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I've just played the free 14 day trial and loved it.
I'm almost definitely going to subscribe and am only stalling for financial reasons at the moment.
You don't actually need to buy the game though, it's all available to download for free from the site above. The cost is the monthly subscription of 15 Euros to play the game.
As for the game play itself, well, it's basically Elite, online and with far prettier graphics. It's a huge and involved affair but the very simple interface (it's possible to play entirely with the mouse and not have to touch the keyboard) makes it really accessible. There's also an excellent built in tutorial which will talk you through the game basics and set you up in good stead for the oncoming experience.
The possibilities for the type of game you want it to be, as in Elite, are huge (trade, mine, be a pirate, a courier, join the police, military etc) but unlike Elite, Eve offers the opportunity to form corporations with other players where in game credits can be pooled for the good of the business.
It's this aspect that really makes Eve as it forces a community spirit within the game and makes players communicate with each other and work together. It's also a big deal when corporations go to war against each other over something simple like say, shipping lanes.
The only downside to the game, if you consider this to be one, is that the gameplay is pretty slow. The combat is essentially automated and the victor in any fight is the player with the better ship rather than it being player-skill based. For me, that was ideal as I have terrible reactions and little skill to speak of but I can see why this might be frustrating to others.
The thing that really makes Eve stand out though is the way the servers are set up. Normally on-line games are set up so that you play on servers of a certain number of players, say 64 (I'm thinking of Battlefield here) but Eve runs a server cluster which puts everybody on-line at any given time into the same universe and therefore, potentially into contact with each other. I found that logging on in the evenings and at weekends, there was usually around 20 thousand people playing which by comparison to Battlefield for example, is staggering.
So yeah, should you buy it? I think you should definitely check out the trial and see what you reckon. If you liked Elite then you'll probably like Eve. |
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