Review:
Outer Empires: An MMO for PC and Iphones

I happen to believe in the potential of the Iphone. Since the opening of the app store, it has been said that for any situation, there’s an app for that. It’s become our generation’s Macguyver, A-team, or Wesley Crusher. So obviously I wasn’t surprised at all when it was announced that a new space MMO was to be released. Like a 2D Eve Online, with a PC in-browser client and Iphone APP so you can play from your desktop, and then take it on the go: to class, the grocery store, bordello… the choice is yours. I wasn’t surprised, but I was intrigued.

Well it was released, and its name is Outer Empires. You can find it at outer-empires.com and it’s free to play (Unless you want bonus subscriber perks). I’ve been playing it for a couple weeks now, and for the most part I’ve enjoyed my time with it.

If you’ve played Eve Online, you basically know what to expect. You start out with a little dinky ship, that can’t do dick all, and as you progress, doing the same missions over and over, until you make enough space cash and experience to buy a bigger ship, to do bigger jobs and make more money. In this package the fun comes from the community.

Like World of Warcraft, there’s guilds you can create or join. Their called factions in this, and unlike World of Warcraft the factions pretty much control the game. You can colonize planets which turns those systems into your territory. There are a number of large factions constantly warring against each other, and there’s even a news feed to keep track of the politics of all the big factions. In fact I’ve watched long conversations about the politics of the game in the general chat go on for hours.

There’s a real feel that the things you do as a faction seriously impact the universe and the game as a whole. You’ll want to play harder and be more successful so that you can help your faction succeed on a galactic level.

But how is the game really? The graphics are very underwhelming, but for a browser/Iphone game you can’t be expecting too much. The game can also be very clunk to control, made all the worse by some of the worst lag I have come across. It’s not always very laggy, but during peak times it can take minutes just to undock from a station.