Review: Eve Online

TonyDaytona

66%

I wasn’t too excited to review EVE because I’m not a fan of space games, unless I can nail green space whores (James T. Kirk style). Anyway, most of my experiences consisted of being more confused than Ms. South Carolina (white southern alien) trying to explain how Iraq is one of the 50 states.
   During character creation I had no clue what the attributes (memory, intelligence, etc.) did or what race (Amarr, Cladari, Gallente, and Minmatar) to pick. Without a tutorial, I just chose randomly and started at some generic mining colony.
   I attributed my confusion to the “2 for 1” Happy Hour I just came from. I easily completed the first few missions in the tutorial, but then all of the agents (quest givers) were telling me to “gain more reputation” or “I have no more work for you.” I had only done 3 quests at the start of the game and I hit a brick wall. I had no quests and no idea where to go! I checked the map and that just gave me a fucking headache.
   Exploration is just not an option, unless you have unlimited time and patience. If you set a course without having a true destination, you will get nowhere, very slowly. I spent 45 minutes flying aimlessly before I gave up, equally disgusted with myself and the game.
   The next morning I was sober and hung-over, but I decided to put my ego aside and ask for help. Someone eventually took mercy on me and I found a mission to explore an asteroid field. I spent the next 4 hours flying between asteroid belts looking for pirates, but I never found a single pirate and I uninstalled.

EuroTrash

81%

Eve has a kick ass storyline. Humanity has expanded deep into space, going as far as to travel through a wormhole called Eve. When the wormhole collapses the colonies on the other side are cut off and after centuries form their own warring governments and corporations.
   I noticed very early on however that when you are sent on a mission there is really nothing else to do. You can mine and ferry it to the station, or you can sit and wait for the quest enemies. Killing them will take about 2 minutes and you fly back to the station. This gets very repetitive after a while. The game is praised for its PVP and politics, but the leveling process generally sucks and needs a lot of work if they want it to grow.
   First off, there needs to be a way to group with other players so when the group completes an objective you all get credit. Right now the only option is for everyone to wait their turn and it’s like I said, there is nothing else to do! It’s not like other games where there are non-quest related monsters around to fight.
   More enemy ships controlled by the computer would be great. Mining and flying around are bland and uninspired. There could be quests where we go out with a large group of AI controlled NPC ships to attack another group of enemy ships. Perhaps an assault on a capital ship with a group of smaller fighters. Anything other then the repetition and waiting I experienced would be amazing.

Tzo

90%

Reviewing EVE redefined my view of MMORPGS, and that is no small thing for me to say! The player driven content in this game is the best I’ve seen in any game ever. When you kill an enemy in Eve they lose their entire ship and all their cargo. As a solo player who is still quite new to the game I can only marvel at the concept of large corporations trying to take over each other’s systems by force. This is exactly the type of thing that is often promised by developers and rarely delivered.
   I like how new players can compete with older players relatively easily. They won’t be as versatile, but they can play one role just as well after a short period of time. If you stick with one ship and one set of skills you can max them out and be on an even playing field with anyone in the game.
   The thing that disappointed me most was just minor graphical issues. For example I leave a star port and jump to a location that should require me to first fly around the star port, but the game just points me straight at it and I jump right through the station! The same thing happens with planets, where you will clip right through the planet. I really wanted to see some “slingshoting” and actual physics in play. There should also be more interesting things to see in space, like large nebulae and galaxies. They could have done so much more! Hopefully the new graphics upgrade is as good as it looks.
   I still love the game. The first time I chased someone down and blew up their ship was a great boost of adrenaline.