Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Star Trek Online - Beta - Ground Combat

I got in the beta due to pre-ordering the game so I downloaded it on Tuesday. Today I was at home watching the twins as my wife was laid up with a nasty pinched nerve due to the pregnancy (protip: pregnancy not all that fun) and after the boys went down for a nap and I had cleaned up the place a bit, I sat down for 45 minutes to try out the game.

The character creation is fantastic with lots of options for everything from race to badge insigna and boots. I, of course, created a human called Ensign Kodachi, first name Kirith.

I was disappointed with the character controls. The camera was annoying, turning in the direction I wanted to move instead of facing a single direciton... unless something was targeted which I didn't get at first. The animations looked... off. During one fight watching the NPCs bounce around like jackrabbits with springs in their boots to get over obstacles was very offputting. And I ran everywhere; dude slow down! It didn't look like a Triple-A game from 2010 in my humble opinion.

Then again, I just came off of finishing the awesome Batman: Arkham Asylum last week so maybe I'm just spoiled and STO is following MMO standards that I'm not used to because of Eve being so different. Also, I understand MMOs have to make allowances for network latency but still... I think they could do better.

But I'm not here for the ground combat. Indeed, I hope to eskew all ground based missions if at all possible (although I get the feeling that it will not be). So as I got to my light cruiser USS Ninveah (naturally) I quit the game as my time was up. Ah, the hazards of being on call to waking toddlers. Tonight if Eve is quite I shall continue my investigation of the part that matters: ship to ship combat.

4 comments:

  1. Bad Kirith! Don't be swayed from such heretical "other games". Get back in EVE, and let's Amarr Victor and what not.

    Bit hypocyritical since I can't get on EVE atm. XD

    MushskiC. (Fellow Corpie)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are correct, you avoid ground combat. The episode missions generally have multiple phases where you go from space to surface and back to space again.

    The animations are not stellar, but they are in the same space as LotRO, War, and WoW.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That should say, "can't avoid ground combat."

    ReplyDelete
  4. "It didn't look like a Triple-A game from 2010 in my humble opinion."

    Yeah - as you allude to MMOs look like trash compared to single player/co-op games on the PC and consoles.

    EVE can look pretty because, for the most, it's just tiled wallpapers with a few sex ships throw in. (It's easy to be hi-res when you entire world isn't 3D models.)

    ReplyDelete