01/19/05 >> EVE Online: Second Genesis (PC)

Genre: Space based MMORPG

 

 

 

 

 

Eve Online is a space-themed MMORPG that reminds me a lot of another game, Freelancer. Eve differs from Freelancer in that slightly less emphasis is put on actually flying your ship and more on making money and a profit.

 

I'm going to discuss this with the most general of information since this is a MMORPG-ish kind of game that updates often. As of this writing, it has released its latest upgrade, called the "Rise of the Red Moon." Eve Online (the Second Age) has been around since 2003.

 

The “eye candy” in this game is really spectacular, both inside the space hangars and outside the ship as you fly around in space. Since this is a space game, you tend to handle most things about flying and things you can do with ships: go after pirates, travel from place to place taking cargo, mining, and the like. It would be the perfect companion to a game like Neocron if you are into industrialized punk. I am particularly impressed with the space background and how well the planets and stars look. The ships and space stations are rather blocky, and the interior docking gallery leaves a lot to be desired. Music, special effects, and the computer voice is really good, but it's not that spectacular. There is a jukebox mechanism that you can tailor your musical preferences. If that could be worked into a way you can include music from your computer, then you might really have something there.

 

The game's purpose is more economical than anything else. You are a pilot and you fly around handling missions that can come from the game's npc or players themselves. Missions take on basically three roles: courier, battle situations (killing enemy ships, for example), and mining for materials. There is a secondary option of developing plans and new devices that mimics similar game mechanics found in Star Wars Galaxy. The game is not as active as Star Wars Galaxies. While you can fly from place to place on your own, most of it is handled through a lot of right-clicking from your mouse. Most people though will use the autopilot feature to get from place to place, leaving a lot of time for you to chat with other players.

 

 

You play a member of essentially one of four modified human races that got cut out of the old Earth part of the Universe after a lot of strife, turmoil and the like. It's pretty typical. There is a fifth race that players could possible find themselves in but that takes a lot of know-how of how to get yourself into such a life. The races reflect both social and political points of view and also reflect in the kinds of companies that you start yourself in. Like minded players can band together in corporations and sometimes those associations will help further the plots along.

 

I would have liked to have the ability to allow players to fly onto habitable worlds and see a few things other than space and the hangar. The gameplay could allow players to become more immersed into the world instead of feeling like you're stuck in a ship with no way of leaving it.

 

There are a few things about Eve Online that I am a bit mixed on. One is the passiveness of the system, and that is reflected best in how you improve your player. Skills are acquired cumulatively, and they act more like an indication of xp more than anything else. The time it takes for you to learn a skill is a real-time clock, and can last from a hour or two to up to a month depending on the levels of difficulty of the skill involved. There are thirteen groups of skills, and the time is based on your stats which can be improved on by skills. When you are learning a skill, the time ticks down non-stop so you don't have to be on all the time that you are learning a skill, which is nice.

 

However, since these skills are the prerequisites to acquiring just about anything that you need (and money in this game is dumped on you by the hundreds of thousands regardless of what you want to do), I'm not sure most gamers have the patience to play while waiting for a month to go by so that you can have the skills needed to purchase a very high-caliber weapon or ship. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, in fact I like it. I do wonder if the time it takes to master the skills needed to get the ships you want is a little on the high side. Make no mistake; Eve Online has a very high learning curve.

 

The other problem I have with the passiveness of the system is in its attacking system. Eve Online uses a more realistic real-world system where which you are generally sitting or slowly maneuvering around another target and firing on it while it does the same thing to you. And the bigger or slower the ship, the more likely you are just going to sit there. It uses a rather complicated system based on range and the type of weapon you are using to determine your accuracy. However, I have found that generally you are sitting there while another ship is either flying rings around you or just hitting you with missiles which just simply fly and hit you. Players end up purchasing a lot of additional items just so that their ship can allow or foil attempts to evade or attack you. In the end, this doesn’t make for a more enjoyable gaming experience.

 

 

One final problem with the game in general is that it seems to be somewhat newbie unfriendly. The tutorial that you start with lasts for about two hours or more and I think it leaves a lot of information out of it that I would think of it to be vital. It also seems to be rather dry. There is a newbie chat room that you can't close out of for the first thirty days of the game. People are generally friendly can help you out on the chat rooms. Not so in the game for newbies. Player kills happen fairly frequently, even in areas that the game considers to be safe. Other than petitioning the makers about a possible abuse or waiting for help from other gamers or the NPC police, there does not seem to be much in the way of recourse if a very seasoned player just so happens to attack and destroy a new player's ship on the first few days of playing. I'd like to see the game become friendlier to first-timers before I would recommend a higher rating.

 

 

 

Game Score

 

8.7

 

 

Reviewed By: Contributed