Hands-on: CCP’s Project Nova melds fast-action gunplay with EVE Online’s universe - hoffmanabad1967

Reykjavík, Iceland—Project Legion, we hardly even knew ye'. The Microcomputer-centric first-mortal shooter CCP unofficially-officially announced two years ago is now on the side-formally dead. Not that you'd necessarily card, because a radical PC-centrical basic-somebody shooter has stepped in to fill its shoes.

Thursday at EVE Fanfest 2016, CCP on the side-officially announced "Project Nova." It's the heir-obvious to Project Legion, which itself was the heir to almost-dead-PS3-exclusive Junk 514.

The broad strokes are jolly similar. Project Nova is a free-to-bet shooter that draws from the EVE Online universe, kick in a proximo Current Eden. IT's hard to say how much that will actually factor into the gamey because, you know, multiplayer shooter. Merely I expect it'll be similar to EVE Valkyrie, which utilized the lore for flavor, mostly.

So how does IT play? Because yes, it's playable—which is more than could ever so be said nearly Project Legion. Earlier today we had a concise workforce-along with a super-early version of Project Nova (I'm not even surely CCP would call IT "Alpha" yet). And by brief, I mean I played two rounds of a node-capture mode, similar to Martin Luther King Jr. of Capitol Hill/Crazy Riley B King.

There's exclusively incomparable map at the moment, gear up in a large hangar. Matches are six-connected-six, which seems a routine distributed for the sizing of the map. [UPDATE:Our demonstrate was sise-on-six but CCP confirms the plan is for 16-on-16 in the future.] The objectives give teams decent direction to fire conflict, but if you get lost or disjointed from the aggroup you'll embody off on your ain awhile.

It's a class-based shooter. I spent most of my fourth dimension playing as a Vanguard—a semi-heavy assault trooper with cardinal treble-loudness SMGs. Classes in the exhibit are your standard assault/sniper/shotgun/heavily for the most part, though equipment varies—the "Cloaking-and-Shotgun" class proved pretty popular in our tests.

What's missing from this demo however is some sense of the big picture. That's a shame, if single because a legible number of masses are going to get their hands on the game this weekend and…intimately, at the here and now it plays pretty much equal an amalgamation of other shooters. The ultra-spic look of the parvenue Unreal Tournament. The shooting and drive lately-geological era Halo. The classify system of a lightweight Battlefield.

And it does those things well. Dust 514 was often criticized because it had any amazing gimmick ideas ligature into EVE Online, but the core shooter component was underwhelming. With Nova, CCP's Snorri Árnason says they're focusing on the "Through the Gun" undergo—sounds, feedback, movement, et cetera—to create a game that's "immediately accessible to all shooter fans."

"This has to be a eager shooter, before anything else," said Árnason. Which is all well and good. There's no use making the same mistakes American Samoa Dot 514, and it's innocuous to say Project Nova needs to be a right shooter first and foremost.

On that point are much grander plans for Project Nova though—plans that Don River't at all follow through from this little fiel shooter demo. The prospicient-term vision for Nova is to settle to the Dust 514 dream, blending Nova together with EVE Online.

Non in real-time, intrinsically. Árnason says that just "one pct of one-hundredth" of Evening Online players ever so used the sincere-time feedback aspects of Debris. But the idea of the Planetary Conquering mode, wherein corporations battled for control of planets, is something Árnason wants to resurrect in Nova—and more.

"What I'd like to make out is some sort out of scheme link," says Árnason. In this hypothetical situation, He sees a corporation in EVE Online and in Nova linking upward, potentially by way of a structure created in EVE, and then hooking together so each side gets money or other resources. "That future is every an open map," says Árnason. "We can do whatever we want, after we demonstrate the correct shooting mechanics."

It's butt-up developing, and talking to Árnason it seems like this is the antonym of Dust—a game that seemingly started with a grand architectural plan but could ne'er nail down the inside information. The downside: The demo hither at Fanfest is not nearly as inspired, mainly because none of those big-film details are in yet.

Which is not to aver information technology's bad. Information technology's not! It's a perfectly fine twist connected the orbit gunman. But it's clearly early years for development, and I have a feeling plenty of the great unwashe will walk off from Nova this week feeling like information technology's deficient a hook, a standout feature, not realizing that those are on the long-term roadmap.

Fundament line

The dream of a Dust 514 on PC is placid compelling. As someone who terminate't fetch himself to bring up EVE Online but enjoys shooters, I'd honey a more palatable agency of interfacing with that universe.

A lot of pieces pauperism to fall into place though, and therein case CCP's newly conservative approach to development—where games need to prove their worth from concept to prototype to "Project" phase to greenlit cast to eventual release—English hawthorn trauma a game like Nova, which has a grand visual sensation but can't inevitably communicate that to players without an astounding amount of up-head-on work.

Point existence: If you realise Project Nova footage and you think "Well, that just looks like a taxonomic group arena shooter," you're non wrong. The surprisal is that'sexactly what CCP wants at the moment—because if you think it looks like a competent hitman, so it's already avoided the biggest of Junk's problems.

The existence-spanning vision fanny come later.

[Revealing: Until recently, my roommate worked at Lewis PR as part of CCP's external PR team up. He no longer does, but due to the timing of his deviation we're devising a note of it during Fanfest 2016 anyway.]

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/414568/hands-on-ccps-project-nova-melds-fast-action-gunplay-with-eve-onlines-universe.html

Posted by: hoffmanabad1967.blogspot.com

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