Between trying to gain information, you're free to explore, take on missions, trade between planets, indulge in a little harmful piracy or harmless piracy and generally get into trouble. Luckily, he left him a prototype space-ship, the Darkstar One. (Or I may be biased, because the lead character's name is pronounced identically to mine, which is always good for a few giggles.)ĭarktstar One is an Elite Clone positioning you as a freshly trained flight recruit who's trying to find out who offed his dear old Pa. The point being: Elite, for all its scale, action and variety, was a simple game. This level of Asteroids is impossible.īut with Darkstar One, I'm away, in a far away galaxy shooting pirates who are quite near, actually. I Realllllly couldn't be bothered wrestling with it. Compare to when I started playing X3 and I was actually glad that my 3D card was coughing blood while running it so I could lob it back at Kristan with a "Sorry, chum" note attached. Now, Darkstar One is far from a perfect game, but it immediately excited and engaged me in a way that no recent other Elite clone managed.
What's different about Elite Clones? They're too different. What's different about Elite Clones?Īfter about four hours with Darkstar One an idea struck me. So maybe times have just changed? It's a game which may have worked once, but no more - but then look at (say) Civilzation, which, generation after generation, gains a new fanbase and reclaims the centre. But all of these are peripheral concerns, outside the main thrust of the culture. Hell: there's the ever-growing community of Eve Online who've decided to retreat from the real-world into a universe where laser death lights the heavens (with a side-order of mining). Reading this they'll be veterans of Frontier or Privateer or X: Beyond the Frontier who still bear the scars in their personal history, scabby months in a darkened room in an uncomfortable seat saving the universe and making enormous profits. What it means is a game which immediately and obviously dominates the gaming landscape and consumes the social life of pretty much everyone.Ĭlearly, the Elite successors that have appeared have had localised effects. We got that when Frontier appeared, and that wasn't the next Elite in the way we're currently yabbering about. Here's a thought for you: we've been waiting for the next Elite for over twenty years now.
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