LucasArts has announced that they have released a new downloadable mission for their popular actioner, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. The new mission is set on the ice-planet of Hoth and is currently available on the PlayStation Network for $9.99 while the Xbox LIVE Marketplace will get the mission on February 23rd.
‘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.
Electronic Arts and Visceral Games have released the official launch trailer to their newly-released third-person actioner, Dante’s Inferno. The game chronicles Dante’s journey into the various circles of Hell to find the soul of his beloved. You can find more info out on Dante’s Inferno at the game’s official website.
The Olympic Winter Games conjures up thoughts of national pride – our country’s team winning the gold and showing the rest of the world exactly what our athletes are made of. That’s what SEGA and EuroCom have tried to do in Vancouver 2010, their video game representation of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
PRESENTATION
Vancouver 2010 features a pleasant, vibrantly-colored user-interface, mirroring the colors seen in the logo for the upcoming Winter Games. Navigating the menus is simple and effective, never leaving you at a loss for where a particular feature or mode can be located. Unfortunately, beyond this pretty menu system, the game does not feature any of the pageantry or spectacle that goes hand-in-hand with the games. There is no career mode, no lighting of the flame, no real visceral connection to the games themselves or what it would be like to participate in them. A ‘career mode’ would have benefited this game greatly, perhaps showing the story of an Olympian from flame lighting to closing ceremony. Without this, the various events, while fun, feel isolated from one another.
This brings us to the selection of events included in Vancouver 2010. While the box claims there are 14 different events in the game, many of them are slight variations on one another and feel mostly the same. Missing entirely are some VERY important events such as curling, the biathlon, and figure skating. Furthermore, in some of these events, you are only given the option to only play in either the male or female categories. Why you could not choose the gender dynamically is beyond me – there really isn’t a whole heck of a lot of difference between the two variations.
This may sound like a lot of negative so far, however when you get down into the events that are included, you will have a good time playing them. They are a lot of fun and, when placed into the first-person perspective, you will really get a sense of speed and excitement while going through them. I especially liked the representation of the bobsleigh.
Also a definite positive are the game’s online and ‘challenge’ modes. While playing online is fun to compare your scores in the various events with your friends, the various challenges offered by the challenge mode do a lot to keep things exciting and moving forward.
GAMEPLAY
Something that Vancouver 2010 has going for it in spades is being easy to pickup. Each of the games you will take part in don’t require very complicated control schemes to compete. Usually, you only need to hit a couple of buttons in a specific sequence or steer slightly with the left and right triggers. Thankfully, like the classic game of ‘Reversi’, while it is simple to pickup the game can be very challenging as there are a ton of nuances in each event.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Visually-speaking, Vancouver 2010 is a crisp and rich representation of the Winter Games. Beautiful, snow covered landscapes and vivid signage and costuming will grace your screen. Unfortunately, the crowds seem a bit wooden and are not up to spec with the rest of the graphic elements in the game. Thankfully, your character is very well-detailed and will express his or her satisfaction with your run through an event with the appropriate body language.
The game’s first-person perspective is incredible and will really give you a sense of exhilaration and an appreciation for what some of these athletes experience during their trials. Between going what seems to be mach 2 in the downhill slopes to flying through the air in the ski jump, the game has a lot going for it in the graphics department.
In-game music is a great, upbeat mix of songs that will keep you fueled and playing. Some of them, from artists like Fallout Boy and Fairweather, will make you want to take them along in your iPod to listen too while driving… Be careful with that one, I was once known to hit triple-digits while blasting Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, but I digress.
While taking part in the events, the sound of rushing wind, skis on snow and ice, and a whole lot more will grace your ears. Going back to the pageantry and spectacle portion of this review for a second, it would have been nice to feel more involved with the Olympics rather than just randomly doing an event by including a commentator as a person would hear watching the events on television. Aside from this, the game audio is very well-done.
OVERALL
SEGA and EuroCom have attempted to capture the 2010 Olympic Winter Games with Vancouver 2010. While they did not succeed in this goal outright, they did succeed in creating a nice smattering of isolated events that you will enjoy taking through the online and challenge modes. The game looks really nice, is easy to pickup, and the events are fun to play through.
Electronic Arts is finishing up their dev diary series on the various circles of Hell featured in their newly-released actioner, Dante’s Inferno, by talking about the ninth and final circle: Treachery. This is the circle where Lucifer himself sits in wait for Dante to make his try for his dead beloved, Beatrice.
Funcom has released the first trailer of in-game footage from their upcoming MMO, The Secret World. Set in a variety of environments, but all pervasive with Lovecraftian-attitude, the game will feature three secret societies or factions which will battle it out for control of our world and the dark forces which inhabit it. In this new ‘Kingsmouth Trailer’, we are treated to what appears to be a zombie outbreak in what would otherwise be a ‘normal’ US town.
Electronic Arts has announced that it has purchased airtime during the Super Bowl on February 7th to show a commercial for its upcoming third-person actioner, Dante’s Inferno. The 30-second commercial spot will promote the game’s February 9th release on the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms.
Dante’s Inferno tells the tale of a man trying to save his love from an untimely demise by actually going through the many circles of Hell to find her.
Star Trek Online has officially-announced that its servers have gone live, not just to the head-start customers, but to everyone. This means that once you get your game downloaded and installed by way of whatever retailer (online or other) you purchased from, you should be good to go. However, know that the pre-order goodies have been slow-going as some retailers are not distributing their redemption codes until this afternoon. So, sit tight and at least get your character created in the meantime.
While we ready our full review of the game, checkout our recent preview article.
KOEI has released a new video showing off some of the new bosses and even some Meng Huo footage in their latest gameplay trailer. Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce is due out February 16th on the Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms.
We were happy to take part in the recent beta test of Cryptic Studios’ upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online, and wanted to make sure we give you our preliminary thoughts on the game prior to its February 2nd release date (Feb. 5th in Europe).
After getting the beta client up and running, and following a rather large patch, I jumped into creating my first character. The game’s user-interface and themes seem to have a lot in common with Champions Online, Cryptic’s other MMO in play currently. At the time we played in the beta, we were limited to creating a Starfleet character at first. Overall, the system is similar to the previously-mentioned Champions but far less flamboyant in your options… (cont.)
See the rest of our Star Trek Online preview, After the Break!
You can select uniform themes and colors, as well as customize your body shape slightly. It never gets too out-of-hand, although we were able to create a few aliens we thought Starfleet might have trouble replicating uniforms for.
Once character creation was completed, we were thrust into the game’s tutorial mission, which is actually a series of missions strung together that nicely teaches you the basics of both ground and space combat. My advice to you new players is to read what NPCs say to you very carefully. The journal where your mission information is stored can sometimes not be verbose enough and you might miss some important clues if you don’t pay attention while the task is being assigned to you.
The ground combat in Star Trek Online was fun – similar to Champions in terms of using weapons and abilities, but level designs seemed a lot better in the way of how they fit with the Star Trek cannon. It was really exciting to beam my away team down to an alien world for the first time in the middle of what we would call a violent dust storm (I know not what the planet’s natives call it – but I digress). The game makes good use of flanking and combat keeps you moving and seeking cover. Attacking an enemy’s side or rear will result in a lot of extra damage so you will find some real challenge in battle with the various types of things you will fight – be it a Gorn, Borg, or Orion Slave-Woman.
Your away team is made up of your bridge offers and other selected ‘red-shirts’, and you never really feel alone as the squad AI is fairly good in keeping to their respective roles. You will be able to recruit Tactical, Engineering, and Science offers to your crew, each with their own set of technical abilities. It is pretty cool to see your blue-shirted science officers running around in the heat of battle healing your team up – all on their own.
The real meat and potatoes of Star Trek Online will most-likely be the space combat. Like a slightly more ‘arcadey’ variant of the Starfleet Command combat system, you will have to maneuver your ships around constantly, making sure to use your shield and weapon arcs to their fullest. When you begin facing off against multiple aggressors with your friends at your side, things become very exciting – even sometimes rivaling the Borg space battle at the opening of Star Trek: First Contact in terms of ‘Oorah’-factor. Phasers and disruptors burn shields, torpedos slam into ship hulls… Life is good when it comes to Star Trek Online’s space combat system.
Outside of combat, exploring starbases and other various objects seems adequate in providing a place for players to socialize. It will also be nice to see if Cryptic is going to allow players to congregate on each others starships at some point. In fact, there are so many places Cryptic can take STO it will be very exciting to see where they leads us.
Still in beta, however, the game was displaying several bugs, the most annoying of which can be seen below. To preface, there are no official EVAs in Star Trek Online, yet this seems to happen a lot.
Again, this is still in beta, so hopefully all the issues will be corrected by time the game is released.
Overall, we had a lot of fun playing Star Trek Online and feel like it is definitely going to be worth picking up. Standby for our full review of the game after its launch!
Also, remember to weigh your pre-order options carefully – many retailers offer different bonus items!
