‘Space, the Final Frontier…’, with these words I was indoctrinated into the cult of Star Trek as a young child. Since then, I have followed every television program, and every abysmal video game incarnation of the show (save for Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites). With the rise of MMOs, my geek-heart had always held out hope that the world of Star Trek would be taken massively-multiplayer so I can helm my own vessel and fight the enemies of the United Federation of Planets.
Cryptic Studios took over development of a Star Trek MMO from Perpetual Entertainment back in 2008. In an astonishing amount of time, Cryptic developed a whole new game from scratch as Perpetual took their code and engine with them into bankruptcy. The result is Star Trek Online, and it is mostly fun, mostly…
Your first foray into STO will be the character creator. Here you will see a layout which looks very similar to Cryptic’s other MMO, Champions Online. This is because STO shares many of the same resources from that title (hence the VERY speedy development time). During the beta this process felt clunky but now, with the retail release, the character creator feels a lot smoother and more fleshed-out. You are given mostly humanoid customizations for your character, but can really change your head design quite a bit. This is in keeping with Star Trek’s long-standing tradition of humanoid aliens who’s only real ‘alien’ appearance is a different head bump configuration (Incidentally, this was done on the TV shows to keep makeup and costuming costs down).
One important step in character creation is choosing what kind of officer your character will be (tactical, engineer, or science). These are the closest thing that STO has to the traditional class-system found in fantasy MMOs. Tactical officers will get skills that focus on offense, engineers will get tanking skills, while science officers will get abilities that exploit their enemy’s weak points and other de-buffers. Remember this point when I talk about ship-types coming up…
Unlike Perpetual’s original vision for Star Trek Online, Cryptic has designed the game so that each player will command an individual starship from a third-person perspective when they are not walking around alien worlds and starbases. Every player will start off in command of a Federation Light Cruiser, similar to the Miranda-class vessel commandeered by Khan in Star Trek II. These are good, all-around space craft capable of showing players what kind of ship-style they prefer. This is important as after players reach Lt. Commander status (which starts at a standard-MMO equivalent of level 11). At this time, players have to choose whether or not to command a cruiser, escort, or science vessel. Okay, remember when I mentioned character classes earlier? Well, ships work similarly in that escort ships are primarily built for DPS attacks (however they have very thin defenses), cruises are tanks, and science vessels serve the de-buffer role.
What makes STO interesting in its incarnation of a class-system is that just because your character is, say, an engineer doesn’t mean you have to choose a cruiser. While that combination tends to compliment each other, you can really mix things up by placing your tactical officer character into a cruiser, for example. This customization adds a lot to the gameplay and eliminates simple ‘X > Y > Z > X’ gameplay found in many MMOs on the market.
Commanding a ship by yourself might seem lonely, given that Starfleet ships usually have a large bridge crew which serve as the story’s heroes. In STO it is no different as you will gain bridge officers throughout your adventures. Each officer will add his or her own abilities (they are also made up of tactical, engineer, and science varieties) which you can utilize in combat. Which means, if you are a tactical officer and want that shield buff ability, just make sure your chief engineer aboard the ship has it and so will you – again, mega-kudos to Cryptic for this kind of customization.
Your bridge officers will often accompany you to the ground-mission portions of the game, as you explore alien worlds and fight Klingons and Romulans (to name two foes). The ground combat is very quick and is where you can see the most parallels between STO and Champions Online. The system is virtually the same – which is not to say ‘bad’, and I actually think it works slightly better here than in Champions.
Ship-to-ship combat in STO is handled similarly to the Starfleet Command line of PC games. Your ship has firing and shield arcs which must be monitored and managed carefully as you turn-and-burn around the cosmos while locked into vicious combat with enemy vessels. The experience is harrowing and exciting with the exception that you cannot set more than two of your ship’s weapons to auto-fire. This means you will wear out your thumb quickly spamming the spacebar to fire your directed energy weapons like phasers. Also, ground auto-fire is nonexistent, which also makes for a button-spam-fest. Aside from this, combat is a lot of fun to take part in.
The part where Star Trek Online lacks is in its mission variety. Even though you might read the briefing given to you when beginning one, your goals usually break down into either destroying a certain number of enemy squadrons and scanning a certain number of items. Cryptic needs to focus more on the multi-tiered mission experience which combines both space and ground combat as well as gripping storylines. That’s not to say that STO does not have this, its best example being the mission surrounding the Guardian of Forever! In this experience, you will not only fight Klingons in orbit but beam down to the surface, and go through the Guardian’s gate to follow an enemy into the past. There you will actually fight alongside the original U.S.S. Enterprise (with Leonard Nimoy providing the voice-work for Spock). It is a brilliant mission and I only wish all of them could be that involved.
Visually, Star Trek Online is a great-looking game, both in space and on-foot. The ships are well-detailed, weapons effects brilliant, and sound effects pulled straight from the various shows. One of my favorite things is when I hit the ‘Brace for Impact’ ability to protect my crew members from harm during an attack will sound the red alert klaxon from the original television series.
Overall, Star Trek Online is a very fun and enjoyable recreation of the Star Trek universe in MMO form. It provides a lot of customization in terms of your character, starship, and overall gameplay experience while also providing tons of visual candy to enjoy. It may need some work on the depth of its quests but that is nothing they will not work on in the future as witnessed with their recent Borg missions content upgrade.
