Lone Gunman
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Posted - 2003.07.25 22:16:00 -
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EVE ONLINE: The Second Genesis
Space Junk By Arcadian Del Sol
Eve Online comes so close to being a great game. It is absolutely stunning to look at, and has one of the best collections of ingame music I have ever heard. Unfortunetly, this stunning mood is crushed by an interface that has all the charm of a TPS Report.
Your screen is a collection of pop-ups, and you spend tons of time performing click and drag operations. For example, after mining minerals from asteroids, you must dock at a station, open your ship window, open your station window, and then click and drag from one to the other before you can process it.
If by some heroic measure of tolerance you are able to move passed that, you'll discover that the game is not ready for prime time. Bug fixes are bolted on to it, only to removed when the remedy turns out to be worse than the disease, making the servers too frequently unavailable for a game that wants you to pay a monthly access fee. If that weren't bad enough, the support website has all the synergy of post-Cold War Russia, where every feature operates as an independent nation-state. The online support database, the support forums, the "ask a question" e-mail interface-each requires it's own login ID and password. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but for $13 a month, I expect a toll free phone number with a live voice at the other end.
On the positive side, and unlike other games in which your skill gains are bound by how quickly you can smelt iron or cleave trolls. Eve-Online uses an egg timer. You mark a skill to gain, and in the passing of time, it raises to the next level. So what? Well, the cool part is that the timer doesn't stop ticking when you log out. At higher levels you can train
in a skill, go on a holiday cruise, and find yourself ready for the next level by the time you get back home.
Finally, an online game that doesn't punish you for having a day job.
The bottom line? The game is not entirely unfun to play, but if you looking for a fast-paced interstellar-shooter, then keep looking.
VERDICT 2/5 Stars "Looks and sounds great, but there is no game here."
May the Flaming begin......
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