of Strike Vector are along the same lines, with ships fighting amongst atmospheric clouds, and floating industrial platforms. The makers (a small 9 person team) describe the game as a "new kind of first person shooter" essentialy trying to do for zero gravity ship combat what Quake 3 once did for the FPS. With an emphasis on high speed and responsive arcade feedback in a multiplayer team deathmatch.
I have high hopes for the new era of publisher-free space sim development, and while every game listed here could still crash and burn, the very fact that something like Star Citizen is even being attempted makes me incredibly happy.
Fly safe!
