Perpetuum Online – Ten Minute Impressions

Perpetuum Online finished downloading, and loaded right up with out a hitch. But since it’s the middle of the day and I have a bit of work to do, I just popped in for a quick looksee and spent about ten minutes tooling around in my new robot. Here are my impressions so far.

• This is Eve Online. Really, Avatar Creations seem to have gone out of their way to replicate the Eve Online experience but in a ground based environment. Every thing from the character creation process to the GUI screams Eve to me.
• The Eve emulation is is not necessarily a bad thing, Eve is a highly successful game, one of the few that has grown over time.
• Having said that, I’m not a big fan of the Eve UI myself I think it’s too complex, and I reckon the Perpetuum UI goes even further in complexity than Eve’s does. Having designed GUI’s myself for nearly two decades the biggest trap is in not making a UI as simple and easy to use as possible. After all, it’s just a way of presenting info, it’s not the gameplay.
• The robot controls are fairly easy to use, although there are a lot of toolbar icons to figure out and they all look similar.
• Locking targets is done the same way as Eve, but there seems to be a second step required to fire on a target. I’ll have to recheck this to make sure, but if so that second step should be removed (see my simple UI comment above.)
• more to come…

I’m really hesitant to make a judgement at this early, early stage since I’ve spent so little time in the game. So I won’t.

I will however, say that it may be a little too much like Eve for me. Eve Online is a game that I want to love, but I’ve tried a bunch of times to get into. It always ends up the same with me losing interest and cancelling my subscription. That may because Eve is too sandbox. I do like some direction from the game. And Eve also requires a large time commitment, which with my polygamous gaming habits and short attention span is also a problem.

I’ll give Perpetuum more time, that’s only fair, but if it is simply Eve Online on the ground then it may not be for me. Having said that, if you are a huge Eve fan, then by all means give it a shot.

Perpetuum Online Early Access

Woo Hoo! Look. An invite!

My inbox this morning had a nice little prezzie in the form of an early access key from the folks at Avatar Creations, the developers of the very-soon-to-be-released Robot MMOG, Perpetuum Online. Just in time for the weekend. What a bonus! Many thanks to the Avatar Creations people.

I have to admit that, while I have noticed the recent news about Perpetuum, I haven’t actively been following the games development.

I’ve created my account and am currently in the process of downloading the client.

When I’ve had a bit of a look, I’ll let you know what I think.

…But That Was [Yesterday]

Because of time constraints, I haven’t been spending much time in the MMOG scene lately, but when I’ve got a spare few minutes there are plenty of quick indie games that provide a distraction.

I just came across this little gem of a browser based game called …But That Was [Yesterday]. It’s a simple, almost minimalistic side scroller, but it has a wonderful quality. Getting through the entire game took me only a few minutes, but it left me feeling somewhat emotional. Rock Paper Shotgun described it as tugging at the heartstrings like bell ropes which I think is an entirely apt description.

I highly recommend to give it a try right here.

Who says games can’t be art?

Castle Smash Cinematic

Castle Smash is a Facebook game released by a group of indie game developers. It’s basically Angry Birds but with a Facebook flavour. But the best thing about the game is the cinematic that I’ve embedded below.

The expression on the horse’s face is priceless.