Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

After selecting my avatar, I put on my headphones and jumped into the game. In many of the previous interviews I worked on with Producer Hermann Peterscheck, he and I constantly discussed how focused his team had been on iteration. The first glance at the player screen made it incredibly obvious that the constant iteration cycles had definitely paid off in the user interface. Old space combat gamers will instantly recognize many of the elements of the genre’s standard HUD. From the opponent viewing window to the center targeting reticule, there’s a lot that stays true to that old formula. Shield status and hull integrity are also quickly recognizable and located at the top of the screen.

The graphics in JGE are incredibly varied from one zone or ship to the next.

However, a bevy of MMO related options have been integrated into the UI. At any given moment, a player can access their email, inventory, character info, mission status, galaxy map, social functions, and more. These were all put at the bottom of the screen in a rather inconspicuous little row. If players want to access any of these options, they can quickly hit their middle mouse button and click on anything on their screen. Since there were no joysticks readily available at the event, how selecting these options works in stick mode is still a mystery to me.

Speaking of the joystick, I would have loved to try the game with one in my hands for a number of reasons. In most space combat games, I tend to feel that throttle control is an incredibly important weapon in most dogfights. If you have solid control of your throttling, whether to slow down to perform a tight turn to keep your bead on a target or to keep distances close while protecting another ship, your results in a space combat game will be exceptional. An enemy may have bigger guns, but if you can consistently stay behind them, you’ll win in the long run. While the mouse and keyboard certainly allowed me to maneuver well enough to get through the first few levels, I didn’t have the tight sort of control that I felt would be available with a joystick.

That’s not to say that the mouse and keyboard combination was inadequate. On the contrary, I thought the mouse and keyboard control was exceptional in JGE and it didn’t hinder my progress at all. I simply know that the joystick control would have given me a greater sense of precision, especially on my turns, aiming and throttle.