Stratharn
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Posted - 2011.06.25 12:29:00 -
[2]
Right, a few hours later...
It's not bad.
I don't think it has the depth of Eve, and the GUI is certainly much clunkier - but it's surprisingly similar enough for your average Eve player to pick up pretty quickly.
Graphically it's quite nice - perhaps a bit too cartoony. I think it's probably a lot lighter on your graphics card than many games. I was a little lost to start with because the tutorials are only passingly helpful. The learning curve is not as steep as Eve, but there is an initial hurdle or two to get over before you know how to get around.
I just like robots. It wasn't long before I was scooting about travelling between teleporters and hot-zones shooting at the little mites and looting their exploded carcasses. The bots you start out with are a bit dismal. Basically four legged gun-mounts that skitter around like irritated spiders. There isn't any real feeling of scale. I have no idea how big this thing is supposed to be.
Combat is standard MMO fare. Click to target, wait for a lock, hit your weapons, and wait for it to die. Moving about doesn't seem to make much difference in combat, but you do need to consider target range.
There is no compass. On the big battlefield, I had killed my quota of drones and needed to head for home to sell my loot, and I realised I had completely lost my bearings. It turns out you can turn on a little floating radar map, but it's not on by default, and it took me ages to find it.
Once you know how to turn things on, I found myself unconsciously setting up the GUI to work like Eve. Everything just seemed to fit in the right places, and did the same stuff. The game seems to be essentially Eve Online with robots.
The chat channels were FULL of disgruntled former Eve players. There was a special channel set up for them, with lots of Devs in attendance to welcome the new players and give them personal attention. There were over 100 people in the Eve channel, and they were all talking about how they were giving up Eve and taking up Perpetuum.
There's even talk of setting up a corp called New Eden specifically to cater to disgruntled former Eve players.
I haven't made up my mind yet. I've played it for a couple of hours, and I enjoyed it... and I fully intend at this point to play the entire 15 free days. I'll see then whether this game (which is cheaper than Eve) will end up being the one I subscribe to moving forwards.
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