PlayStation Plus Free Game Has Nearly 1,000 Hours Of Content, Unfathomably Large Open World

5 days ago 13

Nicholas Becher is a gaming journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from FAU. With extensive experience playing video games, he covers all forms of gaming content at Screen Rant, from breaking news to the latest fan theories. Most-played games range from Clair Obscur to Civ to Elden Ring to Halo 2 and beyond.

PlayStation Plus has a massive library of games that range across all the most popular genres, offering subscribers new games in the catalog constantly throughout the year. With so many great games to choose from, even some of the biggest games out there can slip past your radar.

PlayStation Plus currently has an absolutely unreal-sized free game with nearly 1,000 hours of content, and players have likely been sleeping on it for years (via PlayStation). Elite Dangerous is touted as the definitive multiplayer space exploration experience, allowing players to venture into "the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions."

This PlayStation Plus Game Is Stupidly Big

Despite it being over a decade since Elite Dangerous was first released, the game remains one of the largest and most ambitious space exploration games out there. Before newer massive space games like No Man's Sky or Star Citizen were released, Elite Dangerous was setting the bar for what's possible in terms of open-world exploration.

Elite Dangerous traces its origins back to the groundbreaking 1984 game Elite. The original Elite was revolutionary for its time, combining wireframe 3D graphics, open-ended gameplay, and a procedurally generated universe that allowed players to trade, fight, explore, or pirate freely. The emphasis on free exploration and its massive scale laid the foundation for the space simulation genre.

Released in 2014, Elite Dangerous features a 1:1 recreation of the Milky Way galaxy, online multiplayer integration, and ongoing expansion. It serves as both a sequel and a reimagining of one of gaming’s most influential space simulation projects, and you can play it for free on PlayStation Plus now.

Elite Dangerous Offers Up Hundreds Of Hours Of Play

An astronaut looking over a desert planet at sunset from Elite Dangerous.

If you're looking for a massive open-world space exploration game akin to No Man's Sky but with a realistic Milky Way galaxy to take on instead, Elite Dangerous is a must-play entry in the PS Plus catalog. Elite Dangerous comes highly recommended among critics, with a Metacritic score of 80 and a 4.14 out of 5-star user rating on PlayStation.

The PS Plus version currently includes the Horizons season expansion, which allows players to journey to "surfaces of strange worlds," introducing weapon crafting, deployable fighter ships, and multi-crew cooperative gameplay features.

There's literally hundreds of hours of content packed into Elite Dangerous and its massive open-world, and anyone who enjoys space exploration/adventure games is truly missing out if they've not given it a try.