Progressing the Genre
Seemingly, and in fitting with the previous paragraph, Masthead have taken apparent conventions of earlier games and stuck religiously to them and this can be seen none more clearly than in the systems in place for progression. Earthrise offers no fluff, no real reason to be immersed, and certainly nothing much further than hard, laborious grind.
Every aspect of character-development within the game comes from grinding for battle-points, craft-points, or gear. Even deciding which faction you will take side with only really begins once you start to take a flamethrower to the genitals of an opposing minion. Now it is fair to say that every MMORPG contains an element of grind – Ultima Online started the fire, EverQuest poured gasoline onto said fire, and World of Warcraft collected up a shared fire-based knowledge and created lots of little fires with a back-story in an attempt to be clever. Flame based metaphors aside, Earthrise is no different to the average game of the genre in that everything is achieved by small-time genocide against a certain amount of wildlife.
Where things start to err on the side of boredom however, comes with the realisation that the game itself packs about as much feeling and atmosphere as a weekend spent picking at your knee-skin, and dryly observing its size and salty taste. In a nutshell Earthrise is essentially uninteresting and the developer hasn’t done anything to alleviate such feeling. Quests are nothing more than repeatable kill X of Y, and the landscape itself, while pretty, feels as active as a bone yard.
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All that the developers need to do is add in an element of fluff and, for lack of a better word, niceties. While the game is set in a post-apocalyptic future, this doesn’t stop settlements from having a little heart and interest. Take for instance the fellow, destroyed-earth stable mate, Fallout series; within this saga of RPGs is a rich and engaging lore and identity that drives players forward in discovering and exploring the world. For some reason this has all been neglected within Earthrise and everything suffers as a consequence.
Earthrise is not MineCraft or even A Tale in the Desert in that players do not sculpt or design the landscape; there needs to be some essence or interest in which to believe the deception of the virtual world in which you inhabit. It is hard to find another game in the genre in which it is so blatantly pointless and obvious that all you are doing is grinding to the inevitable collection of everything before your interest wanes and you finally rejoin the physical realm once more.
The world of Enterra itself is a beautiful, varied, and vibrant place. The developers have managed to encapsulate the scorched earth appeal of post-apocolyptia without resorting to the all-too familiar greys and browns. It is a crying shame then that this world is nothing more than a lifeless husk for which mobs to inhabit and players to discover with disappointed eyes. There is nothing to uncover, no stories to tease out, no real reason to question why that landmark is there or why this place has an intense population of overgrown rats.
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You cannot escape the damning fact that this is simply an area created to populate with beasties and undesirables. There is no element of interaction with the world or no need to be emotionally invested. This approach was fine a decade ago but surely now we need a nod to progression rather than selfishly wallowing in the past.
The Little Distractions
The problems within Earthrise simply boil down to a lack of anything more. What should be a title full of promise is actually a disappointing exercise in the more tedious aspects of the genre. Masthead's title has other avenues to explore, but the infuriating fact is that the developer neither conceals their identical nature to combat grind, nor does it ever go to lengths to explain or make them different.
Crafting is one of the few distractions from focusing plainly on battle-point grind and this area also lacks in refinement or progression. And while there is a comprehensive list of items and gadgets that can be created by a player, the basics are only uncovered when delving into a forum post on the games-own website.
Designing items is essentially divided into three forms of material: Organic, synthetic, and metal. Now within most games, these resources are collected through nodes and other such pursuits - not in Earthrise - any material of desire is collected by murdering an enemy. Why you may ask that a crocodile is hoarding materials? Well this is one of the many mysterious that evolve in a post-nuclear world.
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So once you have prized materials out of the cold dead hands of monsters, you can begin the crafting procedure - which again will take a trip to the forums to realise that the little inconspicuous machines that only show any worth when scrolling your cursor over them, are the pre-requisite to any artisan pursuit. From here you will need to learn initially the recycling skills to create usable items from your materials, and then learn patterns from your skill menu.
The plain and simple fact of this element of the game is that it just isn't that engaging. To make a chest-piece you must build a frame work, which is a pattern in itself, and then provide 3 organic, 2 synthetic, and 1 metal material- and to add to the tedium of this is the inventory system that neither sort or shows any real worth of an item unless you manually look at each. Essentially it is nothing more inspiring than bringing forth a menu in Lord of the Rings Online and clicking "create x of y". Crafting sums up the game: dull, uninspired, and uninventive.
And further pursuits such as trading or even PvP to this end neither create much excitement or reason to thump your chest with glee. Trading is done with an effective broker system which contradicts the a player-ran community, and PvP is nothing more than an annoyance which most players navigate by pressing the teleporting /unstuck or further alt+F4.
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Almost every element and direction within the game feels slightly undeveloped or just simply bland. There is no distinctive or dynamic part of Earthrise which makes it stand out. Its combat system fails to really conjure anything but annoyance, its questing system devolves the genre back around five years, the crafting is nothing new, and the landscape while expansive and pretty, feels dead. To add a cream filled topping to this sundae of unoriginality is the performance of the game itself which is pitiful and best, a scam for your cash at worst.
Fin
After playing through Earthrise I question the sandbox credentials of this title. Aside from being essentially classless, the game offers little more than grinding combat and crafting and this to me seems a pale reflection of the aforementioned sub-genre. The game is simply one-dimensional and in all honesty I see very little potential for anything else. This is an MMO that needed real player-driven aspects - ownable land, player-built settlements - essentially an earth based Eve Online, alas this isn't and will never be such a thing.
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So the real question to this all is: should I buy this game? The well-publicized performance issues aside, Earthrise itself is just actually a rather bland game. There is nothing on offer here that we haven't seen a thousand times before but done with more inspiration and ambition. Masthead have created something which harkens back to the past and does just that; there is no nod to refinement within the genre or even progressing the sandbox their game purports to be. Personally I wish that we will see a small-time developer with the desire to make something 50% old and 50% new and do away with this full-loot PvP nonsense that bogs most games down.
So in closing if you enjoy grinding for days straight for no real reward other than the knowledge that you have spent a million or so battle-points - go ahead and fill your boots. For anyone else? Wait until more unique titles to hit the market.
