Before I start officialy, heres a question for everybody. How do you review an MMORPG? Do you review it on its merits and its peers as an Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game? Or do you place it squarely among all other games and review it for the number of hours its good for? That question should apear biased to whoever reads it, but there should be people who see either direction biased because there are people who love MMORPGs and find them endlessly satisfying and there are people who are only satisfied as long as they can quickly move from location to location and plot device to plot device. Earth & Beyond is probably one of the last projects of Westwood Studios now that they are an official property of Electronic Arts, which in a way is sad because they have produced so many products that cater to so many genres of gamers that it is to be hoped that the history of ORIGIN does not repeat itself. It is a Sci-Fi based MMORPG that applies diablo-esque gameplay to a space based RPG and can be said to do so succesfuly, and even makes the game far more rewarding for single player gaming than any other MMORPG to date with a rish series of flowing quests that introduce the player to the environment before falling into the role of an average MMORPG. The basic game mechanics are so simple a five year old could play this game without earning a single brain wrinkle. The only stats you choose are which of the six classes you play at the beginning of the game elliminating the illustion that how strong or wise you are makes a huge difference other than punishing people for being ignorant with distribution. All other decisions are completely superficial, but VERY cool as characters in the game as well as your ship(be carefull as your ship upgrades the secondary collors you choose will become far more prominant) are extremely customizable rivaling even Bioware's Baldurs Gate and Never Winter Nights, and yet having no bearing on the game other than making shure your character looks cool. There is absolutely no collision detection and aside from landscape and most planets and moons you can fly through anything which is odd but neccesarily fitting in a game which is desinged to apeal to those who neither care for nor hold respect for l33t p1l0t sk1llz. Combat takes place much as in everquest where you select a target aproach within range of your respective weapon and your character automaticaly targets trusting to your skills and to the games meter for the targets combat difficulty meter to tell you your chances of a succesful fight. Unlike previous MMO space based RPGs, well, the only one, they have delt with the large empty spaces of the universe with warp drive so you can pilot from fight to fight and task to task without spending excruciating lengths of time between targets and destinations and later upgrades in the game such as wormhole for the Jenquait Explorers and faster engines will shorten these distances even further. Bases provide places where you can be towed back to should you be disabled by enemy fire and unable to find a friendly player to jumpstart your ship. Above and beyond all other games of its type, Earth and Beyond offers a deeper experience for the beginning player as a long series of quests is offered to each player introducing them to their role in the community with a large number of interactions with NPC's which are handled in a branching conversation dialogues that sometimes will let you go through all the options over and over again and sometimes will remember your choices and treat you acordingly for the duration of eternity or in some cases your faction changes. Finaly more so than any other online RPG you can play solo indefinitely, BUT the enjoyment from doing so greatly diminishes after the first 24 hours or so although similar quests will occasionaly apear and suck you back into a sort of story making the pure level up process which is identical to other games of its type fill like filler they are few and far between and will quickly drop back leaving you with the feeling youve done something cool but its back to playing EverQuest in space. For a traditional gamer Earth & Beyond will easily fill up your first months subscription(which is free) with rewarding hours and thus justifying the $44.95 price tag and with plenty of replay value as each of the six classes has the same introductory depth. On a final note, E&B does seem to get one thing backwards, but I doubt if a large number of people will notice it as it is strangely apropriate for space. The graphics are incredible, but all the things worth looking at youll only see during your down time and even then you wont be paying much attention as docking is handled automaticaly.... which is funny because you spend most of your time in asteroid fields and empty space fighting or mining or traveling and you can hit the dock button without even bothering to fly around outside the station before hand for a look... same goes for most planets once you land on them, and the few where you have to fly around and can aprieciat the landscape youll be all bitter because you don't want to look at it because it's stopping you from getting where you need to be, namely, inside the station. Which, as I said before, is funny that the places where you want to be and have stuff to do are some of the least attractive places in the game....
Well must admit that Im sorry to see this game go, as it will be ending in september, because this is a good game, and one of kind that is for sure. I had loads of fun with this game and really enjoyed it, the learning c... Read Full Review
Google Search it folks. You can still play this great game. And it still stands up against a lot of the other computer games out there. Way better than STO. It tells you something that even after all these year... Read Full Review
