STAR TREK MMO
MMO
System: Playstation 4
Developer: Cryptic Games
Year of Release: 2016 (Originally 2010)
This game came out right around the time I was heavily getting into Star Trek. I had always been a Star Wars kind of kid and aside from that one time my dead beat father got me a fucking Quark action figure (because hey! Star Something huh, you little twat) my experience with Star Trek was as close minded as the feud between the franchises would have led you to believe. Eventually in late high school I marathoned every episode of the original series and a convert was made. Well, not so much a convert. As an aside, of the seven deadly sins I most closely identify with gluttony. Not just literally, with food, but with media, and ideas. I just voraciously devour as much as fucking possible as quickly as I can. So, for me at least, there's room in my soul for Wars and some good old fashioned Trek.
MMO's are another thing I've always more or less avoided my entire life. There was one time I installed an Everquest demo on my step-grandfather's computer way back in the day. Overwhelmed by things and systems I couldn't fathom on top of loading into a very dark, cat (I think) village drove me away from the genre. Plus, hey they all cost an arm and leg, fuck that. I paid for the game, let me fucking enjoy it. Runescape and Neopets were the closest things to MMO's I partook in. Ironically my fondest memories of Runescape are listening to the Grandia II soundtrack and talking to pre-teens just as awkward and angsty as myself.
DCUO, a game I played near the time I revived this blog, was my first serious foray into MMO's. Let's take another aside because, well, quite frankly Star Trek Online isn't very interesting. Once upon a time I was quite the adept thief, for several months in my high school years my friends and I would raid various stores. On our last expedition, I had nabbed a copy of Guild Wars with all the expansions. Unfortunately we happened to get caught on that go round, and thus I missed out on a possibly earlier MMO memory.
Three paragraphs in and aside from blatantly claiming Star Trek Online isn't very interesting I've avoided talking about it altogether. In it's current state it's a free to play MMO, the only kind I'm likely to play, I find it hard to justify a monthly Netflix subscription as it is. The game shines in space combat, but also has a rudimentary ground combat system. Neither are terribly great. The ground combat consists of pointing in the general direction of bad things and hitting triggers. They die eventually, so far I've encountered nothing remotely challenging. I've faced massive lizard men (Gorns you fucking nerds) with nothing but a bat'leth in my hands and came out victorious.
Space combat is the big draw though. It approaches interesting content at least. You have four different shields on each side of your ship, and you have weapons with varying arcs of range on them attached to the front and the aft of your ship. So positioning is key. However, at this early point in the game (I've just reached level 20 and have two more missions left in the first "season") my ships thus far have rather poor handling, so battles in space are long drawn out instances of me holding a stick in one direction and waiting as lasers and beams cascade down upon the ships involved in the combat. Basically, energy weapons decimate shields, missiles decimate health bars after shields are gone. That's it.
My favorite part so far is having a sizable chunk of the beta quadrant available to explore, along with a bit of the alpha quadrant and a smidgen of the delta quadrant will open up later. Getting to fly around in the world of Star Trek is amazing, running into familiar planets, and space stations is a thrill for the trekkie buried away in the depths of my soul. Some familiar faces show up throughout the game as well, however, it's a little hollow.
The writing is really bland, and even bringing in some of the original voice actors hardly helps. I've read most of the dialogue to pop up and it's all been pretty typical video game dreck. In the first season a Klingon has gone mad with power and wants to ensure his race is constantly at war so as to not see his civilization fall apart. His rationale is weak, his plans are silly, his speeches are preposterous. It doesn't feel like Star Trek, while still parading around as Star Trek. Star Trek is about discovering new things, coming to terms with those new things, and finding ways to make sure everyone is comfortable with how things end up working out. Most of the time you wind up attacking swaths of enemies as the big bad laughs and teleports away in just the nick of time. It's weak.
Since creating an account and deciding to dedicate my limited time in this form of life to this game I've come to find out both the developer and the publisher of the game are mostly considered, shit. And I can see why. Like DCUO, while free, there are many many ways to spend your money on this game. Most ships, costumes and even a couple of actual playable races are locked behind a paywall. There are a few subscription options, which give you some small bonuses. It's odd, because the actual content, as in new missions, are added for free and they're already all the way up to season 11. Each season is essentially an expansion, offering anywhere from around six to twenty plus new missions to partake in. Again, like DCUO, everything you need is available for free, it just requires many hours of grinding to achieve that.
I'm still in the beginning of the game and quite easily able to just keep chugging along from mission to mission without much more effort than equipping newly obtained equipment. I assume at some point I'll hit a wall and not make much progress, or at least that's what my experience with DCUO has lead me to believe. Playing on the PS4 is comfortable enough, although the controls don't always feel exactly responsive, which is a bit disappointing.
For the diehard Trek fans out there you might as well check this out. It's free and you get to spend a bit of time in a world you love. That's certainly what keeps me logging in nearly every day for a couple of missions. Ultimately though, there are many other better games to play, MMO or not. If you do decide to take the dive, just be sure not to be suckered into spending tons of cash. If you enjoy your time spent with the game it makes sense to buy something to give back to the developers, but just be careful. It would be quite easy to spend hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars getting useless shit or unlocking boxes. Like a discount whore, with Star Trek Online, you get what you pay for.
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