Jumping. It has been a staple of games since a little plumber leaped to impossible heights for his portly Italian frame onto an ill fated goomba. Jumping was just the first step into the genre known as platforming. I find that platformers are more about flow than about strategy. And perhaps the only games I excel at most times. Timing and better than average reaction time to the environment are key. It is difficult to put into words what makes one good at a platformer. It seems to be more about just understanding how the character moves and then adjusting your expectations based on that. From the early years of my gaming memory I was hooked on such games as Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, and Kid Icarus on my Gameboy. These games were the ones I would come back to over and over again.

My experience in platformers really defined how I looked at most games. A somewhat bias outlook but one that carried over nonetheless. Shadow Complex was a good idea of what a new type of platformer can do though it is not strictly a platformer in the sense of older types. More similar to Mega Man than Mario, but then again Mega Man is considered an old school platformer as well just with some shooting elements. Still it doesn't yet feel as if it is a true platformer in the way the Mario Bros. and Mario World did. I believe a very good idea of a platformer is exemplified in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. One of my favorite games of all time MAINLY because of the acrobatic platforming sections more so than the combat. I thought the new Prince of Persia was a fantastic game for its extensive platforming sections that downplayed the combat. This is mostly because of my personal preferences however and couldn't care less of others opinions dealing with such things as the broken story progression and ending, of which I loved that as well by the way. No the great thing was that I felt elated with the wall dashes, slides, flips, jumps, leaps, and general acrobatics in the new POP. So much so that I yearned from some other games to pick up on this formula. The controls felt as smooth as I remember the older 2d platforming games of my heyday. The NES and SNES were strewn with tons of those genre games. And with good reason. It was simple to put such gameplay in the limited horsepower of those systems and still make them not only fun but looking good too.

I can't really say what it is about platformers that draws me in so much. I suppose it is the simple ability to jump to impossible heights and fall without getting so much as a sprained ankle. Even more than flying, jumping was much more fun. I spent hours in Crackdown simply leaping from building to building, collecting those enticing agility orbs so I could jump even higher. In Little Big Planet you enjoyed a world of your own imagination just as you did as a kid. In Tomb Raider the scrambling across ledges and leaping to catch another always made me eager for the next tomb to be thoroughly raided. The simple ability that seems more than human and yet so easily understood as human of leaping, running, jumping, climbing. It's like being a kid again but now you have nearly no limits and no scraped knees. That elation of simple enjoyment that you get from climbing a tree or running as fast as you can is translated when Sonic races across a screen to jump onto a spring and fly through the air to land on some bumpers and fly in another direction. That sense of freedom that is felt on a trampoline is reflected in Jumping Flash as you rocket skyward to your next point. When you pull of a particularly tricky run through obstacles and enemies in N+ you feel accomplished. Splosion Man reflects the sillyness of the incredible gaps of free space one crosses in platformers to reach a goal in a perfect example of platforming goodness and a lesson in its frustratingly difficult challenges. VVVVVV shows that it doesn't have to look next gen to be fun, frustrating, and fast paced.



I notice a trend in many newer platforming games is the use of weapons. Sure Mario could spit fireballs but that wasn't really a main focus of the game. Perhaps its merely a new facet of gaming but I prefer a game that relies mostly on its moving through the levels rather than worrying about shooting enemies. A sandbox game seems to be a natural progression of the platformer. Your Crackdowns, Prototypes, Assassins Creeds are all examples of a very platform heavy game that also doubles in the action department. These cross genre games are very fun and satisfying but I find myself itching for some old 2D type gaming. Braid was certainly a welcome addition to that genre adding in its own gimmick of time manipulation that made for some rather head scratching environmental puzzles. As for future titles I can't say for sure. To be honest when a new platformer I hadn't heard of comes out I am just as surprised as most as they seem to be not nearly as hyped as the larger AAA titles of today. Which is rather sad in a way. Mirror's Edge was about the last nearly pure platformer I can think of in recent history that was hyped as much as any other game. And that didn't do so well due to some control issues that came up.

Truly good platformers are not only fun but difficult. I mean this in a way that makes them rewarding for accomplishing a level after working at it. Timing just the right jumps at just the right times is just as difficult as taking out an enemy in an FPS or landing that combo string in a fighter. You feel just the same kind of rush in running through a gauntlet of dangers and coming out unscathed as you do when you finish the raid in an MMO or scoring perfectly in a music rhythm game. They are smaller moments to be sure scored by simple landings or a brief run through a near impossible maze. But let me tell you when you finally reach your princess in the RIGHT damn castle this time you are king of the damn world.

Bioware has reached a point in their games that has now peaked with Mass Effect 2. It is now safe to say that it rivals Half Life 2 in the game and story area. I do not say this lightly as I hold HL2 in very high esteem so you can imagine how ME2 must have affected me to come to this conclusion. But it most certainly has blown all my expectations out of the water as one of the best games produced by Bioware and even this year. I would even go so far as to say it might make game of the year. It is still very early in the year and often games that come out earlier are overlooked later on but this one just could be the one to make it. Now the rest of this article is going to have some spoilers. So fair warning to you now. Reading on will give away some key moments in Mass Effect 2 but I feel I need to point them out to show just how good this game is.

Spoilers Ahead!

I played ME1 just before ME2 so I was going in with a fresh outlook in my mind of the next chapter in Shepard's journey. Bioware handles the reset of Shepard into a new game very well so that someone new to the game can jump right in with a custom character. I played the PC version so I cannot say how the 360 version worked but importing your save from ME1 was fairly simple as it gave you in game option to do so. Your choices had an effect on certain outcomes later in ME2 as you find going in. It lists your choices at key points in the game like who you choose to let die during the Virmire mission and if Wrex was alive or not. All very nice touches to what is essentially the next chapter in that story. And it does feel like another chapter as you dive headlong into Mass Effect 2 with the Normandy being blown to hell and Shepard dying in space. Only to be brought back by a shadowy secret organization known as Cerberus. A pro-human group looking to use Shepard to face the threat of the Reapers.

The main baddies of this chapter though are a proxy of the Reapers known as the Collectors. Named such as they seem to collect everything from technology to people for unknown purposes. Now they are taking entire human colonies for whatever reason and Cerberus is on the case with Shepard leading. It should be noted that Cerberus is a shady bunch that isn't too worried about bending or even breaking laws and ethical boundaries to see that humans benefit from it. That Cerberus is such an organization is integral to the overall storyline and influences many of the characters choices and consequences. That you start out with these people rather than the full backing of the Council as you did the last game says something about how Bioware decided to change up the storytelling here. In fact you don't even meet the council at all this time around. And have very little to do with the Citadel. They could have just had you working as you were as a Spectre for the Council but they decided to shake things up. In fact your status as a Spectre is of almost no consequence during the game at all. Something so integral to the first game was hardly even used in the second which is pretty damn ballsy on a storytelling viewpoint. They were not content to rely on it for pushing the game forward. Instead you find yourself hitting more resistance than ever now that you are part of the Cerberus group or at least working with them on stopping the Collectors.

But enough on that, the real biggies are in the story and how what you thought you knew was not what necessarily is. Sure others have pointed out the differences in game play mechanics such as the improved cover system or inventory reduction and upgrades but that is not really what makes the game so intriguing, at least not to me. Now each character is well fleshed out this time around. Every new member of your crew can be won over to be loyal to you by interacting with them and learning their story, even doing missions to help them that reveal who they are and what drives them. No cardboard cutouts to be found here but real characters that come across as genuine. From the scarred psyche of Jack, who is angry at the universe and keeps everyone away to keep from getting hurt to the Asari Justicar, Samara, who has to live with the burden of being the executioner of her own children. Everyone of them has a distinct personality that makes them who they are and pulls you farther into the world of Mass Effect. My personal favorite this time around is Mordin, the Salarian scientist with a very blunt attitude and a guilty conscience. His matter-of-fact attitude and fast talking explanations that go on and on are so fun just to listen to I found myself trying to talk to him all the time. That right there is a mark of good character design. And then there is the bit where he sings some Gilbert and Sullivan. I shit you not.



Even Joker is not such a defensive prick this time around and actually has some cool moments. His rapport with EDI, the Normandy's onboard AI is rather fun and humorous. But there is one particular part in the game that stands out. That is Joker's mission when the Collectors take over the ship. He has to hobble to the rescue by avoiding enemies that are pouring into the Normandy and he can't even get up to a fast jog. I actually died a couple times when I took the wrong route and my face got eaten by a Collector. It is a stand out moment in ME2 that really brings it to a whole new level story wise.




The voice acting in this one really shines even more than the original did. They really put a lot of effort into those roles and damn do they deliver on the goods. A prime example is Martin Sheen's role as the head of Cerberus, the Illsuive man. The voices seem to fit so perfectly on the characters you would think they were born just for the roles. It immerses you so much into the atmosphere you feel as if you are watching a sci-fi epic instead of actually controlling how that epic plays out. The dialogue choices I made were more in the vein of how I thought my Shepard would react and not so much how I would. To be able to try and think what a character would do that is separate from yourself and your own opinions was a very good feeling for me. It made Shepard feel more real with his own life and choices to make and I was just the little voice in his head from time to time. I am not one of those people that wants to put myself in the shoes of the protagonist. Instead I want to be joining them on their adventure and watching it unfold. So this for me felt great.



Romantic paths this time around are more numerous. For myself I choose Tali, my favorite from ME1. She was a very different character than the others. Eager but not as self confident. It gave her a unique feel and personality. I recall when talking to her in late stages that Shepard gave a little smile on occasion. That was a nice little touch I thought and really made it even more believable that he actually liked Tali and she wasn't just the choice of the moment and he remained stone faced. This time around it wasn't just conversations that get you a romantic option. In fact if you sided with a different character on a key point in the game it could end a relationship. Another nice little touch. And that is what really sets ME2 apart. All the nice 'little touches' that make it on the whole a very great game. A sum of its parts if you will.

There are even more story twists as you go along that really flex the writing staffs muscles on this game. Such as recruiting Legion, a Geth. Turns out the Geth you had fought in the first game were actually a splinter faction from the original Geth that rebelled against the Quarians. They had evolved on their own to create their place in the galaxy and were not interested in having the Reapers do it for them. In fact they wanted to fight the other Geth, who they call Heretics, and the Reapers which explains how one joins your crew. This leads to tensions with Tali later on as you can imagine and how you resolve it can change your relationship with her as well. The emphasis on choices is expounded on even more here. One key moment to me was from the first game, sparing the Rachni queen. You meet an Asari who passes on a message thanking you for helping her. Whether you meet her again in ME2 I am unsure as I have not fully explored everything yet but this one touch made me feel I made the right choice. And perhaps it will even be a major point in the third game who knows.



A major twist in the game is similar to the one from the first game where you find out the Reapers built the Citadel and mass relays and not the Protheans. Turns out the Collectors are Protheans that the Reapers modified to be their slaves. Not only that but they are building another Reaper as it seems they had past civilizations do for them before. Each time they wipe out a civilization they have them build more Reapers for them it seems. So they grow and evolve with each new one they destroy. In fact the new Reaper being built looks like a human skeleton when you encounter it at the end, foreboding the end of humanity. The malevolence of the Reapers and the threat they represent never seemed so insidious as at that moment that you see the missing human colonys being reduced into genetic sludge to help build a new Reaper.

The story of this game and its enormously epic presentation to a galaxy on the brink of destruction all pans out here in this second act of the Mass Effect trilogy. It easily stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Half-Life and Halo in terms of scale and depth in a sci-fi magnum opus. Hell I would put it up against Star Wars for sheer breadth of characters and thematic presentation. It really is that good. I not only recommend getting it but also Mass Effect 1 if you really want the full package. I do not go on at length about most games but this one has certainly hit all the right buttons for me and I look forward to what Bioware has to offer in the next installment. A great game, a great time, and great fun.

Ok, so the beta is over and the dust has settled. As of writing this its been a couple days since the last time I played. I was collecting my thoughts on the matter and looking back at what I had experienced in the Star Trek Online world. I will try to summarize my thoughts and opinions that have accumulated up to this point.

The game's presentation is top notch. They nailed the atmosphere of Star Trek wonderfully. From the opening menus to the characters to the world your character inhabits its easily recognizable as the Star Trek universe. Every sound, every wall panel, every flip of a tricorder to scan something immerses you in that mindset of being there. The details do not only go into the window dressing but into the stories and missions as well. You not only meet some characters from the Trek universe but get to go on missions with them. They tell you bits of their back story that you might already know being a Trek fan and new information that is all new and expands the universe even more. I got a major kick out of Leonard Nimoy having some voice over work in this game and nostalgia flooded over me in a nice warm wave. Those touches to a franchise so ingrained in our culture really give it some appeal there.

Now for the gameplay there is really two games here. The starship portions, of which there is a large majority of, and the ground missions. As I have said before the starship battles are very well done here. The backdrop is meticulously detailed with asteroids, gaseous nebula, planets, moons, ship debris, and all manner of starstuff to fill the vacuum of space. The lighting effects really work well here as phasers, disruptors, torpedoes and the like act as active light sources that reflect off ship hulls and whatever else is nearby. The battles in space feel tough as your ship takes a pounding from barrages of beams and torpedoes hammering at your shields. You almost feel each impact and can imagine your little guys on the bridge being tossed around in true Trek fashion as they battle Klingons. A good sound system really brings it all together as with surround sound you can hear the direction of fire and explosions. The closer you zoom into the action the louder it gets. Just try to get over the fact of no sound in space and you will enjoy the hell out of it.

Then there is the ground missions. This is an entirely different animal. If you are alone you control your away team of whoever your bridge officers are that you selected to go with you. Thankfully the ally AI for your team is very well done. They know when to heal and when to buff. They do not often screw up and many times will save your ass if you get incapacitated. The weapons and armors you get throughout the game are typical of an MMO. Always seeking out the next best thing. But you also have to keep in mind your NPC team. Keeping them decked out as well as yourself will be key to this game. As for the ground missions themselves there is a fair amount of combat involved here too. Although the enemy AI can be rather dull witted it makes up for it in sheer strength. Very few pushovers when it comes to the NPC enemies. In fact many of them can be real tough mofos and teach you about the virtues of dodge rolling really fast. A alternative to fighting missions there are some talk to NPC type missions. Where you try to solve things with words and scanning things. These were rather rare in the beta I played. I hope that they flesh out more of these missions to make them more in depth in the full release. The actual mechanics of movement and combat are fairly straightforward and simple to pick up. No big surprises here. Your team has their own abilities as well that you can activate or they will themselves. As of the beta it seems you get a maximum of 4 away team members. However if you invite another player into your team they will replace an NPC team member at random. This was a bit of a gripe as if they replaced a Science officer and there were no others then there would be no one that could heal in the team making it rougher going. In space battles it doesn't usually matter who joins your team but on ground missions the setup needs a bit more strategy.

The missions structures are defined by who gives them. There are simple ones such as kill x number of enemies in y location. Another type is to explore a portion of the galaxy map. Usually this involves flying around in a space until certain anomalies appear and you enter a system for a random encounter of some kind. It can involve fighting or scanning objects or away missions that involve fighting or bringing supplies to colonists. There are also fleet action missions. This involves you and other players completing goals in large scale battles against enemy fleets. These are rather fun in the sheer scale of them. Then there are the story based missions. These usually progress the main story of the MMO forward. And this is where you usually run into characters from the Trek universe. Homage is paid to the franchise in these missions very often. From nods to characters, episodes, stories, or just small details. It's all there for you to explore and interact with. Settings in the Trek universe are well thought out and interesting to visit. But this is more enjoyable for a fan of the series and not so much a newcomer. Though they make it all interesting enough that even a newcomer would find it interesting. Or at least that is the hope here.


Overall the game is a good representation of Star Trek but still needs more work to truly capture the heart of the franchise. More focus is on battles rather than exploration and diplomacy that made up more of the majority of the movies and shows. Perhaps the full retail will have more emphasis on these. But as this is an MMO they probably wanted to appeal to a wider audience. The gameplay is fairly solid and they have worked out a lot of the initial bugs that were hindering the game up to this point. Also they improved the interface system and NPC system as well. Who is to say what other changes will come about once the game is fully released.

My final thoughts is that this is a good game and has a lot of potential. During the beta there were many enthusiastic players to meet and join up with for all sorts of missions so I think the community is already in place coming out of the gate which is important. For now all I can say is that if you are going to get this game and are a fan of Star Trek you will enjoy yourself. I know I did.

As of writing this Cryptic has released a rather large patch for the beta. This has significantly changed the look of the game. Icons and items are changed as are communications and some character models. As you I loaded into the game I am greeted by the dulcet tones of Leonard Nimoy. I was surprised to say the least. It seems they introduced a new string of missions that gave some backstory to the game and why things are as they are now. Which it seems that will be in the final game and its a very nice touch especially for people that will be new to the game.

The icons and such were much nicer but there were still some bad bugs. Like appearing as a ship when beaming into a ground mission without your away team. Funny the first time but now wearing thin. Especially since you have to beam back out and then load the mission up again to get them to appear. You may have to do this a few times. A new bug is appearing in space instead of your ship and then falling down to the bottom of the map and taking damage. I would have thought the major patch would have fixed it but then again they took down the servers again later on that day for more maintenance. We can only hope they will iron out some more of these persistent annoyances.

As for the gameplay today was a very good day. A mission that I and some others of the Destructoidians (the name of our fleet) took on involved us visiting the Guardian of Forever and the nostalgia factor kicked into warp 9. We went back in time to meet the original Enterprise and even had Spock with Leonard Nimoy voicing him hail us a few times. It was all enough to give me a raging nerdon or nerd hard on. We took out several old style Klingon ships and even got to see the old school Klingons without the forehead bumps. Malcor unleashed his patented Malcor Maneuver on some ships. It was super effective. After some battles and some falling through space before transforming back into ships and a bit of time wibbly wobbly action we were back in our own time space and getting our rewards. That was when another bug popped up that I encountered before. Malcor for some reason or another did not get the completion for the same mission we all just did. So he had to go back and do it again. I have encountered this problem and I can tell you it is rather frustrating in the extreme. To do all that work to get a big fuck you do it again at the end.

We did enjoy the mission though and it was a very big love letter to the fans to let them experience a bit of Trek history themselves and let them feel apart of it. This is what Trek should feel like. Using the enormous history and mythos as a story telling tool and letting the players engage in it and become part of it. I hope to see more referencing missions like this one to flesh out the world they are creating here. There has been tons of littls facts about the universe of Trek to date at the bottom of each loading screen. Information that may lead into missions that do indeed involve old show or movie cast members making appearances in the game. Whether or not they got the voice actors to jump onboard will be a different story. I would hope they could get them.

After the patch Cryptic opened up some more sectors of space such as the Alpha Centari block which was where the Romulan space was. Also apparently the space leading into DS9 area is open as well but I have not visited that area yet. Exploration will be quite fun visiting some of the more iconic places like Bajor.

I will fill you in later when I explore some more of the opened up sectors. Stay tuned.

Ok, we are into it now. And let me tell you as much as I have enjoyed the game so far it is beginning to get on the repetitive side. Star Trek Online is now focusing heavily on combat and less on what made Star Trek what it's been about, exploration and discovery. That is not to say Star Trek has not had war or battles but it's never been only about that.

Now to be fair what there is in Star Trek Online has been good. The space battles are the highlight without a doubt. The ground missions are still quite buggy but have potential. However almost all involve fighting someone for some reason or another. In fact there have been basically only two missions I have encountered that involved no combat. One was a diplomacy mission that was more like simple fetch quest that you talked to NPC then answer questions about what you talked about with each NPC and it was over. Took no more than five minutes total. The other mission involved just bringing supplies to a colony of some sort. Which I didn't have all of them and there was no actual way I could see of giving them the supplies they just seemed to get them somehow. So that was about it for non-combat related missions. No exploration or problem solving. Then back to space battles. Something just doesn't seem right about this. The battles are fun but not the only thing I was expecting from a Star Trek MMO. Sure some will say that is what you get from an MMO, battles that lead to leveling that lead to new equipment to upgrade for more battles later on. That isn't what an MMO simply has to be but rather has become expected to be. And this is where Star Trek should diverge from the pack. However I am going to give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt in the fact that not all of the games content has been unlocked for the beta yet. There is still more factions and more missions to be revealed and that includes the deep space ones that might give us an idea of what the badges of exploration are and where you get them. By the way, the badges of exploration seem to be some type of currency you can use to buy higher level equipment that I haven't yet come across yet.

Last time I mentioned I had recently gone up in rank and gotten a new ship and I want to get into that a little. Once you get to Lieutenant Commander rank you get access to the tier 2 ships. From that tier there are three types. Escorts, which are your main fighter types that are smaller, more maneuverable which means they have a smaller turning radius which is very handy since escorts are the only type that can equip the heavy cannons in the games and have such a small firing arc that you need to be able to turn quickly also you get an extra forward weapon slot but have a downside that they have weaker shields and less crew that can repair your hull if you receive damage. Also each ship gets an extra console slot for what type of ship it is and since this is the tactical type ship you get a second tactical console to equip for an extra offensive boost. Then there are the Cruisers, these are the big ships of the fleet and have very large crews so they can repair damage quicker and have larger engines so they have the strongest shields but they are hindered by a much slower turning radius so you have a hard time lining up torpedoes. You get a second engineering console slot and another rear weapon slot so it you are able to load up front and back torpedo launchers which is nice as you find yourself wishing you had one quite often in the first tier ship battles. Then there is the Science vessels. They are a middle size between the escort and cruiser ships and offer a better turning radius than the cruiser but lower firepower than either ship. They offer a more powerful set of shields and a bit more repair speed since they have a larger crew than the escort ships. They have access to more equipment though that uses your science training. I am not sure on this part as I chose a cruiser for my second tier as I wanted the classic ships from the movies and TV series. Each ship also gets a second slot for another bridge officer depending on its class. So escorts get a second tactical, cruisers get a second engineering, and science get a second science officer slot. Since your officers are your ships abilities you get more abilities that coincide with the class of ship. Also once you upgrade your officers to lieutenant now that you are lieutenant commander they open up their second tier skills. So now one of my engineering officers now has two abilities for the ship. For mine I gave him emergency power to shields second level that compliment his first level emergency power. This comes in handy when in fights as the second one can be used after a shorter cooldown time and recharge the shields during a fight. Thats another point to make is that your bridge officers can now go up in rank if you reach your next rank and with that it opens up their next skills slot to upgrade. So not only do you go up but everything you control does too which is a nice feature. However you need to use all your skill points when you get them as that somehow affects how you rank up as well. I am not sure how that works but I ranked up but my second tier skills were not available to me until I spent all my previous skill points on previous ones. Weird.

It was a good thing I got this new ship as I soon found myself needing it badly in a mission I was in earlier. One group of missions are known as fleet battles. Basically they are large group battles with set objectives to accomplish such as destroy a certain amount of ships or one particular ship. I went in with about fifteen other ships perhaps more it was hard to tell with so much going on. We started off simply enough by taking out groups of ships that appeared. However you never want to be first to encounter a group of enemy ships as they all focus on you immediately and tear away your shields pretty damn fast and blow you to hell in seconds. It is better to try and time your attack range with some other ships so you don't get overwhelmed. The exchange of fire is quite impressive as you weave in and out of ships trying to take down the other fleet. The real shit hit the fan when we had to take down a ship with a name. The rest of the ships were just by class but this named ship was a real beast. It was a dreadnought class of ship I had not seen before and it was a tough sunavabitch. It could easily handle more than ten of our ships attacking it all at once. But the real problem was that there was also a second dreadnought and several warships guarding this one and it was completely wrecking our shit as we all tried to take them out. We were getting slaughtered left and right. Took use quite a while to whittle those bastards down and finally get the main ship alone and even that took a lot of firepower. Now this ship was only around level 13 or so I would think if I go by his rank compared to mine. I can only imagine how powerful the later ships are that you will encounter.

That is another thing I quickly found out. The difficulty of the enemies seem to ramp up considerably at this level. After the fleet battle I decided to go do a mission in the Admiral Quinn line of missions. Quinn is one of the mission giving NPC that you get from hailing Starfleet by the way. I followed the mission and started to notice just how much stronger the enemies were which really kicked into high gear on the ground mission part where I and my away team have to board the USS Kirk and help them fight off Klingon invaders. And damn, that is where shit meets fan big time. I walk in and me and my away team are blown away in seconds. I mean just damn seconds. They blow away our personal shields and health meters so quickly we can barely react. I was just shocked to see such a difference in difficulty compared to the earlier part of the mission. I mean I could see the little red number 3 next to the enemies names that let me know they were three levels higher than me but I had fought the ships just outside before beaming aboard and they were 3 levels higher and not nearly as tough. For some reason the away missions seem to be far higher in difficulty. Mostly this is due to the rapid fire that some of the enemies have that just eat away health and shields.

Now to close out this posting I will say that as much as I enjoy what there is here I am still feeling unfulfilled for my Star Trek jones. Come on Cryptic, make every Trek fan happy and make sure the rest of your content is more in line with what we expect from Trek.

Ok it is day four of this coverage and things are getting better and getting worse.

Let me clarify that for you. More people on Destructoid are getting on STO and playing with them in fleet battles and pew pewing Klingons with them is loads of fun. Having said that the glitches throughout the game seem to still be a major problem. I know this is supposed to be a beta but it seems some of the main problems are not being resolved. Like your away team not beaming down with you or appearing in space as your character or the opposite of appearing in ground missions as your ship still persist. And these are well known issues so you would think they would address them by now. As of writing this the server went down for emergency maintenance again it seems. I realize the problems are being worked on during the beta phase however I can't help but feel a pending disappointment at these problems persisting even into the full release. However despite all this Cryptic seems confident they will be able to fix all of these with their push for the subscription programs of lifetime ones. That seems extremely optimistic for an MMO that isn't even out yet and still experiencing problems.

However despite these problems it remains fun with very well done space battles and strategy as well as a seperate ground mission status that is its own beast altogether. Now if you are looking for a game that is not like an MMO then this is not for you. It doesn't break the mold of MMO quest structures and such nor is there that much difference when it comes to combat. There is still cool down to abilities and such like in most MMO. However it is the overall theme and execution of this persistent world that really keeps you coming back.

My friends from Destructoid have already put together a fleet. A fleet is basically a guild or clan when compared to other MMO. You can have your own private chat channel, a shared bank of inventory and currency, and some missions that open up just for characters in a fleet. This gives you a good way to pool resources for each other as you often find yourself with left over equipment that lower ranked people could use for their own ships and bridge officers.

The servers hiccups have become more noticeable throughout gameplay. It seems they are working overtime to try and address all the problems coming in and are bringing down the servers in some cases. I'd really like some kind of developer journal or something on their website to give you an idea of what was changed and what they are currently working on to give me a rough idea of how they are progressing with finishing out the world. It is probably the first game where I have a vested interest, being a long time Trek fan from years past. I want to see this succeed after they seemed to have put so much effort into it and the community of Trek fans so quick to adopt it into the fold. So far the online community has been very cordial and helpful, something that is rare if you are familiar with most MMO. Is it simply because of the content is Trek related or perhaps just because everyone is new here? I can't say for sure but I do find it nice not to be spammed with dick references nonstop or to see some jerks screwing over others with exploits they have found to level faster or steal drops.

The community is what can really make or break an MMO as far as attracting players and keeping them. Lots of people are familiar with the astounding asshattery in other MMO such as WOW no doubt. It has put off many players to the game and even irks long time players as well.

As of this writing I recently was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and get to choose a new ship. I plan to go with a Cruiser class as I like the big ships from the TV series. I will let you know how that decision pans out later on.