Boldly Going Beyond WoW: Star Trek Online Reviewed
My name is Pete and I’m a recovering WoWholic. I’m also one huge Star Trek fan. Which is why I’ve been feverishly waiting for Star Trek Online. I have been playing the open beta version of the game for the last week or so, and my verdict is as follows: STO isn’t a WoW killer, yet its enjoyable gameplay, combining space combat with ground missions, is a breath of fresh air in the typical MMO fare. The game does lack polish in its writing, user management and mission design and performance issues will hamper almost any rig, unless you have a Crysis playing monster, that is, but the game is a very welcome addition to the MMO world.
Let’s start from the beginning. I loved the character creation process. It’s incredibly deep, allowing the player to customize all aspects of their character, down to the length of their fingers. It’s easily one of the deepest character customization screens of any MMO out there. Sure, all aliens are humanoids, but you can make some funky lookin’ extraterrestrials.
On the other hand, the ship customization is severely lacking. You can basically choose different parts of the type of ship your current vessel belongs to, and that’s it. I would have loved to be able to tweak these pieces, make nacelles bigger or smaller, change the shape of the saucer, that sort of thing.
Once you have selected your character, you are thrust right into the action. The introductory cinematic is narrated by Leonard Nimoy, something every Trekkie will appreciate, while Zachary Quinto does the proper with the tutorial. These little details add a lot to the game’s ambiance.
And it’s those little details that will make Trekkies happy. The sounds are all reproduced correctly, from transporters to phaser rifles. Each load screen is filled with bits of trivia that bridges the gap between the era of The Next Generation and STO. And the game world is filled with familiar characters and locations. It’s pretty clear that the people behind the game have a lot of love and respect for the franchise.
This comes across in the gameplay itself. The game is divided into instances, each space station, each star system is a different instances. In missions where you need a team to succeed, you’re automatically logged into an instance with other players, which makes grouping for one shot missions effortless. The furious space combat feels like Star Trek. The away missions are a mixture of fast paced combat and research and exploration objectives, just like we saw in the shows. (Alas, I haven’t seen any character do a drop kick…) There is a somewhat steep learning curve, especially in the space combat side. It’s very similar to the combat in Star Trek Legacy, but with “special powers” in a bar similar to WoW’s action bars. There is a lot of strategy involved and, once you get the hang of it, it’s a lot of fun and more entertaining than the old “click and sit back” combat of WoW. You need to maneuver your ship in order to protect your shields while trying to exploit the enemy’s weak spots. These are huge ships, mind you, so they don’t fly like X-Wings. Yet they do feel agile and loose, and have powers to make them even faster.
In my time playing, I identified a couple of problems. I noticed there is a lot of repetition in the missions, especially when a player is starting out. The litany of patrol mission after patrol mission wears thin after a while. Also, Cryptic needs to get better writers. Seriously. The mission text is sometimes laughably bad and the missions sometimes feel silly and not all that “Star Trek-y.” Furthermore, something needs to be done with the game specs. I realize the game I have been playing is in beta, but it took me two days to be able to run the game without crashing and, even though both my rigs are far more capable than the recommended specs to run the game, I have to turn everything to half resolution on some away missions to make them playable. And I’m not alone. The forums are full of people with random hardware issues and problems running the game.
And then there are a couple of things that really annoyed me. First, I’m hoping there is something like a Role Playing server (like the have in WoW) when the game launches. I don’t want to play STO alongside the USS Orgasmatron and the USS BuTtZ. It takes me out of the universe completely, which is a big deal for a Trekkie. Second, the map system is staggeringly bad. It’s really hard to figure out where specific systems are located in the Galaxy. The Galaxy is divided into sector blocks you warp into, but there should be a list of systems within that sector block somewhere in the map, so you don’t have to warp into each sector block to search for the system you need to visit.
Overall, the game is a lot of fun. I haven’t been enjoyed a game this much since my first dabbles into WoW. If you like MMOs and you enjoy Star Trek, you’ll love this game. If you aren’t big on Star Trek yet are tired of WoW, give STO a shot, it might surprise you.
