Project Nova

CCP’s efforts to meaningfully entangle FPS and MMO continue.

- 

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 – Dust players fighting across Eve’s own planets for the glory of Eve’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’s starting from stronger foundations, Dust’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’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’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’s aesthetic is just as gloomy and unloveable as Dust