Perpetuum is an MMO that allows you to customize your very own robot to your liking. Whether you want to be a transport robot or a combat robot, Perpetuum has you covered. The world is shaped by the players and their corporations (similar to guilds). Territories will fluctuate, robots will be lost, and people may abandon you — only time will reveal these things.
So why don’t I like Perpetuum? Perhaps it’s because I spent a lot of my time walking around and harvesting minerals to turn in for robo-bucks to try and get a better robot. It’s not that I don’t like that type of gameplay, I fondly recall hours spent in Freelancer convoying minerals from one space system to another. The problem I had with Perpetuum is that it’s just so … esoteric.
I completed the tutorials, tinkered with my robot’s gadgets, took a few missions, and came away feeling a bit empty. Perpetuum is not for me and I could tell that right from the beginning, but it could be right up your alley, and if it is, I urge you to give it a shot. For once, this is not a free-to-play game, but there is a 15-day free trial for you to jump into.
The tutorials do a decent enough job of introducing you to the basic mechanics at play. Unfortunately, as soon as you finish them, you’ll be left wondering “What do I do now?” NO WORRIES! I’m here to tell you: join a corporation, take assignments, ask the chat. Joining a corporation allows you to have people to play with, and more importantly, gives you incentive to play PvP. Although I didn’t experience any PvP in my brief stint with Perpetuum, from what I hear, that’s where the meat of the game is at. I’m just not into PvP in MMOs since they all too often boil down to min/maxing.
You at least get to control your robot during combat instead of simply playing a numbers game. Perpetuum encourages you to use your environment to hide from sight if you need a moment to rethink or reload. You can even equip your robot to multitask: at one point, I was harvesting a plant AND shooting a robot at the same time. If only my childhood robo-friends could see me now!
Oh, and there’s menus. LOTS of menus. Not all of them are explained to the player in the tutorials, but there’s an in-game guide — with a search function! — that I found completely amazing. Seriously, any time I had a question, that guide pointed me in the right direction.
I almost feel guilty for not enjoying the luscious and beautifully crafted world. Part of me just wanted to walk around forever to take it all in, if only the initial walk speed wasn’t incredibly slow. I really wanted to do enough missions to upgrade my robot, but all of the decent looking ones were incredibly expensive. Perhaps if you stick it out with a corporation they will be grateful enough to loan you some robo-bucks? I’m not sure, really.
Perpetuum is not my kind of game, though I almost wish it was. It is a true sandbox MMO, something that carries a lot of weight with it. One thing I thought was incredibly great was that you could be a robot specializing in cargo transporting and play the game just fine! More MMOs (and games in general) need to give the play that kind of freedom.
Reading stories of what the corporation side of the game holds is what initially intrigued me; sadly, they’ll have to remain just that: other people’s stories. Everyone from the in-game chat was really helpful when I asked my many game-related questions, so that should be your go-to resource if you get as confused as I did. If what I struggled with sounds intriguing, give the 15-day free trial a whirl!
