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Reviews: Earth and Beyond
Earth and Beyond
Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: EA Games
Genre: Sci-Fi / Space
Released: 9/24/02
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Earth and Beyond - Div Devlin (11-25-02)
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| Our Gal Megan |
Space the final… Blah. You know that cliché already don't ya now. When Westwood Studio's announced they were making a massively multiplayer online game, set in the vast reaches of our galaxy; I'll admit I was hooked. Growing up on space opera and B rated science fiction serials ala Flash Gordon starring Buster Crabbe, Star Trek: The Original Series and graduating to the early eighties when it was at the height of pop culture with Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers (Wilma Deering gave me wood!) and every other incarnation of space opera that was available, this is a game I've been looking forward to.
While Westwood was not first to hit this genre of persistent online world setting (that title being taken by NetDevil's Jumpgate), they had a proven track record for RPG and Combat Sims. It would be natural for them to mold these two areas of expertise into a space-sim with the content support of Lands of Lore and the fast paced action and plotlines of Command and Conquer. How could this go wrong!
“Earth and Beyond” is set in our galaxy 300 years into our future. Mankind has branched out into the universe and colonized the nearby planet of Mars and the moons of Jupiter. Each colony gradually became independent from the original colonists forming into their own world governments and changing in racial stock after living far from earth setting up the game for three factions of different races. The universe based upon our own, is actually modeled after NASA photographs to recreate an authentic and scientifically viable recreation of what it would be like to adventure in the Milky Way.
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| Ship Construction is actually fun. |
After loading up the game, you are greeted by Megan, our computer counterpart that will guide through the initial learning stages of the game. Within game you are actually going to have two characters to keep track of. The first is your personae. You can choose from one of the three races; the Terran who are the original descendants of earth and still maintain home on our mother earth and specialize in trading. The Progen, are a military combat race cloned for perfection and are suitably styled from their home planet of Mars. The third race hailing from the moons of Jupiter are the Jenquai, who excel at travel and detection, while specializing in stealth and manipulation. For traditional MMO players or those versed in fantasy role-playing games, the three races and the class specialties each break down into the classes of Tank, Scout, Healer (Repairs) and Mage (Nuker).
Each race can be further customized to the player's suits for hair, color, accessories, height, weight, and garments. Although once you have chosen the appearance of your avatar, he/she remains appearing that way for the course of the game. You cannot exchange clothing, items or gear later to change the appearance of your toon.
The next part of character creation is actually the part I enjoyed the most and spent the majority of time with. As you travel through the galaxy you do so, within in your own customized ship. Each ship, while nearly identical with each race, offers you design tools of how the hull, wings, and engines will look. Each race has three types of ships, and each offers a combination of three alternate designs for each of the three main components of the ship. You can then further personalize the ship with color schemes from a large palette as well as add a logo to the wings of your ship. Finally name your ship and take off into space.
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| Like I said, I enjoyed this. |
Each ship has its standard sci-fi fare. Equipped with weapons, shields and engines as well as additional equipment slots to for placement of other tech items that can aid you later during the course of your space adventures. Each hard-point on the ship can have it's items removed for upgrades. So, while you may have missile racks for weapons, you can easily change them to lasers later.
As you adventure through game discovering a variety of worlds and creatures, you progress through a skill and level based system, which has three sections for advancement. Divided between Combat, Exploration and Trade you advance in levels in each area that you focus on. If you monster bash you will gain levels faster in combat. If you trace through space bent solely on discovering new areas, you gain experience in Exploration. Then, if you are one of those players who enjoy working with a games economy system, you will find yourself doing merchant runs taking goods from one system to another. Always buy low and sell high.
As you advance in levels you will gain points which you can distribute to your different skill areas which consist of Beam Weapons, Engine Technology, Reactor Technology, and Device Technology. Terrans and Jenquai also have access to Lore Skills, which enable them to deconstruct items and recreate new items of the appropriate skill level. The implementation of the level and skill system works. You could run into someone who is vastly superior with his or her items but not very good at combat. This is an excellent checks and balances system.
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| Boldly going where... |
As you begin you exploration of the known universe you are going to be thrust into the questing system, which will require you like other games to gather an item, and return it. Most quests are enjoyable and have an added twist of humor in several of them. Unfortunately, like other questing systems you need to go to point A, then Point B, then travel although to Point J acquiring the final solution to the quest and return it to the start at Point A. This ends up becoming an incredible time sink and a waste.
Traveling through game consists of two parts. Your character avatar who interacts with Non-Player Characters in space stations where you can sign-up for missions, check news, repair your ship, purchase upgrades or take on trade goods to sell at other systems. When your ship becomes destroyed you are return to the last space station you registered your ship at akin to a bind point in other games.
Space travel never looked so good, and comes right out of movies. You have the cockpit and can view space from the first person view, third person view, or overhead camera view. Ships that engage warp speed leave contrails as they kick in speed similar to movies. The graphics are eye-candy goodness. Moving from sector to sector for new solar systems in through Warp Gates, and is rather seamless as you enter each new zone. There is hardly any load times or lag when the new zone is ready for you to adventure in.
Sitting on the dock... |
Warp Speed Ahead! |
Going planetside... |
Earth and Beyond is being billed as a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing game. It's designed for grouping and guilds to interact with the games storyline that will be ongoing with support, features and quests. There was so much more that could have been done, and the game was set-up for a great player versus player combat backdrop if it would have been balanced with the three realms similar to Dark Age of Camelot by Mythic. Each of the intergalactic races has a rich storyline and an aggressive nature to the others, which makes great space opera. Ship to ship combat. Most of the time, you will get bored of the time-sinks that take you either questing or monster bashing. Once you have done everything in game, there is nothing left to do to promote a player community of intergalactic proportions and eventual boredom will set in.
Discuss: It's fun for a time.
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