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Earth & Beyond Impressions

For a game that has received little to no fan fare as far as Massively-Multiplayer releases go, Earth and Beyond is something of a dark horse. Sure, it contains its own raving pubescant fan base that each MMOG seems to receive, but who really listens to them anyway? Perhaps since the miss-fires of titles such as Anarchy Online, World War 2 Online and Shattered Galaxy, the audience interested in this genre have taken more of a wait-and-see approach, watching how things panned out before investing in a new character in a brave new world.

When Westwood first decided to delve into this market, I personally wasn’t interested. I’d been burned by one too many boring RTS’s, and despite Blade Runner’s brilliance, I considered the company as a whole occasionally flukey, but more so playing to its audience and incapable of releasing something that would capture my attention in any meaningful way.

Stranger things have happened…

When my younger brother informed me that he had ordered the game from the US, installed and currently winging his way through the known galaxy, I approached with some trepidation. Since my love affair with EverQuest came to a sour and bitter end almost 2 1/2 years ago, I’ve flirted briefly with MMOG’s, but never really committed. Once bitten twice shy? Maybe…but I’ll tell you this: the glossy sheen of Xalbus’ (my brother) war ship hurtling through space alongside his counter-part’s sleek lines was far more appealing than seeing his Gnome-like character running through Dark Age of Camelot.

Perhaps, initially, this is the most appealing part of the game: not an elf or a bow & arrow to be seen anywhere. No wizards or bust maidens with axes, no orcs, nothing except the depths of space as far as the eye can see. As banal as it sounds, it’s refreshing for someone who wasn’t all that into the fantasy setting to begin with; I’ll take a blaster over a +2 longsword any day of the week.

The thing that I think I need to pull me into a MMOG, and indeed any game in general these days is a certain “wow” factor. The only game that has really given me one of those lasting memories has been EverQuest, and it did give me a few: the first time I ran through East Karana and up the mountain pass into HighPass; the first time I watched a sunset from a boat travelling to another island (which monty wrote about in his first EverQuest chronicles post), creeping down into various dungeons, I could go on.

My first “wow” moment came when creating my character, an experience you can have outside the game here. Westwood obviously realised how cool the process was and have released that portion of the game for the masses to see for themselves. From detailing my character’s clothing to christening my ship “The Jumanji”, it was a process that I relished.

Many smaller “wow” moments have come in the last few days, but last night had a moment that made my jaw drop in a way it hasn’t since that first sunset in Norrath, and the image below is the reason:

Sitting in high orbit over New Edinburgh in the Tau Ceti system, watching the rings of the planet slowly spin beneath me was breath-taking. With nothing but my engines quietly burning away, it was a moment to reflect before again consulting my Galactic Map and trying to figure our which planet I needed to hop to next on my way to the Kinshasa-Mbali mine near Aganju.

Mind you, it wasn’t all good. The game sports a typical MMOG interface, which is to say hacking into the CIA is more intuitive than negotiating your way about the stars. The missions in the game still amount to “go here, do this”, although they are dressed up in a superbly crafted backstory.

Not everyone is charmed though, rob has started and almost stopped again, citing dull combat and the tedium of inter-planetary travel as reasons, and rather valid ones I might add. Also annoying was reaching level 30, at which point the game bestows an “upgrade” to the look of your ship. I use the word “upgrade” loosely as I preferred the look of my ship before, and after the initial excitement of creating the ship, it now seems an ultimately pointless excercise as it’s the last time you have a say on how your ship looks.

It is still early days though and being level 31, it’s really hard to give more than a few inital thoughts on a game that has a 119 levels still to come. While no official release date has been given for it here, importers are grabbing it and you can order it online from Aussie site Games Warehouse. I’ve not used them myself, though a friend did order E&B from them and it arrived only a couple days later, so give them a try; if nothing else it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than getting it shipped here from the US.

My name is ‘Splash’, I’m on the Pegasus server…I’ll see you out there.

  posted by splash · at 10:30 am · filed under News