EVE Online

Like most gamers I've heard nightmares about the game EVE Online. The learning curve is insane, the people are asshole griefers, and there's been instances of administrators helping certain groups in a not so honest way. Despite that though, I decided to fire it up a little and see for myself. So I signed in, downloaded the client which is paltry compared to the file sizes in EQ2, set up my free account for the 14 day trial and I was on my way.

A storyline was shown to give a backstory, then you create your charater, give it some traits, and off you go. Pretty easy so far. As you start you're given a tutorial about using the camera, flying the ship, how to orbit around things, how to mine resources, and how to blow up an enemy ship. Again, so far so good. At this point I'm even liking the graphics, it's like Homeworld except people might call you an asshole once in a while. No big deal.

So then I go to get my first missions and then the problems start. I get the mission (go blow up a ship and bring back the stuff they stole), so I fly off and blow up the ship. Woo hoo, easy money, right? Wrong. Something in the game goes bonkers. First, the game pops up a message stating, "Hey your graphics card will support the new high resolution graphics, want to download them?" Well hell yes I want pretty pictures. So about five minutes later the graphics are downloaded and the game needs to restart. No problem, I'll just restart the game and then turn in this mission.

So I go back to the game and get ready to turn in the missions. At this point though, the mission takes a turn for the worse. I completed the missions, my game journal says I completed the mission and that I should go back to the starbase and turn in the stolen goods. But the person who gave the missions says I don't have the item. I did have the item, but now it's gone from my inventory. What the hell?

So now I get on the chat channel and explain the situation. Someone says "check the cargo hold" but I already did that so now I'm stuck plus I don't see a way to restart the mission. The tutorial narration keeps telling me to turn in the damn mission but then the person who gave me the missions says I don't have the pieces.

I then proceeded to log out and uninstall the game. If I can't even get the first missions right there's probably not much of a point to keep trying. To its credit the game is beautiful though. It'd be great to have an EVE Online screensaver. Get a free account and use it to test your graphics card.

As a follow up to my Mass Effect review

I became so disgusted with this game, that my attempts to play through a second time as an evil persona were pointless. I've downloaded that new content but probably won't play it. Try harder next time Bioware, seriously.