User Reviews (41 - 51 of 111)

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Four Stars (and still in Beta)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Been playing for a week now on the open beta test and it has been great. Even with the problems in a beta release, the game has been very stable and, more importantly, fun. I am not into twitch and shoot games so I was interested in trying this. There are enough options for places to go, things to see and things to do, singly and in groups, to keep me occupied for many many hours. Assuming that Westwood continues to add features and experiences, this may be the first online game that has really interested me.

Everquest Online but Improved

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for a true action game this game is not for you. If you are looking for a game where cooperation, exploration, upgrading skills and equipment while facing new challenges, this game has been shaping up to be promising. Make no mistake, you do not control your ship in action sequences other than what weapons to use and shields etc. So the game is more strategy. This has no elements of a game like unreal tournament click and shoot.

Still whether you are a warrior, explorer or tradesmen, the are many things to do and there are battles which require excellent weapons setups and defensive devices. If your looking for a more intelligent online game, this may be for you. Yes it shares some elements with Everquest but it is a much improved engine and a more fluid gaming system. If you think its worth the monthly fee I suggest you give this a try and maybe desert any old MMORPG game you are playing. Hope this helps you!

Destined to be one of the best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: September 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I came upon Earth & Beyond by chance. After having played another game extensively online for the past 3 1/2 years... several friends and I had been discussing where to go from here. One of them had mentioned Earth & Beyond as they were already on the Beta. We didn't give it much thought at first, but about a week later I got an acceptance email to the beta and I was hooked from the beginning.

For a MMORPG, this game has some fantastic imagery. While they only currently have 4 races to choose from, there is still yet some variety. Plus the ability to create and mold a starcraft to your liking is a huge plus.

What hooks me to this game is the seemingly endless exploration of space. You think you've been everywhere there is to go and boom... there's a new planet or new system to travel through. There are several docking stations you can land an interact with NPC as well as real people. Which continues to make the game fun and very interactive.

I pre-ordered this game and am drooling and fidgeting as I await it's arrival. This will undoubtedly be a MUST have for all who enjoy sci-fi games.

NOT the game I thought it would be....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: December 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

If you are looking for "Freespace", "Tachyon", or "WingCommander" in a MMORPG environment, this is NOT it.
I mean... you control your ship with your mouse... need I say more?? Don't get me wrong - this game is very close to being a space jockey's dream... but it does fall short.
It is really a solo game with a bunch of "chat" going on the whole time. It is so close to being something really cool, but falls short in the end. A good overhaul or two, and it might be worth playing... but as it stands, I'd just as soon break out "Tachyon", "Freespace", or "TieFighter" for that matter...

Wait for awhile

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: August 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This could have been a great game that combined the best of the space combat games like Wing Commander with the Everquest type games. Instead you fly your ship with a mouse, and you can't move in 3 dimensions. Forget rolling inverted and pulling into your target, or running some air combat manuveur (ACM) you learned in a real flight sim. It can't be done. They say it's not a flight sim, but you spend all your time flying the ship from point A to point B, and back, trying not to get killed by "swarms" of enemy's who kill you right when you come out of warp before you can defend yourself. To make things worse, in the last beta update a new penalty was incorperated into the game. If you get blown up, you are penalized points toward you next advancement, which once you're past a certain level are very hard to get, also you're charged large fee's to recover, and repair your ship. These new penalty's have taken the last bit of fun out of this game, and every change being made to the game is for the worse. I've played almost every space game made since about 1990. Take my word for it, there's alot better games than this. It's multiplayer, but you can't even shoot the other players. Need I say more.

I need my life back!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I had a life before I started playing in the beta test of this game...really. But I've been completely addicted to it ever since I got it. Totally engrossing, with a gorgeous setting to boot! I was really skeptical that they'd be able to make space an interesting place for a massively-multiplayer game, but they have! There's stuff to do everywhere you turn, and it's really easy to use the controls. I'll be playing the beta until the very last minute that it's going, and the full version of the game will definitely be installed on my computer the very next day.

One of the very few games I've bought on its release date

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: September 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have over 35 game titles lying around right now that I'm either playing or about to play and this is the first time (or close to it) I've ever purchased a game upon its release. I usually wait to buy a game for the following reasons:

1). Price goes down
2). Less buggy
3). You won't need a "bleeding-edge" computer to play it
4). More tips web sites available

I've beta-played this game for nearly a week now and I'm so impressed with it that I've pre-ordered it. I can't call it beta-testing because I haven't found any major bugs to report yet. There may have been one or two minor bugs that I've stumbled across but I can't recall any right now. This review will explain why I'll be spending [good money]to buy this game.

Stability is as good as games that have been out for years. I've played Ultima Online for over two years and counting and both games are equally stable. Crashes for you should be few and far inbetween.

Westwood seems to be on the ball with exploits enforcement which is very important so the in-game economics won't be ruined. Players will also be more proud of their achievements if they don't feel that their in-game neighbors are using broken game mechanics to rapidly advance in the game.

The game is very group oriented. Unlike UO (Ultima Online), there are many and varied reasons to group up and explore/combat together. Grouping will increase experience points earned and give boosts to your skills and abilities. Every class has unique strengths that are contributed to the group and even though some players will be in more of a support role than others, all will contribute heavily to the group's success.

The chat interface enhances the feel of community. There are quite a few chat channels that you can join in while playing the game. This vastly alleviates the boredom while you're moving from locations to locations within a star system.

The combat system is very stream-lined and easy to use. Having fine control over your ship is fine in light combat situations but imagine having to fight off a dozen enemy at the same time. With 3 key clicks I can target a hostile creature, follow it, and have all weapon systems firing at it. This is immensely helpful against computer characters that have lightning-quick reflexes.

The game has hot-keys galore. There are hot-keys to quickly execute just about any functions in the game. New players can use menus and dialogue boxes to help them navigate through the game interface while veterans will use the hot-keys once they know exactly what they want to do and don't want to be coddled by menus and confirmations.

There are more positives about this game but this article is already too long so I'll end it by mentioning one or two points that it can improve on.

I'm experiencing long load times when traveling from one location to another. The delay is anywhere from 5 seconds to over 10 seconds. During this time you see a nice 3D-ish star map that you can look at until the new locations data has finished loading. But this map gets boring very quickly. I'm not sure if the delay is due to programming or due to the fact that I'm using Windows 2000. I've experienced long load times with non-online games before which is surprising because I've got 2 60gig drive hooked together using RAID0.

Memory leaks. It happens in Ultima Online and it happens here too. I've checked memory usage and it slowly but steadily goes up the longer you play. You can play fine for a few hours if you have 256meg of RAM. But play a marathon session and you'll find your screen updates slows down a lot after a few hours. Restarting the game will solve this problem.

Westwood need to add more features to improve selling/buying between players. As of right now, the only way to let players know what you want to buy/sell is by typing into the Market chat channel.

Well, this is pretty much my review of the game. If you liked Trade Wars, Starflight, Elite, Master of Orion, and Star Control 2, I'm almost certain that you'll like this game too!

This reveiw was done by an experemental computer program

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Just to let you know, this is a brilliant game. You get addicted to it after the first few minuets and you must play it for atleast four hours every day. THe storyline is very engaging, but the whole concept is kinda hard to grasp at first. It is very chalenging and like Freelancer, you use the mouse to control the ship. As your levels increase, you can go around to starbases and pick up new skills from "masters". It is only a multyplayer game, and there are some pros and some cons to that. The only thing I don't like about it is that the credits are kinda hard to earn, but you can't buy all that mutch. It is also the most interactive multiplayer space sim ever and you can interact with everyone and everything on a starbase including the other players. There are also aliens and never, never, never interact with a v'rix unless you are really good at combat. The earth & beond universe is allways changing and the people at ea games often update it. I only have the demo though. This game is still one of the bes space sims around and please buy it!

Rushed, and Ruined

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: September 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I too have been in on the beta test, and my advice is to stay away from this game. It's fun when you first start playing, but after a while you figure out that there's not much to do.
To make things worse this could have been a really good game if Westwood had bothered to bring some of the flight sim people in on game development. Instead you have a pretend flight model that only funtions in 2D. No free flight at all. No dogfighting, no acrobatics. You just point on a map where you want to go, push a button, and off you go. (It's bad). On top of that, everytime Westwood patches new stuff to the beta, they make the game worse, and less fun.
It doesn't matter that the beta testers tell them it's bad.
Westwood just wants to get it out on time.
They might get it straighted out a six months after the release, but by then hopefully someone will put out a good space game.

Awesome game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: August 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

After being part of the beta test for this game for more than three weeks, the improvments inside the games is amazing. This is turning out to be one of the best MMORPG's ever.

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