I knew the game wasn't much to speak of from reviews and online video but I had to try it out for a month.
This is one of those games where you just sit back and stare in awe at how the developers did everything just right but the implementation was an absolute failure.
What it gets right:
- Star Trek feel. This was the most impressive part. The universe/world/ships and even ground combat is very star-trek-like. Particularly the starship training, equipment and bridge officer training combination.
- No level discrimination. Even a low level player can team up with a high level player and contribute.
- Missions/Quests are immersive storyline wise and follow star trek canon.
What it got wrong:
- Stupefied combat. Its dumbed down so much it really looks like a console game. Thing is, its stupefied not because of how it was designed...for the complexity of combat elements alone indicates otherwise... but rather it was dumbed down to make it more like a console shooter.
For example, the ships fire too fast, move too fast and their special abilities (the trekkie technobabble solutions you see in the tv series) have been reduced to near uselessness..making raw firepower the only thing that matters. A science vessel for example has the ability to target ship subsystems (shields, engines,etc) and can do technotricks to aid it in combat...but using them is nowhere near as effective as simply firing all guns nonstop and flying a huge starship like it was a paper kite.
- Limited Replayability: As with most MMO's this ends up into the same ol' cycle of 'get quest, run there, do that, run back, run somewhere else, kill something, run back, get reward, repeat'. That in itself is not the 'wrong' part..what this game got wrong is that it has the ability to become infinitely replayable... the code is there and its working in the game... but the developers for some reason just dont use it.
The game has a built in mission builder for player-made content. It has a sector map where players move around the galaxy and can enter star systems at will... there are 2 playable factions (klingon, human) that are at war... that right there is perfect for an MMO-wide , player-created PVP gameplay. Yet... the game does not allow interaction between player created missions and the sector space map... so any player created content is just an instance with no purpose.
overall I give this game a 4/10.
29 Nov 2011, 12:30 pm
