Have You Played… Elite Dangerous?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I confess to not taking complaints that the Kickstarted Elite comeback dropped its promised offline mode seriously at the time. I figured a populated galaxy simply made sense – but I hadn't entirely realised that this would make the main game a cutthroat universe of crime and punishment. I don't have the kind of competitive nature (or, perhaps, simply the patience) that thrives in such a situation, and so my time in ED was so much shorter than I'd hoped. And I found myself dearly wishing there had been an offline mode.

Not that I've given up on it, however: it's just that its purpose for me has shifted.

ED remains the most striking space experience I've ever had, partly because its art and sound design are so bang-on (at least from a spaceship fantasy point of view), and partly because it arrived at such a similar time to the first two Oculus headsets. This was the game that made the VR dream real, even if I couldn't read any of the menus. I do expect to go back to it with Vives and Oculi once they're released, though I won't be getting involved in its long-haul travel, survival and politicking.

I'll just sit there, in my cockpit amongst the stars, gazing at the stars and feeling as though I'm in my dream space game – even though I'm not.