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Star Trek Online
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Graphics & Sound:
Star Trek Online is the franchise's first attempt at the massively online market, and while the game seems to have a good bit of potential, it still has quite a bit of growing up to do before it could even hope to rival some of the genre's top MMO's, but at least what it offers should keep fans of the license pleased.
Visually speaking, the game is stunning to look at, both on the ground and in space. When running around worlds with your away team, the environments have a good variety to them and each of the characters (both on your away team and not) seem to have a lot of definition to their models. While flying your ship in space, you get a solid feel for scale as your ship takes its time to move from objective to objective, even at full impulse. This sense of scale is only reinforced by little details like the number of kilometers before reaching your goal and the various sized ships and objects floating around you as you go about your tasks.
Sound is okay, but nothing to write home about. The background music tends to have the orchestral feel to it that the series' theme songs are known for, while the occasional comments made by NPCs are there, but often feel phoned in. Accompanying the background music are the game's sound effects, which are rarely something other than a few variants of phaser fire and beeps from command ship computers. In general, this aspect of the game, while not stunning, gets the job done.
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Gameplay:
Star Trek Online takes place some 30 years after the destruction of the Romulan Home World, which causes Spock to go into the past and kick off the alternate timeline for the new Star Trek movies.
You get to choose from one of three classes: Engineering, Science and Tactical. These classes state how the character will improve the ship. For instance, an Engineer will have certain boosts to the engines or shields, while a Tactical character benefits the weapons. Each class has three professions which further define the character's abilities and discerns how they help the squad when on away missions. In other words, a Combat Engineer is skilled at explosives and force field knowledge, while a Fabrication Engineer can deploy turrets and shield generators to support the squad.
Of course, all of these attributes are enhanced by the race you choose your character to be. These races include Humans, Vulcans, Bajorans, Andorians and several other favorites from the universe (yes Klingon is available, but only on PvP servers). Each race has innate features that can do everything from increase the character's scenes (Andorian) or natural armor (Benzite), to give them corrosive blood (Bolian) or health regeneration (Trill) and empathy (Betazoid).
When you get into the game itself, you quickly realize it is two different experiences joined together by a common license. Half of the game is away missions where you and your squad beam down to a planet and take on fairly standard missions like taking out Borg bases or rescuing another ship's crew. However, the other half of the game has you controlling your starship as you explore deep space, dive into high-combat zones and enjoy an experience similar to EVE Online.
All-in-all, there is a nice variety of missions in both types of gameplay and you seem to be given a good amount of freedom to do what you want, but it isn't all that long before you start to see the repetitiveness of the missions and want a bit more variety than the game offers. Who knows though, this is a new MMO, and more variety could be just around the next expansion pack.
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Difficulty:
Star Trek Online seems to do a good job of only handing you missions you are capable of pulling off. There are five ranks ranging from Lieutenant to Admiral (with 10 grades of levels within each rank). In order to increase your character's rank, you not only have to perform various missions, but also train the character with the skill points gained in those missions so the only way to progress to harder missions is to have the more advanced skills necessary for those missions. The same can be said for your bridge crew and away teams, except that they have a bit more flexibility in their growth. On one hand, you can stick with the same characters throughout and increase their skills, or request new characters (provided you have the currency), or just have your existing characters train with new ones to increase their skills. All this leads up to a solid difficulty balancing system that forces your character to do only missions that he or she is capable of. Of course, you can still attempt to venture into combat-heavy areas that are way out of your league, but if you stick to the missions and areas that the game wants you to be in, this doesn't happen too often.
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Game Mechanics:
Star Trek Online's two gameplay styles really splits the mechanics up and while the ground-based mechanics seem pretty standard, most players will have some trouble getting over the space-based maneuvering. On the ground, your character is controlled by the standard WSAD keyboard controls and use of abilities and attacks can be either activated by clicking on the item's icon in the Utility Tray or tapping the associated key. Since the game's ground-based combat is also squad-based, Star Trek Online offers three icons per team member to give them the basic commands of attacking your enemy, defending you or setting a rally point for the characters to converge at. Since tapping on these buttons can take valuable time away in a phaser-fight, Star Trek Online gives you the ability to temporarily slow everything down in order to give your commands (provided no other players are on the screen, of course) by tapping the (T) key. Of course, you aren't given a whole lot of time here and it can't be used too frequently, but it is helpful from a strategic perspective.
The other side of things, space missions, feels drastically different. One thing Cryptic did right is translating the feel of Star Trek space combat, and the various features seen throughout all of the movies, TV series and many of the games. For one, Star Trek rarely has snub-fighters that go zipping around ships and into narrow trenches dodging enemies left and right. Instead, Star Trek's fights are typically done at a distance with broad-arching passes to enemy ships while beams and torpedoes barrage the opposing force until both ships pass out of range and have to turn around. The feel of space-based combat in Star Trek is more like pirate ships battling it out on the open seas rather than fighter jets dog-fighting. This, combined with the need to adjust your shield strength so that the sides being hit the hardest have the most protection, and the ability to add more power to different aspects of the ship (shields, weapons, engines) really sells the Star Trek ship-to-ship combat experience.
At this point in the game, only the most hard-core trekkies who love MMO's and are willing to wait it out and let the game grow need apply. There is still a lot of potential for the game, and like any MMO, only time will really tell if it will make it. Star Trek Online's unusual blend of ground-based and space-based gameplay feels right for the license, but it is obvious that the away-team side of things still has a way to go, and most likely won't appeal to the general audience, only big-time Star Trek fans.
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows XP SP2/ Windows Vista/Windows 7 (32 or 64-bit), Intel dual-core 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon X2 + 3800 Processor, 1GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1800 or NVIDIA GeForce 7950 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card, DirectX 9.0c, 5GB Hard Disc Space, Broadband Network |
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Test System:
Windows 7 Ultimate, AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core 2.20 GHz, 4 GB Ram, Radeon HD 5870 Graphics Card, DirectX 9.0c |
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Related Links:
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