I’m not a fan of machinima – what little I have seen has a tendency to consist of crude jokes and internet memes filmed in the medium of Half-Life and Halo. But this week, however, someone brought my attention to something that completely changed my outlook on what combining filming and gaming can do.
I have had the pleasure of taking part in the beta for Dust 514 over the past couple of weeks, the PlayStation 3 shooter which is tied in with the EVE Online universe and which will one day see co-operation between players from both titles. It is a very exciting idea, but one that is clearly going to take a while to come to completion. The beta for Dust is very much that, an early version of the game which is undergoing many changes and updates as it progresses. As such, these are just some early impressions of a still relatively low-level grunt.
The idea behind Dust is brilliant in that whatever happens in Eve impacts on Dust as they share the same universe. I can only assume this means that all the Alliances and Corps found in the PC title will eventually be found in Dust, and that the economies of both will be interlinked with chaos in one game causing chaos in the other. If everything works out, developers CCP could be onto a major winner. Though I do wonder what will happen when the PlayStation 4 eventually gets announced and released, will Dust just transfer over there leaving the PS3 version behind? These are questions for another time though.
With E3 around the corner next-gen gaming is the talk of the console town right now. Rumours and opinions are being spread all over the columns and the forums, suggesting anything from what the next Sony and Microsoft consoles will be called, to specs of said consoles, to games that will feature on said consoles and features that they may include. None of these rumours have yet been confirmed but what I’m sure about is the image in my mind…