Star Trek Online

I just got a new laptop, which is about time because my last one was pretty much steam powered. I decided it was time to actually start using it for games more recent than minesweeper and began looking around. The Sims 3 is an obvious choice for me, and I had a quick poke around Steam looking at a Demo for Machinarium and snapping up my free copy of Portal (until 25th May, get yours).

I also figured I’d check out the demo for Star Trek Online because I was jonesing for it since last year and because studio Cryptic has recently canned plans to port it for console.

It’s an 8GB download, presumably because it’s got to get the game engine in, and presumably because it’s pretty much the whole client, making purchase an easy, quick and tiny little Key transaction to unlock the full version.

I grew up watching The Next Generation, I was disappointed with Deep Space 9 even when it got better. The under-appreciated Alexander Siddig is pretty much the best thing to come out of it. I was underwhelmed at Voyager but grew to like it, I guess. I like Generations, First Contact and to an extent Insurrection but Nemesis shit the bed. I’ve never seen such trite that was so willing to be disruptive and inconsistent with its own material. It was kind of a heartbreaker because the look was fantastic. I think the Original series is wonderfully kitsch and am digging the re-runs on CBS at the moment.

That’s by the by because it’s in the post TNG, DS9, Voyager time frame that Star Trek Online takes place. Basically some shit has gone down and Starfleet needs Captains. They’ll take seriously anybody which is an easy way of having your new character be both in a command post, and a lowly Ensign for you to rank up.

As a fan, I very easily slipped into the universe. Everything is authentic, the colour schemes, design and I was quite unprepared for the officially licensed sounds to just flick a switch in my brain.

Let me get the bad done first. The third person sections are pretty terrible. It’s jerky and cumbersome. Admittedly I’m using a touchpad instead of a mouse and I am not used to a keyboard for action pieces but while it looks good on paper there is a lot you can do at once and keeping your character fluid in a pinch is hard. When you hit up spacedock or anywhere that does not require speed or timing, traipsing around isn’t so bad.

It can be repetitive. The Demo gives a surprisingly large amount but that is ultimately nothing in comparison with the full scope of the game. As it is a demo I’d be willing to reserve judgement as obviously it will introduce story elements and whatnot to keep you motivated. Hell, Modern Warfare 2 is repetitive but it never suffers that complaint.

Here’s the big one; Price. There is no fucking way I’m dropping £9 per calendar month to play a game. I don’t care what game it is.  In a year that’s at least 3 other games I could have bought. I will not play one single game consistently month in month out to warrant spending that much on it. If I leave off it for a couple of weeks which I will do, to play something else then that’s wasted money. I can’t guarantee I’ll get the quality play time to use tha value of that £9. There is no way I’m the only one who thinks this. It’s a game, I play it. It has to be there when I want it to be, I will not be there for it because it says I must.

Cryptic need to pull their heads out of their ass and wise up to modern players. Yeah they may have a fair amount of subs, though the fact they just held a free play weekend says not as much as they hoped. A lot of players are like me and have responsibility, the kind of people who grew up with The Next Generation and wouldn’t mind living that universe for a few hours.They cancelled the console versions because they were too lazy or constrained to work out a pricing through PSN and XBL.

Were they to introduce a subscription plan like RealTime Worlds’ for APB alongside their monthly payment plan, then I would be interested because I would only be paying for the hours I used. I would be getting the value from my money because I wouldn’t see any wasted were I not to log in for a month.

So why do I want to play it. Forgetting the jerky ground controls for moment, beaming down with an away team is awesome, because they did it on telly all the time. The phaser looks and sounds perfect, your tricorder sounds perfect. I cannot stress how important sound is for locking down this experience. You get the beam down effect, the character spends most of the time with their back to you so you don’t really see the equipment they hold, just the energy streaming out of the phaser. It sells it. It’s great.

I was not expecting a lot from ship to ship combat since I found out that there would only be fore, aft, port and starboard shields. I thought this meant that they were levelling combat on only a 2 dimensional plane but what it actually meant was that while combat would involve 3 dimensional flight, the shields would be simplified to just 4 zones. A good choice. Positioning is everything. Your fore and aft phaser banks have a firing arc of 270 degrees each which means they overlap at the sides. You must place your ship so it can deliver a broadside to your quarry while ensuring your shields remain effective by redistributing power or turning so another shield generator takes the brunt for a while. Phasers are good for wearing down shields and when they are down it is more effective to pull round and use a torpedo, with a firing arc of only 90 degrees, which is better for direct hull damage. Again the sounds and visuals are 100% authentic and it’s a nerd’s wet dream to engage in ship based combat. You can reroute to auxiliary, go to full impulse and do all the other shit an outsider would probably find embarrassing to talk about.

Even on my laptop it is pretty to look at and on a high end rig it must look freaking spectacular. I don’t have the great gear, but I can run it well enough to enjoy it and not rue the day.

It’s a big shame that they can’t be bothered to get this working on PS3 because it would look stunning. The Ps3 can definitely handle it and it will work with a console controller.

It’s stupid that I know I’ll enjoy exploring the galaxy in my little pretend starship, assembling an away team and scanning for anomalies, that I want to play the full game but that the only thing stopping me is pricing. Not that it’s so unreasonable, if I could play one single game all year I’d think £108 for a whole annum would be money well spent. But I need to let it rest once in a while, and I need to not be wasting money letting the game lie while I do that.

Sort that, and I’m in. Probably a lot of others too.