Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The original Star Trek series first hit the airwaves on September 6th, 1966 and was promptly canceled less than three years later. At the time, it was impossible to predict the staggering number fans the intellectual property would gather over the next four plus decades. And although there are various principles that are common through all its incarnations, every single one of those fans has a different idea of what Star Trek is (and means) to them. Trying to create a game that would appeal to those fans was going to be a daunting task for anyone, but after the collapse of Perpetual Entertainment in 2008, Cryptic Studios stepped up to the plate to take the challenge on. Not only did they meet it head on, they also did it in two years. That kind of development timetable is completely unheard of in the industry when talking about any MMOG, let alone a triple-A title, but that’s what they did.


Star Trek Online takes place in 2409, approximately thirty years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. Things have undergone significant changes and the current states of affairs are anything but peaceful. The Klingons and Federation are in a state of war. The Romulans have lost their homeworld in a supernova, leaving them homeless and hell-bent on lashing out at anyone they can. The Borg have returned and are more powerful than ever. Species 8472 is infiltrating the highest ranks of all the superpowers and no one seems to know why. The calm and peaceful Star Trek of our youth is no more.

The game is comprised mainly of space and ground combat along with a minion system in the form of bridge officers. Players will take part in episodic content, all woven together in an epic overarching storyline. Along with the main storyline, daring captains can seek riches and new content in the game's exploration sectors. These sectors utilize the Genesis system, which allows the game to create new planets and aliens as players enter them.

Rather than running around grabbing quests from every poor bum in the universe, you'll get your orders from Starfleet and can complete them in nearly any order you wish (this will also come in handy later, as you can communicate remotely rather than having to return to your origin point to receive rewards). The main method of story progression involves episodes. These are missions that are strung together to make one long story arc. Even some of these arcs are regularly linked together.

For the first six levels of the game (unless you complete a questline to unlock them earlier), players cannot create a Klingon-factioned character. For those that wish to concentrate primarily on PvP, that's the side for you. I've been spending the majority of my time on the Federation side of the fence, so that's what the majority of this review reflects.

Cautions

There's little in the way of gameplay to warrant any type of warning for Star Trek Online. The combat is relegated to ships in space and cartoon-like violence on the ground. There is no blood or gore. I also have yet to witness any green-skinned Orion slave girl wardrobe malfunctions (to the dismay of pubescent geeks everywhere) so consider the meat and potatoes of the game perfectly safe for tweens and teenagers.

Unfortunately, the other players they'll encounter have no such guarantees attached to them or their mouths. There is a language filter in the game, and you can create a chat channel that doesn't include the general public, but there's nothing to stop Little Johnny from just turning the global channel back on.

This is no different from virtually any other online game and is just part of the package. If you want to let your kids game online, be prepared for the possibilities.

Gameplay

80Good
Star Trek Online truly feels like two separate games tied together with a common theme, so for this section, I'm going to treat it as such. The score above is the average of the space and ground game scores. Let's start things off with the good.

Space Gameplay Score: A-

Space combat in Star Trek Online consists of monitoring your shields (fore, aft, port, and starboard), knowing where and when to fire which weapons or abilities, and positioning your ship for maximum effectiveness. Like all truly fun games, it's an easy system to learn, but takes time and effort to master. Not so much in the early stages of the game, but the longer you trek through the stars and the better ships you get, your skills are going to need to improve at the same pace to outwit the new enemies you'll encounter.

The combat is fast paced, but not so fast that a solid element of strategy isn't needed. Each tier of ships adds another layer to combat. This is both a blessing and a curse. Just when I began to feel as though I were a masterful kick-ass pilot in my Tier II Science Vessel, I hit Commander and felt like a boot fresh out of the Academy in my new Research Science Vessel. The placement of my fingers for the previous ten levels of gameplay were no longer *quite* valid. This sense of disjointed control soon faded, but the initial change was jarring.


Space is where Star Trek Online truly shines, especially when playing with a group. And not just any group, but a group of skilled pilots. When you get that group that's full of players that not only know their ships well, but also know how to coordinate their attacks it's a beautiful thing. Even when you get players that can't fly or coordinate for squat, it's still fun.

In the early stages of the game, you can stumble blindly into the midst of your enemies with no real plan of attack, but as you progress further along, this quickly becomes the exception rather than the rule. In your first ship, taking on four Klingon Bird-of-Prey ships is a cakewalk. Doing the same thing in a Tier III ship is a whole other story. It can still be done, but a combination of your expertise and the abilities of your bridge officers will determine how efficiently you handle the task. If you go in with a plan, execute it well, and are prepared to change strategies on the fly to deal with an ever-evolving tactical situation, you'll do just fine. If you fly in the middle and shoot at whatever you please you may still get lucky enough to get out of there with at least part of your skin intact, but it's not going to be pretty.

Position, position, position. That's the name of the game when you're trying to blow your enemy out of the sky. Never underestimate the value of unleashing a minor bridge officer ability at just the right time. Tagging that Klingon Battle Cruiser with a lowly Tractor Beam just as the Escort in your group is lining a strafing run from the side can turn a three minute battle into a 20 second one. Position also affects the damage of your beam weapons. The closer you are to your target, the more damage they do.

Knowing where to be during a space battle is important, but how you outfit your ship has just as much to do with determining your play style as anything else. Different weapons have different firing arcs within which they can fire. As a general rule, the more narrow the firing radius, the more damage the weapon will do. So for example, cannons may only have a firing arc of 45 degrees, compared to the 250-degree arc of phasers, but they do a lot more damage. No one way is the right way, so experiment with various configurations to see what works best for you.


The user interface is slick (see our Space UI Guide here) and whether you use your mouse or keyboard for most of your commands during combat, it's all right there. If you're not satisfied with how things are laid out, simply hit F12 and move anything and everything to the position that's a perfect fit for you.

Without a doubt, space combat in Star Trek Online is a treat and always brings a smile to my face. The more ships involved and the closer the battle, the better it gets. Space fleet actions make up some of the most entertaining (and heart pounding) moments in the game.

As you progress through the game, you'll gain access to bigger and better ships. These ships will have more console stations for your bridge officers. The number and types (science, engineering, and tactical) depend on the type of ship you choose. Cruisers are the lumbering tanks of the game with their massive hull strength numbers. Escorts are glass cannons that can turn on a dime. Finally, Science vessels have the most advanced shields of any ship and their crew can disable the subsystems (shields, weapons, engines, and auxiliary systems) of enemy vessels. Each ship has its own strength and weaknesses. Take the time to learn each of them, and you'll be a space combat master in no time.

Ground Gameplay Score: C+

In my First Impressions piece, I talked about the lackluster ground combat in Star Trek Online. To be sure, this aspect of the game has improved in terms of overall fun, but it's still the weakest portion of the Star Trek Online formula. Artificial intelligence programming has improved by leaps and bounds in the rest of the world. I know it has because I've seen it in other games. Unfortunately, those discoveries haven't fully made their way into Star Trek Online, though in some cases they thankfully have.

The bridge officers in my away team are awesome at keeping my sorry ass alive when we're in the thick of battle. I can't stress how much I naturally suck at the ground portion of Star Trek Online. Fortunately for me, the development team has foreseen this inevitability and granted my officers some super leet skills. Now they just need to find a way of doing it without turning them all into wandering morons when it comes time to follow me to the next objective.


The Bridge Officer pathing is in desperate need of improvement. I use the group waypoint button regularly to keep my officers with me. If not, they either get stuck on the local terrain or seem to feel the best way to reach me is to run directly through the group of enemies I just got done skirting around in an attempt to be stealthy.

Enemy AI still goes back and forth between being less than attentive and completely brutal. On the same mission, I stand a solid chance of running into a group of identical enemies. Group number one will stand around and shoot, rarely use an ability, and get in each other's way more often than not as my team slaughters them like the helpless minions they are. Two minutes later when I round the next corner and spy their identical counterparts though, I'm in for a world of hurt. Do you know how hard it is for someone as untalented at ground combat as I am to take out a group of Romulans when one of them is a medic that's continually healing (and reviving) his team members and two others are building shield generators? There should be a happy medium somewhere in between when dealing with identical groups of enemies.

The biggest (and only?) advantage ground combat currently has over its space-bound counterpart is the fact that your bridge officers can utilize all of their powers, rather than being restricted by any console type as they are in space. This means that even if your favorite tactical officer is only allowed to use one ability in space, he can use all of his trained ground abilities. Be sure to promote your bridge officers as soon as you're able to take advantage of this benefit.


The ability to position individual team members is extremely useful and the more I utilize this tool, the more enjoyable my ground experiences have been getting. This adds a small element of strategy to this aspect of the game, but isn't actually required until well into the game. It wasn't until I started having to deal with shield generator-building Romulans that I really had to start having my team positioned to flank them and concentrate our fire. By the time you reach that point though, it does little to add to your enjoyment and becomes an annoyance instead. If this were a necessity for players to learn/master earlier in the game, I wouldn't have a problem with it. To wait until a player is half way through the game's content is too long to wait before making these skills matter.

With all my complaints about the ground aspect of the game, are there any highlights? Actually, the answer is yes. I recently had the pleasure of participating in a fleet action that was ground-based. This is the first and only time I've seen this which is a complete shame because for the first time since I started playing Star Trek Online, ground combat was an absolute blast. We were transported to a planet, given a number of different objectives to complete, and had to fight hordes of Klingons.

Players worked together as they kept moving forward in squads, tossed buffs and heals on everyone like they were beads in a Mardi Gras parade, and did it all as a team... with virtually no communication. It was as though everyone there was suddenly in the moment and dove into character. It really was an amazing thing to witness and I'm glad I was a part of it. Why there aren't more of these fleet action missions in the early levels, I don't know. If they bring about more maps of this nature, the ground combat in Star Trek Online may start to lose its bad image.

Graphics

90Great
To give readers a point of reference for the graphics section, I've been playing Star Trek Online on a system with the following specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom  9850 Quad-Core Processor~2.5GHz
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800Mhz
VIDEO: GeForce GTX 260 (896MB)
SOUND: Onboard Realtek, 5.1 surround sound
POWER: 1000 Watt
OS: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3

Right at the start, players are treated to the full Cryptic character creation treatment. No other company in the industry has come close to dethroning the reigning champions in this aspect and that's good news for you. The uniform choices may feel limited, but it's a uniform. There's only so much customization that can be gotten away with. When it comes to your character's features though, have fun. There are an unimaginable amount of combinations and adjustments you can make to create the character of your dreams. Even one month into the game, I'm still amazed at the variety I continually see.


The art team deserves a hearty "Good job!" for the hard work they obviously put into Star Trek Online. The graphics are clean, vibrant, and while stylized to a certain degree, capture the essence of Star Trek. Space is as infinite in its beauty within the game as I imagine space to be in real life. Just when you reach the point of thinking you've seen all the backgrounds and planets the art team has conjured, you enter a new system and are blown away by the colors strafing the starry background. The ground areas look good (and sometimes stunning) as well.

While I haven't had any flickering issues in space, there are some ground maps that consistently produce this effect, most often within Romulan base maps. Overall, framerates have been silky smooth for me. The only exception to this has been brief moments during some massive fleet battles.

Sound

97Excellent
With all of the original source material at their finger tips, the team at Cryptic would have had to go out of their way to provide anything less than stellar sound. Fortunately, they took the time to make sure the sound in Star Trek Online is perfect. Phasers sound like phasers. When you receive a private tell from another player, the chime of someone coming to your door on the Enterprise-D comes through your speakers. With the very first loading screen, the team draws you into the game with the beginning movements of the original TV intro score. How could you not get excited for the adventures you and your crew will embark on? As the final cherry on the top of this audio sundae, the team also recruited Leonard Nimoy to provide narration for not only the movie intro, but also the progressing storyline. Suffice it to say the sound is outstanding.