I've been jaded with massive multiplayer online games since my time with the infamous World of Warcraft, plus I'm not old (or nerdy) enough to be a true Trekkie. Games that are designed to waste your time like MMOs don't fit my lifestyle, and the only person I can really recognize from Star Trek is Captain Jean-Luc Picard. So you can imagine my sense of disbelief when I realized I actually enjoyed my time with Star Trek Online.
From the time I spent in the game's open beta, there's not much that I can praise about the game's structure. The ground combat is clunky and boring, the user interface isn't intuitive to use, and there's little in the way of guidance in what to do in the game. Want to know the difference between Photon and Quantam torpedos? Don't look at the descriptions in the game, Google it. Want to know where the hell the 'Crystaline Entity' is for that one mission? Google it. I could go on, but you get the overall picture.
But I wouldn't be talking about Star Trek Online if it just was mediocre. One thing that the game has satisfied is my childhood fantasies about blowing things up in space. Piloting a lumbering Federation cruiser around Klingon Bird of Preys and crushing them with disruptor beams and photon torpedoes has created a sensation that I haven't felt since I was seven years old and doodling sprawling space battles on the margins of my math homework. The game is quite good at fulfilling the inner Captain Kirk, and even the cumbersome ground battles serves the purpose of giving us the Star Trek experience by expanding the universe beyond go-here-and-blow-up-3-Klingon-ships.
Star Trek Online is about as geeky as one can get (complete with in-game voice over from Leonard Nimoy), and it even appeals to non-Trekkies if you love sci-fi enough. The game is an MMO in concept, but in reality you won't miss much if you want to do things by yourself, which is another plus in my book. I won't be spending much time with the game, but I do appreciate how it has awoken the inner child that I had assumed to be long gone.
Beam me up, Scotty!
No comments:
Post a Comment