The Academy was screwing up yesterday, so I manually looked for a Merc game. Found one with one spot open and figured what the heck.

Full 32 man games. Full corps with full loadouts (heavies, scouts etc). Eve ship stuff from above. Or something coming down from above. Full voice chat with objective callouts. Revives, resupplies, the full experience.

It was a thing of beauty. I had felt pretty smug with my 5.1 headset/mic and KB/M on Academy servers. This here - I was getting stomped hard. And it was awesome.

Compared to Academy games, it might as well have been two different games.

Inadequate to what? A PC?

Cuz i can't think of any game on the PS3 (or any console for that matter) that has keyboard/mouse support.

Completely agree. There is no comparison between playing a random battle and playing a fully synced battle with your corporation. Unfortunately, CCP doesn't really have a grasp on how to present this extremely drastic difference to new players.

Academy is fun because there is no SP/gear gap....what you said has nothing to do with that gap......there is no reason why "big corp battles" could also do away with SP/gear and have the matches based on skill not how long you have let passive Sp accrue.

If being fully loaded is so very very fun then why not let everyone be fully loaded? rather then waiting and grinding against horrible players with 10 million SP?

I noticed that too, its a bloody console game, on the PS3. TBH CCP should never have bothered implementing KBM support to try and placate PC FPS players (I've played many myself over the years). For the PS3 I just force myself to use DS3, I may be rubbish at it, but I am slowly getting better.

Eve online had a very premature launch. In fact, Eve Online started out with fat less features and limited visuals than how DUST has started now. Yes, it needs work, but that's the whole point of having free updates and constant hotfixes for the next ten years. Just like Eve and just like Rome, DUST was not built in a day.

Eve online had a very premature launch. In fact, Eve Online started out with fat less features and limited visuals than how DUST has started now. Yes, it needs work, but that's the whole point of having free updates and constant hotfixes for the next ten years. Just like Eve and just like Rome, DUST was not built in a day.

A short voiceover cut scene saying something like "New Eden is a harsh place, and you're not going to make it far on your own. You must find other mercenaries who share your goals and vision to fight by your side, and you by theirs." With some quick snips of how to invite players to squad, or search corporations, and then maybe some cut scene style "gameplay" where a Merc is getting owned and goes down, but as the voice says "you must find other mercenaries..." another merc comes into the shot and revives the guy, would do wonders.

Cons:
Dated presentation/visuals
Sloppy, imprecise shooter controls
Inadequate keyboard/mouse support
Future potential tied to EVE Online <<<-----why is this a CON?

I rather get a guy who doesn't paint himself as a fanboi of other games and takes every game for itself from the raw. Clearly this guy hates New Eden and doesn't understand it.

four-star restaurant (don't go to a five star, they are not fulfilling, ever, and it always costs you more for less, a lot less).

Hate to be the one to say it, but restaurants only go to three star. Hotels go up to five, but restaurants go up to three. And earning even one is a prestigious award.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_Guide#Stars

he listed the joining of EVE and DUST as a CON.

Academy is fun because there is no SP/gear gap....what you said has nothing to do with that gap......there is no reason why "big corp battles" could also do away with SP/gear and have the matches based on skill not how long you have let passive Sp accrue.

If being fully loaded is so very very fun then why not let everyone be fully loaded? rather then waiting and grinding against horrible players with 10 million SP?

Yeah cuz roles in FPSs is a new and undiscovered idea that only just now was discovered by CCP. Enemy Territory, BF1942 and Team Fortress are just phantoms of our imagination.

Also the SP/level system comes from RPGs not MMO....most MMOs these days are trashing that RPG model for the simple reason that it sucks.

Leveling up tells a story...it does not allow you to write that story yourself. Great for RPG story telling...terrible for sandbox MMOs. Even worse for an FPS MMO that by its very nature is action based.

In BF1942 and TF2, your roles are very fixed. In TF2, as a medic, you're a medic. You do nothing but heal. Sure, you can shoot, but the only role you're truly suited for is healing. Engineers are for area denial, as are, to some degree, the demoman. To some degee, the same with BF1942.

My point is that you can be much more flexible, or specialised, in DUST. If you're a logi, you're not stuck to healing; you can provide spawn uplinks, ammo refills, or reviving players. If you're a scout, you're not stuck in the role of using your mobility to get close and deal tons of damage (you can snipe instead, or be a quick AV suit). If you're an assault, you're not stuck using the assault rifle, as you can use MD's instead - effectively a cross between the demoman and the heavy of TF2.

Effectively, your role is what you want to define it to be, even if you pick a specific dropsuit.

Dust is a PC game on console. It's fair to give it a PC MMO site review (there are no MMOs on console in the first place). KBM support is bad, not only for lack of menus.

What I don't get is this guy claims he's a hardcore EVE player [even I don't play on my toilet], yet he can't understand how the skill system works or anything. It's like he dumbed himself down on purpose for no real reason other than attempt to put himself in a 'true newbie's' shoes, and went too far. [The quote, "You can never go full ******!" from Tropic Thunder comes to mind]. And the fact that he listed the joining of EVE and DUST as a CON. What the blue hell man; any EVE fanboy/girl would put that as a pro five times over.

Other than that, it was a solid review, with some tones of legitimate concern for the game, which is good. And he does have some fair points about piloting controls and KB/M, the almost sluggish movement on the ground [don't get me started on getting stuck on everything in the terrain], stuff like that.

There are several MMOs on consoles, and there have been since a console generation back. Everquest OA, FF XI, Phantasy Star Online, and FF XIV (to ps3 I think?) at some point. Those are the ones I can think of anyhow.


MMO?

Dust isn't much of an MMO or an RPG though. That's not meant to be an insult necessarily, I'm just thinking that outside of the chat and corp system - it's basically a game with randomized team deathmatch and poor matchmaking. There's a gear/class element, but the classes/gear remain very simple:

Race/class?

e.g. : There are four races, and 4 "classes", but only 11 of those possible combos are available right now - and only 4 of them have much definition role-wise.

Gear?

e.g. : Compared to what one might consider other MMOs (or even regular console RPGs) the weapon choice tends to be very restricted within type. Most weapons inside a given type have basically three weapons (std gun, adv gun, pro gun). Sometimes there's a variant, in which case you might add "different adv gun and different pro gun" to the mix... anything else is probably an Aurum variant of one of those.

Try to imagine if you played an RPG as a sword expert, and by game's end your choices were: Broadsword (you could use this as the start), Broadsword +1, and Broadsword +2. This is pretty accurate to Dust for specializing in a given weapon, most don't have "lots" of types like ARs do. The weapons themselves look mostly identical to prior weapons and act identically in every way but slight damage increases.

Story?

What can be called a story isn't accessible in Dust... at all. Aside from the intro movie, in what way, shape, or form does any player have any involvement in the universe (personally)? Some MMOs aren't great at this either mind you, but the extent of player engagement in the world is instant battles. The instant battles have no apparent attachment to anything. It's like if WoW or Everquest had launched only with a PvP arena, which you can level at.

The names of corporations, the roles of governments, the way players might interact or influence any of it is.... completely missing. A player has no stake in anything, and the impetus to get stronger for a new player has to come from wanting higher skills for more team deathmatches. Team deathmatches where the matchmaking is sketchy, and you can't necessarily choose your team.

So, the game is completely blank here. Any story would have to be gleaned from reading websites. The universe doesn't exist outside some art design for Dust players. There are no "quests", there are no "stories", there is no "content" - there are only random team PvP matches, and starting tomorrow - what are basically arranged pvp matches between player "clans/guilds". All of it exist outside the universe - especially for a random ps3 user.

And unfortunately again all the people in the beta get a massive head start. No one wants to admit that the SP gap creates a completely unbalanced game, but I bet you a lot of people would have quit had CCP reset everyone's account at the launch of the game yesterday.