As mentioned last show, after an unexpected turn of events, I somehow found myself playing an extra MMO amid my already packed schedule, so here is a bonus Op Cheapseats reviewlet for a strange and quirky little bit of online fun; Pirate Galaxy, which can be found here:

http://pirate-galaxy.gamigo.com/

It's a browser-based game, so negligible download, and is Free 2 Play, in the no-sub, item-shop sense of the term.

In the distant future, mankind has been driven to the brink and near extinction by the evil Mantis empire. Reduced to the status of
guerrilla fighters, rebels and pirates, the remainder of humanity now fights a hit and run war on the worlds of the Mantis, using
atmospheric capable star fighters to weave through enemy lines and hit strategic objectives hard. The battle to reclaim the heritage of mankind starts on the remote world of Vega 2, where you arrive in a modified transport with a pair of blasters and a thirst for revenge.

Three Good Things:

• Novel
  Despite being about spaceships, the actual gameplay takes place on the surfaces of canyon-based planets. The ship hovers a fixed distance above the floor and can't climb canyon walls, despite being orbit-capable under its own power. Functionally then, the player is more in the nature of a tank or hovercraft than spaceship, scootering about the planet maps carrying out the missions. Saying all that, the basic gameplay is a lot of fun, being sufficiently light and carefree to complement the more serious MMO as a good drop-in, fifteen minute sort of thing.
  
• Slick
  The audio and visuals are very well done, particularly the space-based travel/lobby/shop sections, with music and camera-work that comes together well to create a stirring sense of purpose to it all. The art is somewhat cartoony in style, rather than the stark elegance of something like EVE Online, but works well with the overall theme. Ship paint schemes are extensively featured and while the various ship models used seemed broadly quite similar, the planetscapes I've seen so far are surprisingly different and interesting.
  
• Unlocks
  As befits a renegade army on the run, the equipment upgrades must first be taken from the enemy, in the form of blueprint unlocks, before the hangar robots can sell you one to equip. Although these can be found by accident, the necessary blueprint unlocks are also the focus of many of the side missions on offer. I quite like the sense of steadily increasing potency this brings, and non-essential blueprints, like ship paint designs can be found as drops as well. Similarly, travel routes to other worlds must first be probed for, forming a similar unlocking mechanic to the galaxy map, and again, the completionist in me enjoys seeing the unknown gradually revealed bit at a time.

Three Bad Things:

• Ammo
  The ships have no autoattack, and the various hotkeys cost harvestable Energy spheres to use. This is especially noticeable with the 'Gun' hotkey; there is no autoattack, and the blasters cost an increasing amount of energy per shot, as you equip more powerful upgrades. This all means that the time you're onto the Vega 1/Lyris stuff, you'll likely be spending nearly as much time harvesting Energy as fighting stuff, as you stock up ahead of fights. Running out of Energy mid-combat leaves you able only to flee if you can, and even the Afterburner needs Energy to use. Gamigo understand that this is a problem and would like to help you, by giving you the opportunity to buy big stacks of Energy, Crystal and more, for real money, in the item shop! Oh I know, they've got to earn their money somehow, and I personally don't mind the downtime that harvesting enforces, but this will annoy many, I suspect.
  
• Classes
  The Vega 3 starbase has a variety of ship types for sale, which based on their available slots correspond roughly to tank, healer, debuff and damage dealer. All very well and good, and the sort of thing an MMO is supposed to have, but the speed and pacing of basic gameplay most reminds me of Auto Assault, a game in which traditional party-based coherence was extremely hard work, due to everyone moving about too fast and far apart. I've yet to actually try group work to be fair, but I suspect it'll be hard work here, for many of the same reasons it was in Auto Assault, and even then, it might just be easier to bring a full team of DPS types, rather than work the usual tank-healer-damage sort of thing. How well differentiated classes will actually work in this sort of game, I've yet to see. Perhaps I just found the tired old Trinity somehow inappropriate in a game about pew pew spaceships.
  
• Clicky
  The game seems a little floatey on the controls. It features click-to-move, with left click being a combined target/move to/autofollow and right-click being a non-targeting move to command. Trouble is, the speed the ship cruises along at means you reach a distantly clicked move-to point very quickly, necessitating many such clicks to get about. This also gets quite frantic if you want to try combat more advanced than following the target, shooting. Since most of the Mantis all close to melee range when engaged, you just end up  parked in front of each other trading blows until one of you blows up. Use of alternate LMB/RMB is hectic, but can allow you to kite them a bit more effectively. WASD keys work, but are a bit sluggish; holding W while pressing D will make your ship turn, but with a noticeable delay. Possibly all this stuff is remapable and I didn't notice, but it just seemed like ship control could be a bit tighter to me.

I do like this one a lot, but probably not as a 'serious MMO', whatever that means. As a filler, in short bursts when there isn't time for an extended session of something more in depth, Pirate Galaxy serves admirably to entertain. I'm not sure I'd put any money into it though; to me, the harvesting seems a necessary part of the game, and anyway, their tariff is a bit steep for the knickknacks you can buy in. For example, the Anjin 1450 is the next ship up from the starter noobship, requires level 7 to fly and 126 Crystal in-game, which will take about ten or so missions to earn, but if you are lazy, you can just buy one from the item shop for about 7 Euros/10 Dollars/6 Pounds. I have no idea what that is compared to other F2P games since they all set their own markets, but seems somewhat poor value for money to me.

Still, that is just me, and apart form grumblings about RMT which probably deserve their own post shortly, I'm finding Pirate Galaxy well worth a look.

Final Verdict: Casual Carefree Fun. An excellent drop-in MMO for those smaller sessions.

Still got the Vanguard write-up in the works, and it'll feature on the very next podcast before that, so watch this space!