Differences Between Space Sims
They’re different. Or are they?
Well, yes and no. Of course one is a finished game in some senses, the other is still a pre-alpha, but looking beyond that, there are a lot of overlaps or intended overlaps. Elite of course takes the approach that it has always taken (a huge, procedurally generated game world) while Star Citizen (for the moment) is primarily hand crafted, although they are working on procedural generation too of course. However, in terms of similarities, there are quite a few:
- Flying spaceships.
- Newtonian physics.
- Missions
- Credits
- Factions
Let’s face it, a lot of the games features overlap, but they both feel as different from one another as their predecessors ever did, perhaps more so. This leads me to a bit of a conundrum. Given that I always preferred one series of games over the other, how to remain impartial since every time I play one I’m mentally comparing it to the other. Ultimately it’s a difficult task for me, but I’m determined to give it a bash. If you feel I’ve been unfair, I’m sure you’ll let me know in the comments J
Flight Model/Controls
Some people are pitch and yawers, others are pitch and rollers, the better ones vary their technique depending on the circumstances and here’s my first issue. Yaw in E:D is virtually useless. If you’ve been following the game on PC, you likely know this already. Well guess what, the lack of “yawability” was of course carried over in the port to XB1. I’m not going to get into a “flight model x is better than flight model y” discussion here, (I’ll leave that to you guys in the comments section) but if you like the ability to choose whether you pitch and roll or just yaw to turn, or even if you’re just a yaw or nothing kind of guy/gal, this still may not be the game for you.
Some aren’t bothered either way and can easily adapt to whatever the game they’re playing allows. Personally I’m probably a 60-40 (in favour of pitch/yaw) guy so I can deal with it, but for those like me it’ll be an annoying itch that you just can’t quite reach to scratch.
The wider control layout however is where the game starts to suffer. As is ever the case with any kind of flight simulation game if it wants to take a semi-serious stab at a simulation experience, you’ll find yourself contorting your hands into an odd mixture of combo button presses to achieve a variety of given outcomes. This is obviously not Frontier’s fault given the limitations of the standard console controller, but coming from PC with a HOTAS, it’s a compromise and from my perspective, a big one.
The simple fact is, flight is a complicated subject. Any game which wants to get remotely involved in it is going to have a lot of controls associated with it. Newtonian spaceflight makes things even more complex. I’m not going to turn this into an Elite vs. Star Citizen flight model discussion but the Elite model is a slightly simpler one which in all honesty probably makes it better suited to consoles than Star Citizen. However I still feel that there is just too much at hand to reasonably be able to control with an Xbox One controller. Even on a PC with a full on HOTAS, part of me still yearns for pedals. Quite simply, that level of control will never come from a console controller.
Driving games have long had wheels and pedals on consoles but the space flight simulator is only a relatively recent resurgent gaming genre. It’s possible we’ll see a HOTAS come to a console at some point in time but the usual questions of what, when and how much are unknown. With the arrival of Elite on the XB1, I think this nudges the likelihood a touch higher, ultimately it will depend on the success of the game on the platform as well as the arrival of other high profile games of the genre for the beancounters at Saitek/Thrustmaster/CH to see if it makes sense for them to invest time and money into working with Microsoft and Sony.
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