Anyway, I was playing Evochron Alliance 2.0 (does anyone still have 1.0 anywhere?) and I was reminded of one of the things that I kind of miss: getting close to stuff.
Here is me flying close to another ship in EA:
Now, try to get that close to another ship in EM. You can't do it. There's something about the view angle or ship scales or something that doesn't work that way.
Here is EM:
It's not that I want to fly that close to stuff, but when you DO get that close, there is a sense of urgency, of immediacy. Even if you're working asteroids, a big asteroid would fill up your screen before you crashed into it. The immediacy of combat is quite different too. In EA, you can fight so close that you can see the make and model of the other ship clearly. In EM, the ship is farther away. More realistic, but not as immediate. Of course, the graphics in EA are not nearly as breathtaking overall, but EM is very advanced in that regard.
Also, the feel of flying the ships in EA is quite different. The smaller ships were...zippier. I think the physics settings were set for more action, and so everything is a bit twitchier. Now, at the time, you might not have noticed, but after sitting behind the stick of a Starmaster for a while, jetting around in EA feels like riding a rocket bareback like in Dr. Strangelove. VERY responsive.
[Edited on 3-4-2011 by Nigel_Strange]
