Elite Dangerous – Commander Burro grows more and more excited…

OK, so I’m on record as being an elite fan but also as being nervous about the new version due out early this year because of my worry it will be a griefing haven. Neither of these facts has changed but it’s fair to say that now that Frontier Developments have released a very highly polished Alpha to the world I’m a hell of a lot more excited about this game than I was a month or so ago.

The Alpha was (and is) only open to the people who backed the kickstarter but FD haave beeen very canny in not trying to block the alpha testers/players from filming and releasing their experiences meaning that YouTube has been flooded with some very impressive footage to whet the appetite of all us non-alpha backers. The first phase of alpha testing is now closed with more coming before they go to an open beta (by open, you still have to pre-order the game from their store) and then eventually in a public Gaamma period much like the way Minecraft operated.

I’m not in a position to purchase access to either the alpha tests or the beta tests but I’m not irked by that as I’m saving up for a joystick & throttle combo to play the game with so early access wouldn’t suit me anyway. Plus there is still the matter of whether or not I’ll like the game being a mulitplayer game or not – as I said in the griefing post, if FD create a world where dicks can flourish then I’m not going to shell out my limited funds for it. In all honesty I don’t think they will allow this to happen but I still want to read some post-launch reviews before I drop £35 for the game and the same again for a joystick.

In the meantime I’ve been scouring YouTube for cool videos to get me in the mood for some long overdue space combat in my gaming life. Of course Elite is much more than combat, but a space trading game alone would be as due as ditch water so a nice dollop of exciting pew pew is going to be a must and it looks like ED is going to deliver in spades!

Scott Manley has a useful introduction here:

And then later he has an very exciting time in a big old space battle here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKAcgx-ueQ

Here, Kroy Mortlach has three brilliant ‘back to basics’ videos that really explain how to get your ship controls up and running from scratch:

And finally, for today at least, Isinona proves his/her amazing piloting skills why flying and fighting with the fly-by-wire flight assist computer turned off. After seeing these videos, I want to fly like this more than anything!

So there you have the pick of my videos of the Elite Dangerous Alpha test. I would dearly love to be part of it but there’s no way I can afford to drop money on games any more (tip – if you want to be cash rich, be kid poor) so these videos are the closest I’ll get to flying my own Cobra Mk3 until the game is released in a few months. I’m all about the vicarious thrills, me 😉