Vendetta: my first few hours
Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 5:45 pm
So I decided to give Vendetta Online a try to see how it tickled my sci-fi gaming fancy. What follows is my first impressions of the experience.First: Graphics. I had slightly higher expectations until I saw the download was only about 200 megs or so and that this game can be run on most popular tablets. The textures are a bit "plain jane" and many of the ship designs fall into the old "it has wings... in space" trap that I believe comes from the designers being from a species that hasn't much time actually building things in and living in space.Next: Interface. Pretty good, pretty good. It's got all the basics laid out in a nice orderly fashion, no holding down the mouse button to navigate through 17 nested menus only to find out you need to be docked at a station to do what you wanted to do in the first place (yes I'm looking at YOU EvE online) The controls feel quick and responsive and the HUD is decently easy to read at a quick glance. My only gripe here is that the 3rd person camera (something I really enjoy) is all but useless and there's no free camera movements or zooming in and out (again ala EvE online) which was another let down. I really like the sector map being laid out as a standard grid because, lets face, this is more than likely how it will work when space travel becomes main stream.And: Game play. The game plays well for the most part, though I admit I haven't gotten to the mining bit though I'm avoiding it on purpose because I KNOW i'll be disappointed. I should note that this is not a slam against the developer but rather me having VERY specific ideas about how I think space mining should work and I have yet to see a game do it just so. My other gripe is combat. While the ship's view moves well, it can take up to 5 to 10 seconds for the weapons to catch up, this means while your tracking the enemy dead on, your weapons are firing off to right or left field and because of this, I think I killed more enemies by accidently flying into them while waiting for my weapons to join me in the fight.All in all, it's a decent game, it feels a bit like an easier to play version of EvE that's lighter on your download times as well, add to this that you can play it while on the go and you have a neat little game.Leks