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Star Trek Online
May. 19th, 2010 02:05 pmNow, fair warning: I did not like the game.
I bought the Steam Digital Deluxe version, and played my Joined Trill up to Lieutenant Commander 3, ignoring the things I did not like and hoping they would change, but they did not. I started a Klingon character, and the things that annoyed me as Starfleet turned even worse as part of the Empire. All together, I sunk over a 100 dollars into the MMO, and in the end... well, I chalk it up to "90% wasted money".
And this is why:
First, the game has only three kinds of missions.
A) Space Combat.
B) Surface Combat.
C) Run/Fly from Point A to Point B to Point C...
Of course, there are mixes and matches of those, but they did not change the experience enough to hold my interest any longer. The game is repetitive, and full of clichés. The computer AI is dumb and predictable, knowing only the overwhelming force strategy. You are actively discouraged to try hard missions, because if you are not geared/trained well enough, you are likely to be killed in seconds.
Second, "random" indoor areas on surface exploration ("C" Type mission) and surface combat missions ("B" Type missions) are annoyingly mazelike. I would expect a scientific facility or military outpost to have some order and organization, but what you find are completely random-sized rooms and hallways, with random connections. If you have to access 4 computers inside a facility, those are also randomly placed, usually in one of the several hard-to-reach corners.
One of the redeeming (but not much) points of the game was the fact that the fixed Starfleet bases have simpler, clear layouts. The Klingon starting zone is a maze on itself.
Third, the game is not 'real' 3D by any stretch of imagination: you can not turn a 'loop' or fly straight 'up' or 'down' out of the position and heading your ship starts in. That makes space combat feel much like normal air combat.
I really expected more from the game.
I bought the Steam Digital Deluxe version, and played my Joined Trill up to Lieutenant Commander 3, ignoring the things I did not like and hoping they would change, but they did not. I started a Klingon character, and the things that annoyed me as Starfleet turned even worse as part of the Empire. All together, I sunk over a 100 dollars into the MMO, and in the end... well, I chalk it up to "90% wasted money".
And this is why:
First, the game has only three kinds of missions.
A) Space Combat.
B) Surface Combat.
C) Run/Fly from Point A to Point B to Point C...
Of course, there are mixes and matches of those, but they did not change the experience enough to hold my interest any longer. The game is repetitive, and full of clichés. The computer AI is dumb and predictable, knowing only the overwhelming force strategy. You are actively discouraged to try hard missions, because if you are not geared/trained well enough, you are likely to be killed in seconds.
Second, "random" indoor areas on surface exploration ("C" Type mission) and surface combat missions ("B" Type missions) are annoyingly mazelike. I would expect a scientific facility or military outpost to have some order and organization, but what you find are completely random-sized rooms and hallways, with random connections. If you have to access 4 computers inside a facility, those are also randomly placed, usually in one of the several hard-to-reach corners.
One of the redeeming (but not much) points of the game was the fact that the fixed Starfleet bases have simpler, clear layouts. The Klingon starting zone is a maze on itself.
Third, the game is not 'real' 3D by any stretch of imagination: you can not turn a 'loop' or fly straight 'up' or 'down' out of the position and heading your ship starts in. That makes space combat feel much like normal air combat.
I really expected more from the game.
