BC-KRTEENS-GAMEON:DE - youth, lifestyle

BC-KRTEENS-GAMEON:DE - youth, lifestyle
Video-game review: 'EverQuest: Evolution'
(PHOTO)
By David Crumm
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
- & quot;EverQuest: Evolution, & quot; Sony Online Entertainment for PC, $29.99 plus monthly online fees. Rating: T (Teen).
As 2003 draws to a close, jumping into Sony's & quot;EverQuest: Evolution & quot; felt like touring a fading old town before moving to a bright new city. We enjoyed wandering around these comfortable fantasy realms, but most of our thoughts were fixed on the horizon: the long-anticipated release of & quot;EverQuest II & quot; next year.
Since 1999, & quot;EverQuest & quot; has been the virtual hometown for thousands of gamers around the world who have a taste for swords and sorcery. When this massively multiplayer online role playing game debuted, players were blown away by the flexible, 3D characters that seemed to have the exciting look of the future, as opposed to the two-dimensional cartoons of the mid-1990s gaming world. & quot;EQ & quot; let us transform ourselves into more than a dozen different races, including dwarfs, trolls, ogres and elves or even exotic lizard-like warriors.
Logging into & quot;Evolution, & quot; we first tried our luck as a & quot;vah shir, & quot; a race of warriors shaped like jungle cats that walk on their hind legs. We roamed through a vast castle encountering a host of other players, explored wooded areas, got lost a couple of times, then slashed our way through some rats, wolves and other predators to build up experience points. But pretty soon, our interest in this & quot;vah shir & quot; began to wane.
For while wandering through an online forest one evening, listening to the virtual sounds of nature, we couldn't help but imagine how much more exciting the forests will be in 2004. We found ourselves using words like & quot;predictable & quot; and even & quot;boring & quot; to describe the quality of the gameplay and the graphics, compared with the many other online choices gamers now enjoy. While this new Sony bundle seemed like a good deal at less than $30, we had to conclude that & quot;Evolution & quot; now seems pretty old-fashioned.