The Machinery: Space Cowboy Online

Free MMOs are dangerous ground to tread. They are numerous, briefly exhilarating, and almost all entirely the same. You might've heard of Space Cowboy - for a free game, it's fairly polished. However, like most free MMOs, it's fun for a while, has an interesting take on combat, and ultimately its grind is too steep and too repetitive to enjoy.

A plane performs a barrel roll, one of the basic flying maneuvers.

The main draw of Space Cowboy is its flying; it’s well implemented and lag free, and it's really the first thing you'll notice about the game. However, flying is not only very easy to master, but also relatively inconsequential in combat past a certain level of familiarity. That is, without a basic mastery of flying, you’re going to die pretty fast. However, mastering the basics only takes an hour or so, and there's not much to learn afterwards. The divide between an expert player and a competent player is very small when compared to, say, that divide in Counter Strike, or Street Fighter. This is one of Space Cowboy’s more conspicuous flaws.

So what does being good at Space Cowboy mean, if being a skilled pilot is only a small part of it? If you’ve ever played an MMO before you probably know the answer: being good at Space Cowboy means being a higher level than your opponent, and having nicer items than your opponent. Essentially, being better than someone at Space Cowboy means playing Space Cowboy more than that person, and very little else.

This is especially true with respect to Space Cowboy’s grind. Almost all of the enemies have very generic habits and patterns, making your fighting tactics for each enemy almost exactly the same. There is only one quest per level, and sometimes not even that. Also, for a good four to five levels, you’re cordoned into a small area, and essentially forced to fight the same mobs over and over again for a good six hours before you level out of the area, and the levels only get longer the stronger you become.

Because the game is almost entirely level based instead of skill based, it takes a while to even get up to the point where you can viably engage other players. But even when you get up to there, the is also almost entirely about your items and your stats.

So many stats, so little actual skill

Even though the flying is fun and new, Space Cowboy cannot let go of the familiar grind, and that is its major flaw. Even amazing flying talent will only get you so far, as you’ll be shot down time and time again by people far higher level than you, because they’ve sunk more time into the dry grind. This is not incredibly surprising; after all, Space Cowboy is an MMO. However, after a few hours of learning to fly, it’s disappointing to realize that you’ve only just mastered the skills you need to start another long, boring, familiar grind.