When comparing Unturned vs Elite: Dangerous, the Slant community recommends Elite: Dangerous for most people. In the question“What are the best HTC Vive games?” Elite: Dangerous is ranked 1st while Unturned is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Elite: Dangerous is:
When Elite Dangerous come out, development won't stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various game play elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. For example, although planetary landings aren't going to be available until a later update, the engine has been designed to be able to support going from lightyears away to meters away.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Plenty of things to do in-game, including combat, crafting, and exploring
The game includes combat, a crafting system, a housing system, lots of items, and varied landscapes to explore. Taken together, there’s plenty to keep you busy.
Pro Fair F2P model where no single person has a false advantage over anyone else
The game’s free-to-play model allows anyone to play free of charge; those who are willing to spend $5 get access to a separate server that grants double experience. So while it is not pay-to-win, spending some money will increase how quickly you can advance in the game.
Pro Active developer who listens to their community
Unturned is developed by Nelson Sexton. He is very active and always listens to feedback from the player community. He is constantly updating the beta; check the community hub for more info.
Pro Selection of weapons allows anyone to find something they enjoy using
The game includes a number of guns and melee weapons, giving the player plenty of choice as to how they would like to attack.
Pro Works great on low-end hardware
The game runs well on older hardware because it does not have very advanced graphics. This makes it compatible with many low spec systems.
Pro Easily mod or add custom maps through Steam Workshop
With Steam Workshop support players can create your own custom maps and mods as well as use others, thus giving the player never ending amounts of extras for the game.
Pro PvP winds up being very tense as the resources in the game are very limited
Scarce resources lead players to compete ruthlessly. This creates a scenario where it is all of nothing, show no weakness, give no benefit.
Pro Fun and intuitive crafting system allows the player to explore tons of combinations of items
The crafting system can be used to easily and intuitively make hundreds of items. Combine two sheets of metal to make a saw, combine two sticks and a nail to make an arrow. Basically you can play around and test what kind of combination make what items, which is fun in and of itself.
Pro Well made maps where each is designed with purpose
Unturned is slightly different from other open world survival games, because it doesn't use randomly generated worlds. This actually is a pro, because the existing maps are very well made, well thought out, and overall having better design choices for worlds than say, Minecraft, Terraria, or 7 Days to Die.
Pro Built with future expansion in mind
When Elite Dangerous come out, development won't stop. To build a game with the huge scope of Elite Dangerous, not all of it can be done at once, so the developers have adopted an approach of incremental improvement. Various game play elements are being designed as a foundation for later features. For example, although planetary landings aren't going to be available until a later update, the engine has been designed to be able to support going from lightyears away to meters away.
Pro Exploration at every level of detail
Full exploration of the galaxy is planned, allowing you to be able to jump from star system to star system, and fly around within a solar system from planet to planet, eventually going all the way down to a planet's surface at a 1:1 scale in a later update. Planetary landings will require a lot of details to be developed and designed, but you can still see the level of detail shift in action when flying into a planet's rings, where getting close enough show the individual asteroids within, which you can then interact with through mining, or by having a battle among them.
Pro Very realistic representation of space & star systems
Elite Dangerous uses publicly available real world star maps that we have of the Milky Way consisting of 150,000 star systems. Although in the current beta, full access to the entire galaxy is limited, in the final game, you will be able to visit any of the 400 billion stars in our galaxy on a 1:1 scale. Stars that we do know of are properly mapped in place and are of the correct type given the information we have about them. Stars we haven't collected data on are procedurally generated which allows you to explore any of the 400 billion of them.
Star systems are intelligently simulated using the "Star Forge", a generator that simulates the creation of a star system forming from its nebular cloud to determine what celestial bodies appear and what orbits they have. This feature leads to many varied and unique star systems possibly with planets that can co-orbit around each other, or with binary star systems, and infinitely more possibilities.
Pro Great Oculus Rift integration
Elite Dangerous has very good integration with the Oculus Rift thanks to its cockpit view only gameplay philosophy. All ship UIs are part of displays that appear on each side of you that appear when you turn your head, so accessing the navigation or ship menus happens seamlessly just by looking in their direction. The game also uses the direction you are looking in for targeting, so your lock on target is whatever you're head is pointing at.
By sitting in the cockpit of a ship, you are given a stationary frame of reference that helps prevent motion sickness associated with movement in game when you aren't actually moving.
Cons
Con Childish community
Many of the community-run servers are managed by immature administrators who can make the game unbearable.
Con Way too easy
You can literally leash (mmo term) a zombie and kill it without taking damage. How can you take this game seriously?
Con Poor graphics
Overall graphics of the game have been improved greatly over time, but still it looks like Minecraft.
Con In early access
The game is not yet officially completed, which means that it may still contain bugs, and that features may change or be removed before final publishing.
Con Really complicated to learn
Looking up faqs and trade routes from first hand users will be the norm for figuring out many aspects of Elite: Dangerous. On top of this notes will have to be taken, which is made more difficult by the fact the game does not support in game not taking. So a pad and paper is recommended to remember all of the minutia of the game.
Con Boring
It is more a simulation than a combat game.
Con Launcher issues
I bought the game on multiple stores and were never happy how the laucher and the account linking worked.
Con "Mile Wide and an Inch Deep"
The game has a serious problem with depth and requires the user to repeat the same few fun actions over and over again. The world is massive and beautiful but feels empty. The game gets stale quickly despite being visually stunning.