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Speaking of throttle, this was the one element that wasn’t incredibly clear on the UI. While I’m sure it exists amid the windows and targeting panels and shield indicators, I don’t remember looking at the screen and thinking “Oh, there’s my speed and throttle indicator.” Speed can be judged by the flare of your exhaust ports, but the hardcore among us will want to find that little indicator especially during PvP.

Can you imagine seeing this many ships flying at you?

Speaking of PvP, I was thrilled to learn that fifty versus fifty versus fifty PvP will be in the Jumpgate Evolution experience. This was discussed by Codemasters’ David Solari during his JGE presentation, and the brand new trailer that they’ve unveiled gives a sense of that epic combat feeling of massive amounts of ships flying at each other at the same time. On top of that, the NetDevil and Codemasters teams have also said that instanced PvP action will also be available. Although there are a number of vocal Jumpgate fans that are against instanced PvP, I really enjoyed the concept in Warhammer Online, and I think it’s a great way for people to jump in and jump out of the game if they only have a few minutes of free time to spare.

Finally, there were a number of small things that I noticed while playing the game that I thought were remarkably neat. While using the mouse and the keyboard, I noticed that there was a small targeting reticule that would help me to “lead” the target that I was locked on. The grouping system and the integrated voice chat were very helpful. The different color exhaust port / afterburners are a nice touch to help identify opposing factions.

At the end of the day, I was ecstatic with what I saw with Jumpgate Evolution. From a space combat gamer’s perspective, it feels like the NetDevil team has gone out of their way to insure that all of the little things that we enjoy have been integrated into the game. Space feels denser than I ever thought was possible, and the overall quality just seems to be so much better than any game I’ve ever seen in this stage of production. With months until release, the NetDevil developers can make this game into something incredible for space combat gamers.