Elite Dangerous

Elite Dangerous is a space adventure, trading and combat simulation game and the fourth game in the Elite series, first of which created the genre. The genre was very popular in the 90s but has been quite dormant since then and has only recently started to get back into popularity.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Gorgeous visuals
 * 2) Amazing sound design
 * 3) Great soundtrack.
 * 4) Fully Newtonian physics, allowing the players to experience true space-flight, rather than feeling like you are flying an aircraft in space like in most sci-fi games.
 * 5) Highly immersive.
 * 6) High levels of scientific accuracy. Planets and moons have realistic distances and move around their orbits. Space stations generate gravity through rotation. Ships are designed to be aerodynamic so they could be realistically used both in and out of atmospheres.
 * 7) The entirety of Milky Way is explorable, though most of the activity is set within couple hundred light-years from Earth, distance which is covered relatively fast due to the faster-than-light travel in the game.
 * 8) Over 30 flyable ships and increasing, all of which look great. From the simple Sidewinder you start in, to the mighty Anaconda, there's a ship to suit your playstyle.
 * 9) Ships come in several types and sizes from a simple fighter or freigther to a 150 meter long warship.
 * 10) Ships are fully customizable in terms of weapons and internal systems and there is a big selection of weapons, including lasers, multi-cannons, railguns, missiles, plasma accelerators etc.
 * 11) Some ships support multi-crew, allowing players to act as gunners and ship-launched fighter pilots aboard other players ships. This also allows newer players to experience later-game ships long before they get to acquire them for themselves.
 * 12) Aliens feel truly alien.
 * 13) Planets can be landed on and explored with a surface reconnaissence vehicle. Currently only planets without an atmosphere however.
 * 14) Planets are given highly detailed descriptions on what they are like, length of day, diameter, temperature, etc.
 * 15) The player has freedom to be what they want, be it bounty hunter, trader, explorer, miner, pirate and so on.
 * 16) Participating in a big space battle can feel pretty epic.
 * 17) The universe is interesting and features no real good and evil factions
 * 18) The time and story in the game advance in real-time, making it quite unique regarding it's story.
 * 19) The players can influence the lore of the game. Notable examples of this include things such as the Distant Worlds Expedition and the Anaconda Graveyard.
 * 20) Regularly updated game with massive potential.
 * 21) A friendly community. For example, there is a group known as the Fuel Rats dedicated to bringing fuel to players who ran out.
 * 22) Supports VR and is unarguably one of the greatest VR experiences available.
 * 23) A third party application called Voice Attack gives your ship an AI which you can talk to and even have them operate certain ship functions. Many of the available AI:s are voiced by famous sci-fi actors, such as Brent Spiner, Marina Sirtis, William Shatner and John De Lancie of Star Trek fame.
 * 24) Has helped revive a long dormant genre.
 * 25) Odyssey expansion has been announced for 2021, which will finally allow the players to leave their ship and move around on foot and engage in FPS combat.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game can feel pretty grindy, as the late-game ships require massive amounts of money. Thinking about the quickest ways to get late-game ships or acquiring every ship in the game can ruin the experience so its adviced not to do so. Engineers are the same way, as you have to find specific materials to upgrade your modules with, and before you can even access them, you have to complete a very specific task, which ranges from providing a certain commodity to increasing your reputation with a certain faction, or getting a certain number of Bounty or Combat Bond Vouchers (which can be very hazardous if your ship isn't kitted out for combat). This is balanced out by the fact that Engineer upgrades are just that, and will make your ship better than ever. And with a number of options for each module, you can optimize your ships for certain roles and situations. Grind has been significantly toned down as of 2020 however.
 * 2) Support for the console versions has been discontinued in March 2022, with no plans to bring any content to them anymore, that also includes the Odyssey expansion.
 * 3) A lot of major features are yet to be implemented in the game. These include the ability to walk around or outside the ship and the ability to land on planets with atmospheres and large population centers. These are planned features however, currently scheduled for early 2021.
 * 4) Some players tend to just gank newer players with bigger ships. As the player can play in solo mode, this deters some players from playing in open play with other players.
 * 5) Reverberating cascade torpedoes are stupidly overpowered, which basically disable even the strongest shields in one or two hits. As torpedoes can be carried in very limited quantities, meaning that a ship equipped with them quickly runs out of ammo, they have little purpose other than griefing, making their inclusion in the game somewhat stupid.
 * 6) New features in updates tend to often be very combat-oriented, neglecting players who prefer to engage in other activities like trading, smuggling, mining, and exploring.
 * 7) The game does feature microtransactions but they can also be acquired by an in-game currency named ARX, though there is a weekly limit on how much ARX can be acquired. Fortunately, all the microtransactions are purely cosmetic.
 * 8) Hutton Orbital. That is all.