- Best Pokemon VR Games - August 15, 2022
- Beat It!: Best Custom Beat Saber Songs - August 4, 2022
- Best VR Steering Wheels Guide - June 6, 2022
Elite: Dangerous and Everspace are two of the most popular and thrilling VR space-shooter experiences. Both games have similar elements, such as flying your ship through space, completing quests, and fighting enemies. If you’re deciding between purchasing one of the two games, you’re wondering what the major dissimilarities and similarities are when comparing Elite Dangerous VR VS Everspace VR. If so, then this is the article for you. In the article, I will discuss the major differences between the two and which of the two games is better, in my opinion.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Bottom Line Up Front
There are inherent differences between Elite: Dangerous VR and Everspace VR. Each game focuses on different aspects of gameplay and mechanics.
The differences lie largely in the type of user experience the games aim for. This includes a difference in graphics, spaceship gameplay mechanics, map sizes, and multiplayer gameplay.
I’m going to discuss these differences in detail in the subsequent sections and cover a wide range of criteria that sets the two games apart from each other. The genre of the games may, at first glance, make them feel similar, however, there are enough nuanced differences between the two.
Key Differences Between the Two
- Elite: Dangerous is a game that focuses on being a simulator for a spaceship experience, Whereas Everspace focuses on a more visually striking experience.
- Elite: Dangerous focuses on the expansive galaxy and the multiplayer possibilities of running into other users, who may even battle you, Whereas the battle mechanics on Everspace are more monotonous and mundane.
- Elite: Dangerous focuses on the open-world aspect of the game, Whereas Everspace is a game that places its focus on a character-driven storyline with several missions, quests, side quests, and bounty hunting options for you to do in space.
There are more nuanced differences between the two games that I will discuss in the subsequent section. While the games have a lot of similarities to space shooters, they have a very different take on the genre.
Elite: Dangerous VR vs. Everspace VR
Gameplay and Mechanics
Elite: Dangerous VR
Elite: Dangerous focuses on simulating the experience of an actual spaceship. The game does a great job of making the task of starting and maintaining a spaceship seem as close to reality as possible. You need to run all the in-flight checks constantly before and after taking flight. You will also be required to carefully navigate the vast star systems as you find your way around the Milky Way Galaxy.
Elite: Dangerous also offers a lot of options for what you can do when you’re in space. You get a set amount of money at the start, which you can choose to funnel into your exploits for trading space goods, fighting enemies, collecting materials, or completing quests.
Everspace VR
Everspace VR is a game that focuses its gameplay on the graphics and visual aspects of space travel. It also has a more gripping story mode. There is an excellent narrative at the base of most quests and main storyline events in the game. The characters are deep and help make the story very gripping.
Everspace largely focuses its mechanics on shooting. Unfortunately, the great shooting mechanics are for enough, since the fighting gameplay is very mundane. There is no variation in the enemies and how they battle, making the shooting feel like a series of low-level battles at the start of a Pokémon game.
Everspace punishes players brutally for dying in the game, which is another thing it does completely differently from Elite: Dangerous. It’s not easy to die, for sure. The consistent combat scenarios and mechanics ensure that once you’ve climbed the learning curve, you’ll be able to hold your own. However, if you die, you’re pushed right back to the starting line, akin to a game of snakes and ladders gone wrong. You do get to keep upgrades and unlocks when you’re pushed back, though.
Graphics, Visuals, and Audio
Elite: Dangerous VR
Elite: Dangerous has incredible visuals. The rendering isn’t top-notch, but there is certainly nothing wrong with it. What will leave you stunned is the scale of the planets, how realistic other space bodies look, and how true to their scale they are. Unfortunately, because of the limited movement speed of your craft, this can feel like you’re moving extremely slowly as you approach a large celestial body. This particular bit makes traveling in the game sometimes feel like a crawl.
The audio in this game, however, is incredible. Since you spend most of your time inside the cockpit and are surrounded by the sounds of the ship, you’d expect the audio experience to be immersive. You will not be disappointed. The game does its best to replicate the sounds from inside a spaceship.
Everspace VR
Everspace VR is visually more stunning than Elite: Dangerous. There is a bigger focus on rendering. Light refraction, flares, and textures. The planets render as the correct size in this game as well. However, you can’t spot the polygons used to construct them as easily, and it’s clear that the textures are a lot sharper and more detailed on Everspace. Since some aspects of the game are a little mundane, you can always look around to see the stunning visuals. This is something that I feel Everspace is a clear winner in. Elite: Dangerous places more of its focus on the scale and size of the game, but the rendering isn’t fantastic, with polygons and texture feeling like something out of a PS3 game.
The audio on Everspace is not lacking by any means. It’s an above-average audio experience. The combat sounds and mixing are great. However, when you’re forced to listen to the same types of sounds for the same activity over the span of the entire game, they tend to grow very annoying. That, however, says nothing about the quality of the audio, which is well above average. However, it is not in the same league as Elite: Dangerous VR, which is very clear in the audio department due to its surround sound and environment-focused sound mixing.
Controls and Combat
Elite: Dangerous VR
Elite: Dangerous has an interesting set of controls. To a large extent, you can control how your ship moves on every single axis. As I’ve stated before, ships move on jet propulsion (nobody knows why) in this game. This means that you move a couple of hundred meters every second, or close to that.
The propulsion-based movement turns combat into a lot of fun. You can get into proper dogfights like Word War-era planes. Trying to get behind the ship you’re fighting with the moves you pull is extremely fun. Moreover, it’s a fantastic way to figure out rolling and dodging in the game. This means a lot of combat is dependent on your tactics as a pilot rather than just your shooting skills. You must tactically anticipate and intercept your opponent’s moves to get the higher ground and get behind them.
Controls on the game are not complex. It’s the mechanics of some things like flight checks that remain the complex part of the game. The VR controllers on all headsets will be able to accommodate the relatively simple controls that the game employs.
Everspace VR
Everspace has very interactive controls, allowing for boosting the ship, movement based on jets, and, most importantly, strafing. Strafing involves moving your ship laterally without moving forward. This, in my opinion, is the most important control in the whole game, especially where combat is concerned.
Everspace is very shooting-focused. It’s a game that prides itself on a simple and enjoyable shooting mechanism. You have a crosshair, where you will have to keep a target long enough to lock on to them. You also will have to move around and dodge the surrounding enemies as well. Shooting requires you to aim and fire your guns all while managing to not get hit. The ship’s controls remain the same as they do in flight. This means that strafing is extremely important for dodging. However, it will have to be coupled skilfully with propulsion in order for you actually to be able to beat enemies.
The controls on Everspace, much like Elite: Dangerous, are not complex by any means. If you have two hands and two VR controllers, you’ll comfortably see your way through the game. It is best to have controllers with analogs for the in-flight controls, particularly for strafing.
Size, Scope, and Story
Elite: Dangerous VR
Elite: Dangerous is a massive game. Though the game classifies itself as a sandbox, the sandbox in question comprises the entire Milky Way Galaxy, which means all 400-billion star systems. That basically makes it much wider in scope than most open-world games. The expanse and its sheer size will make you shudder at times in the vast openness of space. This is especially evident when you’re alone in a star system, exploring. Since planets and bodies are built to scale, so is the galaxy. This means that travel times, even at multiple times the speed of light, are still minutes long. You can watch the destination you’ve locked on creep closer and closer with every passing second.
In the game, you can take up trading, combating, or exploring. Trading as an activity includes objectives to find materials and sell or buy them to maximize your profit. Combat can arise at any point with other users or NPCs that have to be found for a quest. You may be called upon to essentially bounty hunt an NPC in a different sector of the galaxy. Lastly, exploration is the free-roaming option available to you at all times. You don’t have to do it, but you can. And it is a lot of fun, given the size of the map in the game.
The story isn’t really a core campaign that you can play. Due to the sheer size of the game, it focuses more on the exploration and the stations that you can dock into to pick up different things to do. There’s no series of main quests or side quests to follow in the game, and all things that you do will be equally important from your perspective. This has an upside and downsides. The clear upside is the absolute freedom users have regarding what they want to focus on and how they want to build themselves in the game. The downside is that if you don’t have direction after one point, the game can feel slow and boring, which may make it a tough job to play it regularly.
Everspace VR
Everspace is a much smaller game in comparison. However, viewed in isolation, the game isn’t small at all. It has roughly ten sectors with multiple maps and levels in each that need to be progressed through in order for the player to be able to proceed to the subsequent sector.
Everspace makes it a point to drive the game through the story. The main quests are fun, and there is a gripping backstory to the game, along with the characters that have some depth to them. There are also enough side missions, exploration opportunities, battles, and hunts that you can otherwise fill your time with. When you’re docked at a station in space, you can select what you want to do in a game. If you want to progress through the sectors and levels, you have to abide by the main story completion at least.
Multiplayer Opportunities
Elite: Dangerous
Elite: Dangerous is actively multiplayer. This means that there are always users in the galaxy. You may or may not run into them depending on how popular of a sector you’re in. Even if you’re in an unpopular sector in the game, it’s always thrilling to see another player-controlled ship in the vicinity. However, beware, as players are free to attack each other. The only downside to the multiplayer aspect of Elite: Dangerous is that players are unable to share rewards and collaborate for missions. There are only battling opportunities but no way to be able to team up or go against multiple players or to take part in reward-seeking, like in GTA.
Everspace VR
Everspace, unfortunately, doesn’t have any multiplayer opportunities. The game is entirely focused on the single-player experience, and there is no scope for interaction between players in different regions.
Which is Better?
Winner: Elite: Dangerous VR
This question is very subjective. It all depends on what you want as a player.
If you’re someone who values the expansive, open-world nature of space and the accurate depiction of your galaxy, you will find Elite: Dangerous far more thrilling. However, there isn’t a gripping story to accompany all the glamour of space. To counter that, however, there is a much more interactive, immersive, and serious experience when flying your ship and managing the ship itself, including in-flight and pre-flight checks.
On the other hand, if you value visuals and detailed textures, there is no game better than Everspace. The details are stunning, and while scales and the map aren’t meant to be realistic, the way celestial bodies are designed in the game surely is. Moreover, if you’re driven by a game with a compelling story, then Everspace is the one to go for, as there is a deeper story to the game with gripping characters.
I personally prefer the vast expanse of the Elite: Dangerous VR game. Additionally, the combat that isn’t mundane also makes a big impact on my decision to pick it as a winner. Moreover, multiplayer support is very important to me since I play most games with friends online. This makes Elite: Dangerous a clear winner, at least in my book.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Question: Does Everspace VR Have Multiplayer?
Answer: No. Everspace VR doesn’t presently have multiplayer support. It is also unlikely to get it in the future. However, we could see the sequel of the game (Everspace 2) get multiplayer support, in all probability.
Question: Is Everspace VR an Open-world Game?
Answer: Yes, and no. Basically, you will have to navigate through the levels and the sectors by completing the core storyline in order to unlock all the sectors. Once you’ve moved through these and completed enough elements of the story, you will be able to treat the game as close to open-world type as you want, with the whole expanse of the map available to you.
Question: Is the Elite: Dangerous VR Map Based on the Real Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Yes! Elite: Dangerous VR’s map is modeled on the exact Milky Way Galaxy as we know it. This includes all of the stars, nebulae, and star systems that we know of through astronomy and science. Moreover, the game also generates starts and systems to add to the galaxy in spots in order to help the game grow.
Conclusion
There are many similarities between Elite: Dangerous VR and Everspace VR. Both games focus on deep space with immersive controls for handling and flying ships, along with a focus on combat and exploration.
However, the games also have inherent differences. Elite: Dangerous focuses on the accuracy and expanse of space, along with intuitive battle controls and realistic spaceship mechanics.
Everspace, on the other hand, focuses on a gripping story, interesting characters, and visuals that are outrightly stunning.
I personally prefer Elite: Dangerous because it’s a lot more exploration, and the combat is not monotonous (which is what combat on Everspace can sometimes feel like.) However, it’s certain that whatever game you choose out of these will not disappoint you. These are undoubtedly two of the best space shooter/exploration games on the market for VR users.
Happy exploration!
Continue reading: