When comparing Hawken vs Elite: Dangerous, the Slant community recommends Elite: Dangerous for most people. In the question“What are the best Oculus Rift games?” Elite: Dangerous is ranked 6th while Hawken is ranked 17th. 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 Almost completely free
In Hawken, almost everything can be bought with in-game currency. Unlike most free to play games this even includes items such as cosmetic changes. While you may have to do a bit of grinding, this game can be fully played without spending a dime.
Pro No PS+ subscription required
Most PS4 games with multiplayer modes require an additional subscription called Playstation Plus. However, free games that have online multiplayer don't generally need PS+ to play online, which is a much welcomed feature for players who can't fork out money for this subscription.
Pro Fast-paced and fun action
Hawken breaks the idea that large heavy mechs equate to slow movement. You'll instead move at a brisk pace, constantly firing your machine guns and launching rockets at the enemy. The mechs are also equipped with jump-jets, allowing you to make very swift evasive maneuvers and hover above the battlefield, so it has a 3D tactics aspect unlike most FPS games. All of this makes the action really enjoyable.
Pro Encourages teamplay
In a genre saturated with lone wolf games like Call of Duty, it's nice to have a game like Hawken which makes teamwork a necessity. You'll immediately notice how disadvantageous 1v2 battles are, so you'll always look to cooperate with your teammates. From things like providing covering fire to defending each other when repairing mechs, it feels nice when you can rely on your teammates on a regular basis.
Pro Great sense of immersion
Hawken does an excellent job of making you feel like you really are in the mech. From the vibrations on the glass when you're firing off a salvo of missiles to the swaying of the cockpit when you're stomping your way through a destroyed city, there are many details that considerably add to the immersion.
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 Lack of story is a missed opportunity
A current trend in online gaming is that many games do not offer a single player campaign or any means to tell a story. Sadly Hawken continues this trend as it does very little to expand on its interesting setting, which is very disappointing.
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.