User Reviews (1 - 11 of 26)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

First ever persistent universe

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: October 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is the first ever really MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game), in UO or EQ you've got seperate servers. Here there is one Universe with 100 000 players. Furthermore the world is persistent, you can build hundreds of ships, stations. Definitly there is no other games like that and it's the first one and the most technicaly advanced.

Ambitious but disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: October 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing Mankind since August 2000.

MK provides an eternally-persistent Universe of thousands of star systems, each with between five and eight planets. Don't believe everything the advertising says: much that is promised is not yet implemented.

The eye-candy is superficially impressive, but the only thing "three-dimensional" about the playing space is the location of star systems relative to each other: each star system, and each planetary surface, is a flat square, except that the planet surfaces wrap around top-to-bottom and left-to-right, e.g. if you fly off the right side, you end up coming back in the left side. There is no observable "hyperspace" flight -- you jump from star system to star system.

Don't try Mankind if you have repetitive-stress injuries to your mousing hand: to do anything at all requires far more mouse-clicking than I thought possible. Worse, the Game vendor (Vibes) forbids players from building their own Game-enhancement software to reduce the volume of drudge-work.

I have never played "Red Alert" myself, but I've watched my brother play, and I've played "Empire". MK is very much like RA or Empire, only (a) much, much slower and (b) on a much larger scale. The vendor's literature seems to promise a standing conflict between Empires; that's not implemented yet, so there's just a kind of free-flowing anarchy, in which most people don't shoot each other. If you just go in shooting, as a newbie, you're quite likely to attract the attention of someone with _far_ more resources than you, get wiped out as a lesson, then get an offer of help getting started.

There are Guilds, all player-organized. Some are quite strong, others quite incoherent.

Vibes have serious server stability problems. The Game implementation assigns an area of the Galaxy to each of the half-dozen or so servers, and when a server goes down, its area becomes inaccessible. Vibes seem to have no hot-backup hardware: as of this writing (late Oct 2000), one server has just been replaced, having been down for several weeks. You can evade some of the instability, if you have spread your holdings out enough that you have stuff on several servers, but of course a brand-newbie cannot do this: his one "free" starter-ship has too short a range.

The attributes of the various ships and buildings are poorly thought out. Only a few are worth building, and the official documentation doesn't provide enough info for you to figure out which those are. Many important performance characteristics -- such as weapons range -- are not officially documented at all; you either have to experiment or learn from other players.

The good news is that players have filled many holes in the official documentation. Of course, every time Vibes change the Game, the player community have to play catch-up.

The bad news is that, to climb the tech tree, you have to "research" all the useless stuff at the lower levels before you get access to the useful higher-level stuff.

There are several online Forum systems devoted to discussing MK....

All in all, Vibes would have been better off if they'd spent more resources on stability and coherent functioning, and less on eye-candy.

I still play, but I doubt I'll renew my ... annual subscription when it expires.

Mankind, more hype than game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: October 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Do not purchase this game for the following reasons:

The game is run on several servers, and they are down more than 70% of the time.

Any bugs or account errors that occure during server outages are rarely ever solved or credited back to the user.

Tech support, unfortunatly is not kind with american users. Any problems that are sent to vibes, receive a form letter that never addresses the problem, nor take into account the seriousness of the problem

The game involves spending hours and hours of clicking a mouse buton to load/unload ships from bases, minerals from bases. I would estimate in a 4 hour play session, you will be clicking the mouse button 6000-10000 times.

And while the company touts 100,000 accounts, 80% are only demo accounts that players use as mules, non paid accounts.

Not what I would expect

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: October 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have played Mankind for a year now.

The game is set in a universe of well over a thousand planets (most likely much more). There are two problems with this ame.

One, there is no tech support Two, the servers are often down

When I say no tech support, I mean there is NONE. You can try to e-mail them, but the only response you get is in garbled English, and I have yet to get a problm solved by them without a "reinstall the game and try again" message.

What you do get is a game that is more addictive than you can imagine. You must speak with other players before you buy. You can look around for forums to do so.

Looking for fun? look eslewhere then

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: October 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I dont think this game needs more than one word to describe...but which? useless? boring? disappointing? Anyway, it works not, requires far too many clicks and is constantly downgraded by the company (Vibes). Features listed on the box have never appeared ingame and never will... The company is notorious for its arrogance and inefficiency... I have strongly advised my friends to look and wait for other games or for Mankind 2 to be released ...if ever. ...

Unfortunately NOT that good

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It is unfortunate that this title does not live up to its expectations. While initially the gameplay is rather SIMCITY'ish, it quickly dulls as you realize that the MULTITUDE of clicks necessary to accomplish any task will leave you with carpal tunnel syndrome. Coupled with the poor communications, and the fact there is little or no multiplayer interaction, UNLESS you accidentally stumble upon somone. Places this game at the bottom of the heap. MAYBE the creators will start to listen to their players and change the gameplay, ONLY THEN, will this game RESURRECT itself.

Not Worth The $$ at All

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: November 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

MK is a waste of time and money. The concept is good but the implementation of that concept missed the mark so badly you might think Microsoft had something to do with it. The tech support is non-existant and the "universe" is un-reliable. You will spend hours clicking and building but you will not be assured that your work will be around when you log on again. Although the user comunity is quite strong the company ignores them regularly with regards to enhancements and bug fixes.

Go spend your money elsewhere. Maybe a good book?

A Complex Good Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 14
Date: November 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Mankind is a complex game that involves building cities, bases and ships (after gathering your own elements), diplomacy, war, alliances and much more.

This game is not for those who only enjoy the "shoot them up" style of play. It IS for those looking for something that incorporates several key elements of gaming, including building a character, building your assets, strategy, AND combat.

With superior graphics, ample opportunity for role play and players from around the world, Mankind provides a chance for its players to make friends across international borders.

The game operators, Vibes, have had some problems in the past, but they have worked hard to continually improve game play, customer support and to add new features while making existing features work better.

If you are looking for a game that incorporates more than just combat, more than just role playing, more than just strategy and more than just building, but that incorporates all of those elements, Mankind is the game for you.

Lord Badger - TG

mankind

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: November 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've played this game for just over a year an a half. The other reviews are right for the most part. Yes there is an awful lot of mouse clicking in this game, but this is to be expected with a game as complex as this. Is it boring, yes & no, it's more monotinous than boring. Mankind is as fun or dull as you make it!. The main theme here is construction, to research you have to build a lab(s), to get minerals you have to build mine(s),..etc. But what the others have not said is that as a player in MK, you get to meet many fun & interesting people from all over the world! For instance, i have met players from Norway, portigul, Italy, spain, germany...and you also can get to know these players as well. This is not just a game, it's almost an RPG in setup. I would hope that customers browsing through will try MK, if not for the graphics, which are very good, but to meet other people they would not have met otherwise

Unlimited Universe? You got to be kidding...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: November 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The rating system here at Amazon doesn't give good choices. This game is 5-Star for addictive, 3-Star for enjoying all the boring time of click,click,click to do anything useful to play, and -1-Star (that's right, a MINUS 1) for company response to any problems with the game. After spending close to a year playing this game with all the server ups and downs, living and surviving through 2 major upgrades; not without their problems,(addictivness) and even now after the fiasco(sp) that was created with the recent upgrade to the 1.7 version I still miss not being able to log in and talk to the international group of friends I have met on line.

If I knew then what I know now about how the creators of this game worked and how much(laugh) they(Vibes) care about supporting their customers, I would never have thrown the money into it. But then I would have never met these interesting people who play it, nor the informative forums (i.e. Mankind Outpost on delphi.com for English players)where everyone now knows me.

Before spending any money or time on this game, I would suggest reading both the reviews and checking out the forum discussions unless you do not worry about wasted money and effort in a game.

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions