Dust 514 was a shooter both nourished and suffocated by its link to the cutthroat cosmos of Eve Online. Launched in 2013 and shuttered three years later, it tantalised with the prospect of two genres working in tandem within one universe &ndash; Dust players fighting across Eve&rsquo;s own planets for the glory of Eve&rsquo;s own corporations, while starship captains shelled them from orbit. Sadly, its dreary gunplay paled before the richness of player drama offered by the long-running MMO. While it&rsquo;s starting from stronger foundations, Dust&rsquo;s successor Project Nova already looks like it might end up the same way.CCP has, in fairness, learned a lot from the first game&rsquo;s fate. The shooting still lacks charisma but is a definite step up, closer in terms of pace, handling and map dimensions to Halo than Dust, with a streamlined class system in place of the previous game&rsquo;s opaque load out management. While hardly novel, the guns and abilities lend themselves to some passable team play strategies: a sniper using her active camo and hover jets to flank a horde, for example, while comrades pop healing auras and build turrets on preset pads near the objective. Nova&rsquo;s aesthetic is just as gloomy and unloveable as Dust&rsquo;s, but the fact that scraps now unfold on starship hulls rather than planets at least makes for some spectacular backdrops, with frigates circling over the carnage like angry seabirds.All this reflects the studio&rsquo;s belated realisation that an Eve shooter can&rsquo;t trade on its Eve elements alone &ndash; a realisation that saw it enlisting Sumo Digital&rsquo;s new Nottingham studio, made up of Crytek veterans, to develop Nova&rsquo;s core, while moving the old Dust team back to CCP&rsquo;s Reykjavik offices to strengthen ties to the MMO. &ldquo;It has to be fun to kill someone, over and over again,&rdquo; game director Snorri &Aacute;rnason tells us. &ldquo;It can&rsquo;t rely on other mechanics that are not part of the game to keep it sustainable.&rdquo;A worthy agenda indeed, but Nova doesn&rsquo;t strike us yet as a game that can excel on its own merits, and other developer remarks suggest a lack of confidence in the underpinnings. &Aacute;rnason observes that Nova&rsquo;s team-based wave survival mode Onslaught might &ldquo;mirror&rdquo; the role of asteroid-mining in Eve Online &ndash; that is, something that is &ldquo;inherently not really fun&rdquo;, but a relaxing way of grinding out resources. Game director Steven Clark, meanwhile, comments a little tellingly that CCP&rsquo;s fans have been hankering for &ldquo;something they could pick up and play for 15 minutes while they&rsquo;re waiting for something to happen in Eve&rdquo;. Is Nova an experience in itself, then, or just a way for fans to fill time?The upshot is that the game&rsquo;s most intriguing element is once again its connection to the MMO that spawned it, which CCP is reluctant to discuss at the time of writing: the developer&rsquo;s hope is to sell players on Nova&rsquo;s shooting, then slowly introduce the Eve meta-layer in line with community feedback. The key word, though, is &ldquo;asymmetrical&rdquo;. Events in each game do not transfer across directly and in real time, but pass through a &lsquo;translation layer&rsquo; which gives CCP more control over the effects; this also avoids the problem of each game&rsquo;s networking features (such as voice chat) being dependent on the other, which means that CCP won&rsquo;t have to take Nova offline whenever it performs a major update on Eve.&Aacute;rnason gives the example of an attack on a star base in Eve triggering a clash across the station&rsquo;s surface in Nova, the outcome of which feeds back into the MMO. &ldquo;The Eve owner might get a message that says, &lsquo;Your Citadel was sabotaged, your reinforcement timer is now minus two.&rsquo; That would scare a lot of Eve players, because the whole game is about making sure you&rsquo;re defending on your reinforcement timers.&rdquo; The MMO&rsquo;s unique &lsquo;time dilation&rsquo; feature makes tethering its engagements to those of Nova difficult, however. For the most part, &Aacute;rnason feels the best way to achieve symbiosis between games is via their economies: a Nova player might harvest black oil, for instance, to flog to Eve players via an auction house.All these hypotheticals will come to nothing, however, if the shooting doesn&rsquo;t captivate. The concept of an FPS fighting its corner within an MMO is still arresting, and Nova is very much a game that aims to set wrongs right: CCP&rsquo;s caution about speculating beyond the fundamentals is probably the correct tack to take. But a project with a long tail still needs to make a good first impression, and where Dust felt like it might make history, Nova seems like history on repeat.

Project Nova

Techlife News

UNITED AIRLINES WILL OFFER FREE INTERNET ON FLIGHTS USING SERVICE FROM ELON MUSK'S SPACEX

TECH BILLIONAIRE RETURNS TO EARTH AFTER FIRST PRIVATE SPACEWALK

CLEAN ENERGY: SHE FOUNDED A BUSINESS TO KEEP EV CHARGING STATIONS UP AND RUNNING

STUCK-IN-SPACE ASTRONAUTS REFLECT ON BEING LEFT BEHIND AND ADJUSTING TO LIFE IN ORBIT

UBER TO DISPATCH WAYMO'S ROBOTAXIS IN AUSTIN AND ATLANTA NEXT YEAR

HOW AUTOMAKERS ARE MAKING "RECALLS" EASIER

A VOLUNTEER NETWORK OF INTERPRETERS WANTS TO MAKE REFUGEES' LANGUAGES MORE ACCESSIBLE. WILL AI HELP?

NOT-SO-GREAT EXPECTATIONS: STUDENTS ARE READING FEWER BOOKS IN ENGLISH CLASS

INSTAGRAM MAKES TEEN ACCOUNTS PRIVATE AS PRESSURE MOUNTS ON THE APP TO PROTECT CHILDREN

CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR SIGNS LAWS TO PROTECT ACTORS AGAINST UNAUTHORIZED USE OF AI

LAWSUITS BUFFET US OFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS, SEEKING TO END OR DELAY THEM

GM OFFERING ADAPTERS TO HELP ELECTRIC VEHICLE OWNERS ACCESS TESLA CHARGERS

WHAT THE FED'S RATE CUT COULD MEAN FOR YOU

iPhone 16

GOOGLE WINS LEGAL BID TO OVERTURN 1.5 BILLION EURO ANTITRUST FINE IN EU DIGITAL AD CASE

CONGRESS TARGETS CHINESE INFLUENCE IN HEALTH TECH. IT COULD COME WITH TRADEOFFS

FACEBOOK OWNER META BANS RUSSIA STATE MEDIA OUTLETS OVER 'FOREIGN INTERFERENCE'

LONGSHOREMEN AT KEY US PORTS THREATENING TO STRIKE OVER AUTOMATION AND PAY

GOOGLE'S MILLISECOND AD AUCTIONS ARE THE FOCUS OF A MONOPOLY CLAIM

Time

Are mosquitoes getting more dangerous? - It's not news that mosquitoes carry a number of viruses and parasites that can be harmful to human health, including malaria, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, West Nile virus, and eastern equine encephalitis.

There can be only one Sally Rooney

People US

HALLMARK STAR ASHLEY WILLIAMS Honoring Her Mom On & Off Screen

Overturning the cradle of the Arab Spring

The heartache of calling Israel home

LATINO LEADERS

Newsweek US

Georgia's Nightmare for the West

ALFONSO CUARÓN GOES LONG

KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY TAPPING HIS INNER CHILD

JAMES MIDDLETON From Despair to Hope

Tito Jackson of the Jackson 5 Dies at 70

English

Spanish(español)

Bengali(বাঙালি)

Gujarati(ગુજરાતી)

Hindi(हिन्दी)

Malayalam(മലയാളം)

Tamil(தமிழ்)

Telugu(తెలుగు)

Edge UK

CHANTS OF SENNAAR

MEGHNA JAYANTH

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Post Script

TWO POINT STUDIOS

RAIDERS OF THE ARCHIVE

SPLITGATE 2

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II

Narrative Engine

The Outer Limits

Download your favorite titles and read them offline, anytime and anywhere

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines and newspapers from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from thousands of best-selling titles.

Gift your loved ones with a Magzter Gift Card instantly and give them the freedom to read their favorite magazines from {{magCount}}+ best-selling international titles.

Name

Please fill out this form if you need any help regarding publishing your content on Magzter

Since we launched, Magzter has been committed to partnering with global organizations to provide the greatest possible newsstand technology & service to our customers. Whether you are looking to offer magazine subscriptions to your customer database or just want to learn more, Magzter is committed to helping your business grow. To find out more, please fill out the questionnaire below: