The World Next Door & Elite Dangerous Free On Epic

Warning: The following article may contain linked videos with mild to strong language that some readers may find distressing. The reader’s discretion is advised.

On Monday, I said “It’s a great day for America, everybody!” in the Prime Gaming article where I spoke of space horror scorpions. I also talked of a game made so poorly the publisher and developer apologized for its release. Tuesday, Zoë went on about the hoax hostage situation at Ubisoft Montreal last Friday, and I wrote about a Lovecraft-inspired non-horror game that looks pretty and leaked. Epic Games’ Lawyers are now Men at Work and going to the land down under. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will dine in Valhalla with its victorious launch. Disintegration‘s multiplayer fell over and died after five months. The Game Awards gave nods to somethings not released this past year and some meh games. Then, to top off a news-heavy week, Ubisoft had to reshuffle like the Catholic church.

Once again I can talk about the free games on the Epic Games Store that I haven’t played this week. However, this is not for lack of trying, I’ve just had every issue under the sun thrown at me. First I was told by Epic that I wasn’t allowed to download things because I didn’t have permission to access my hard drives or something. When that was fixed for Elite Dangerous I couldn’t cue a second download for The World Next Door. After about a 20GB download over a couple of hours, Elite needed to update, which took a while for Epic to notice and download said update. Did it work after that? NOPE!

I’m sitting just over an hour before this article goes out, and I’ve been unable to get Elite Dangerous to fully load into the main menu for over 6-8 hours. I’ve checked for updates, I’ve gone around the bend, and I’ve attempted everything to fix it. Nothing! It will load the legal bit with the pretty logo and “Elite 1984-2020…” and so on, but just as it hits that main menu, “The game failed to communicate with the authentication server. Please check your internet connection and try again in a few minutes.” Well, here is a hint to the authenticity: you are running through Epic and Frontier’s launchers, and the PC is receiving and sending out information packets for emails and messaging services.

Yes, I might be slightly annoyed about all of this because I actually wanted to play a bit of Elite Dangerous this week. I like space, it is almost an empty vacuum and there are 100% fewer people out there, I love it! I may have also been practicing my Jean-Luc Picard impressions all week. It was after UpIsNotJump’s “Elite Dangerous VR Is An Absolute Nightmare” & “Elite Dangerous Is Still A Nightmare” videos along with the Zero Punctuation review of it that made me want to play it. Space trucking? I’ve played enough Euro Truck Sim 2 to enjoy the freedom of open space, take me with you.

As for the trouble with The World Next Door, those are all related to Elite Dangerous. I spent many many hours yelling, swearing, crying, and swearing. In fact, I spent far too much time trying to get Elite to work that I’d lost track of time and we’re now about an hour before this article needs to go up and I’m still writing it. I’m also sure, if this were a video I’d do that whole live-action cut-away that they’d have in cartoons where I’m sat at my desk awkwardly typing this out as you read it.

Speaking of cartoons, that’s roughly what I called The World Next Door last week at the end of the article. An anime teen drama akin to The CW’s teen drama/poorly written series Riverdale, but this time it is a match-three puzzler. Given I’ve already not been too flattering towards it, I’m sure you’d realize I wasn’t looking forward to that as much as empty space. I wonder why? If you like masquerade ball masks, teen drama, and match-three puzzles, I could see you loving that more than the infinite cold darkness of space.

Elite Dangerous and The World Next Door are available for free all this week, and will be disappearing on the morning of the 26th of November. Also free, though seemingly not for a limited time is Bus Simulator 18, which is down by Sludge Life, Thumbleweek Park, and 3 Out Of 10 season one. If space seems like too much trouble, go drive a bus. Though next week, I’ll be back to my usual ways of talking about something I do not understand. MudRunner will be free. Oh great, me talking about cars and how they work, what could go wrong?