[Preview] Star Trek Online Beta First Look

I, like a good little Trekkie fanboy pre-ordered Star Trek: Online. And what an advantageous move that was. “Why?”, you ask. How stupid you are! As a pre-order bonus I was allowed to join the open-beta! Talk about worth it! Thankfully, in doing that, I can give you a first taste of this great MMO!

Immediately upon playing, I knew it to be what I had originally expected it to be: Amazing. As far as I can tell at this point, very little Star Trek canon was left unused when creating this spectacle of a game.

When you first get into the game, you create your character of course. Now, you can choose a standard race from the popular Star Trek species such as Andorians and Vulcan. If you do that though, you are a noob. Yes, a noob from noob town, dressed in the attire of a noobite noob- squire. The Race creator is where this part of the game shines like a class 5 pulsar! It is about the most advanced character creator I have ever seen in an MMO. Listen to me, because I don’t think you are getting it. THE MOST ADVANCED CHARACTER CREATOR I have EVER seen in an MMO. From cranial shape to neck WIDTH (yes, you can change how wide the neck is), you can control almost every aspect of your alien species. I myself didn’t go to crazy with it, but running around the game I saw some pretty damn cool aliens!

But that’s not all that important. Why run around as an alien when you can speed around in your kick ass space-ship?! Very early in the game you take command of your own spaceship, and once you start roaming the galaxy you wonder why they didn’t give it to you sooner. When in space you have full range of control from left/right to up/down, and everything in between. It take s a bit of getting used to, and it feels a bit slow, but its the most freeing game movement I’ve felt in a long time. The space battles too are very interesting. You can customize your ships weapons, but at the start you only have 2 phasers and a photon-torpedo canon.  The trick though is that they each only have a certain range from which they can fire so you are constantly maneuvering your ship any which way you can to maximize your threat to the enemy ships.  this is great though because it cancels out the possibility of a stagnant fight as you are almost always in a dog-fight with the other ships.

The controls are easy, but not as simple as that in most MMO’s, so be prepared to take your hand off the mouse to pull a few maneuvering tricks, in space and on the ground. Character skills are split between Ground and Space abilities, which is good because you’re going to need them.

You upgrade skills by spending points on them as you would in any other MMO, but there are many more of them to pump up, so you better have a plan for how you want your officer to evolve.

If the game sounds daunting, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Your crew is there to help you out. No matter where you go, you can always take an away team with you. They too can gain skills, and you have full control over that as well. I know what you are thinking, “AI help? Oh please, no. They always get in the way and fuck my shit up!” Well, in any other game I would fully agree, but these AI are different. They are useful. You might not believe me, but they actually do things that might in some way help your situation. Unbelievable I know, but this game does take place in the FUTURE!

I hope this little taste of Star Trek: Online has helped sate your thirst for a little while longer. I could go on, but If I don’t get back to playing my warp cores going to breech.

Live Long and Prosper, suckas!