Month: March 2015

Please crash as soon as you get green position lights

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about X: Beyond The Frontier – far more than in any of the sequels – is just how laid back it is. From the non-existent flight model (your X-perimental shuttle responds better to a knackered old keyboard than it does an expensive joystick) to the sleep-inducing automated voice that greets you as you dock at a station, Egosoft’s debut space trader seems intent on lulling the player into a semi-conscious state – perhaps to prepare pilots for what can be a fairly ponderous journey.

Unfortunately it’s when you are at your most relaxed that you are most in danger. I refer of course to perils of the siren-like docking music, which acts as a kind of aural pillow upon which you can rest your trade-addled mind. In concert with the hypnotic green “position lights” the game’s Blade Runner-inspired OST has caused me to collide with many a station entrance on account of being too catatonic to slow down. On the plus side, pulling out or managing to get your speed down in the nick of time can be a genuine thrill. Given how secondary combat is to the game, perhaps it’s just as well.

Here’s how it should be done:

A dangerous journey to Elite starts here

Despite the many costly late nights invested in Elite: Dangerous over the last few weeks, it was only in the early hours, after delivering another golden cargo to the tea-starved settlements of Aiabiko, that I could at last afford a Cobra Mk. III. Not my first, I should add, but given how quickly that fated vessel left my possession – disintegrating barely a minute into its maiden voyage  – you’ll forgive me for not counting it.

As well as being the most iconic ship in the game, the Cobra is for me the most desirable, on account of the more numerous (and less punishing) late nights spent flying its wireframe predecessor as a starry-eyed teenager. Needless to say, having one of these beauties in the hangar for the first-ish time in three decades makes me happier than any game inventory has managed in many a year.

In the original Elite, of course, the Cobra was the only ship you could hope to fly, which was perfectly fine as it was just as capable a combat vessel as it was at shifting narcotics. In Elite: Dangerous it’s every bit as versatile as it’s 1984-model – more so given the fitting options – but with a range of available hulls better suited to specific roles, the old workhorse has effectively been relegated to stopgap status. It’s now the old banger you pootle around in once you’ve nailed the fundamentals; useful only until you decide on where you’re going in life and can afford something better suited to getting you there faster.

The thing is, being something of an old wreck myself, I’m loathed to scrap a ship I’ve waited almost 30 years to reacquire. Which is why I’m going to try to ascend through the various Elite rankings old school, sticking to the Cobra Mk. III for as long as I can. Since time isn’t an issue (well, aside from the onset of old age), the hope is I can earn my golden wings without having to invest in the jump range of the Asp, the firepower of a Vulture or the cargo bay of a Type-9. It will be a long and dangerous journey, I’m sure, but it’s one I’m determined to stick with for as long as my dwindling free time allows, or until curiosity gets the better of me.

I give myself a week.

dockingnewcobra

Must try harder

It’s time to do more with this little blog than indulge my velleity, so I’ve decided to give my infrequent adventures in games writing a bit of focus by concentrating on the games that seem to take up all my spare time – spacey ones.

As previously mentioned I’ve been playing a fair bit of Elite Dangerous over the last year, but over the last couple of weeks things have started falling into place in terms of my ambitions and interest in the game.

At the same time, in an effort to put an old Vista laptop to some use, I’ve been enjoying starting from scratch in the very first X game. I’m not sure if it’ll hold my interest in quite the same way as it did when I first reviewed it for PC Zone (back in the wilderness years of space gaming), but I’ve already gotten further on this second attempt than I ever managed first time in any of the sequels.

xbtf1