I’ll admit that I have a peculiar fascination with the EVE franchise, even though I’ve yet to partake in anything related to EVE Online first-hand. There’s something decidedly hardcore about CCP Games’ flagship title that speaks to me, and although Dust 514 didn’t turn out so excitingly, the spinoff certainly still piqued my interest.
At GDC 2014 last month, Garrett and I were given a quick preview of EVE: Valkyrie, the newest member of the CCP’s lineup. Valkyrie is a multiplayer dogfighting shooter set in the EVE universe, where you take the reigns of a single ship and careen right into the midst of frantic space battles. It’s an Oculus Rift exclusive, and although we’ve received very little information regarding what the game’s actually about, we did get a brief amount of hands-on time with CCP’s new title.
The game launches you into an open space arena, and gives your ship a constant forward momentum, which provides for a slightly on-rails feel to gameplay. Using a gamepad, you can move your ship’s orientation with the left analog stick, speed up with the A button or slow down with the B button, and shoot with the right trigger. The Oculus Rift will allow you to look around at your environs in space and lock onto other ships by pressing the left trigger. Releasing the left trigger after setting a lock will fire off a missile, and pressing the Y button will allow you to cancel locks that have been directed at your ship.
Garrett and I both played short deathmatch-style matches against bots, and I was enthused by the pretty cool ambience provided by the Oculus Rift headset. The demo had some stellar sound design and I liked that I could look around and see other ships, planets, and asteroids within the vastness of space. Admittedly, the visuals were not the best around, but that could have been due to the dev kit we were using.
We were told that Valkyrie will be a PC-exclusive, and that’s about it. For more information on what the game is about and how it fits into the EVE universe, we’ll have to wait for Fanfest next month!
Som Pourfarzaneh / Som has been hanging out with the MMORPG.com crew since 2011, and is an Associate Director & Lecturer in Media, Anthropology, and Religious Studies. He’s a former Community Manager for Neverwinter, the free-to-play Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG from Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment, and is unreasonably good at Maze Craze for the Atari 2600. You can exchange puns and chat (European) football with him on Twitter @sominator.
