In Space, No One Can Hear You Roleplay

Earth and Beyond. OK, beyond what?

Oh, I guess they mean that it’s “above and beyond” the standard MMORPGs like Everquest and Ultima Online, where you slay dragons and go on quests and collect as much gold as possible. In Space: Above and Beyond, you slay giant space jellies, go on quests, and collect as many credits as possible.

Even though this massive multiplayer online space game claims to be a roleplayer’s haven, it’s really just a massive single player game that happens to have thousands of players online at the same time.

Keep in mind, I don’t judge games simply in relation to other games in their genre, so my predisposition against MMORPGs might be playing a bias here.

I had such high hopes for this game, though. After spending literally an hour customizing my character, and customizing her ship, all the while listening to the annoying “help” of a digitized character (who felt it was necessary to tell me when to click the “next” button), I entered the game.

I spent the entire time going on training missions, followed by a few single player “real” missions after that. Now, granted, the training did inform me how to “group” with another ship, though I saw no reason to do so for any of the missions I completed.

As far as interaction? That customized character I built only spent a small fraction of the time on the space station, where you can actually meet other characters face to face. The rest of the time was spent gallivanting around in her ship, in which you are even less likely to run into someone willing to interact.

The chat channels were constantly filled with “out of character chat.” Only one player made an attempt at roleplaying, as his ship was adrift in the outer reaches of space with no hope unless someone could give him a jumpstart.

One response stated, “Nice roleplaying. I think that deserves a jumpstart.”

If it’s such nice roleplaying, why didn’t you respond in character?

Now, even taken on its face as a single player game it’s rather dull. You build your skills by improving one of three areas – exploration, combat and trading. Each of these areas can be improved through constant use of skills in those areas – for example, mining asteroids gains you points in exploration. Once you gain a level in each area, you get points to spend increasing your skills.

In the mean time, you can save up money for improvements to your ship, as well as completing certain missions to give you hull upgrades (allowing more weapons or cargo space, for example).

There is a rather intricate plot going on as a backdrop, which might or might not become more involving of the player characters as time goes on. Seeing as how I didn’t stay in the game long enough, who knows?

I guess it would have helped to be able to understand the back story. Sure, I read up on this game on the Web site, but it gave me very limited information and even after playing the demo I can’t tell you the difference between a Terran and a – um, what was the other race again?

If nothing else, this is one place where Star Wars: Galaxies will have a huge leg up on any other MMORPG; you already know the plot going into the game, so you can jump right in.

I suppose if I had an extra $10 per month lying around I could have stayed with the full version of the game until Galaxies comes out. But with no real investment in my character, why bother??