DUST 514, the multiplayer-only sci-fi first-person shooter from CCP Games that’s set in its EVE Online universe, finally went into its open beta on Tuesday. Now anyone with a PlayStation 3 can download the game from the PlayStation Network’s new free-to-play section, and get started jumping out of spaceships and overrunning ground installations.
The question is, would you actually want to? Here’s a look at one of the gaming world’s longest-anticipated titles from someone who started playing as soon as the beta went open.
Prepare to die
No, I’m serious. Get ready to die once you log into DUST 514. A lot. It may not have EVE Online’s learning curve, but it’s still pretty brutal even by first-person shooter standards.
One reason is that it’s an MMOFPS, or a massively-multiplayer online RPG combined with a first-person shooter. And it’s an MMO with an extremely complicated skill tree, which you start at roughly the bottom of. Worse, the gear you buy tends to have a limited number of uses, because it dies with your character.
Another is that it takes place in the same world as EVE Online. I don’t mean it uses the same backstory, I mean it takes place on the same servers (or at least ones that are linked to EVE’s main Tranquility server). That means that for better or for worse, DUST 514 players are being swept up into EVE’s byzantine political intrigues, and large EVE corporations are doing things like performing orbital strikes. Soon they’ll even be able to sponsor favored players through in-game currency transfer.
So basically, you’re going up against people who not only have much higher skill levels — which have a significant effect on things like weapon damage and accuracy — they’re also fighting for their “serious business of internet spaceships” which has been going on for a decade or so. Fun times!
Grading on a curve
If you’re willing to take a few bullets, you’ll still have to spend awhile poring over arcane listings of skills and equipment, and figuring out which are best for your character. There are online guides on the DUST 514 forums which help with that, but most aren’t that detailed or rigorous, and it doesn’t help that things may have changed significantly since they were written.
Once you get past all of that, what you’re left with is a pretty generic sci-fi shooter, which only has deathmatch (“Assault”) and capture-the-flag (“Skirmish”) modes and has seemingly only one map. One is left with the impression that, like in EVE Online, the real game in DUST 514 is about min-maxing your character’s stats and equipment. And in order to do that, you’ll probably have to get involved with an EVE corporation, for better or worse.
Looking on the bright side
Still, DUST 514 is free-to-play, and its customization options can be pretty engrossing. It’s also (sadly) unusual among first-person shooters in that it allows you to create a female character, although the EVE Online community is notoriously misogynistic.
Since it’s still in beta right now, that means they’ll be adding more to it at some point. But how long it takes, and how much of an improvement it makes, no one can say for sure. And given EVE’s culture of sadism and sexism, it’s debatable whether or not it’s worth sticking around for.
