Star Trek Online First Impressions Pt.2

The Open Beta for Star Trek Online has now finished and we are only 3 day away from the head start that is available for people how have pre-ordered the game.

My initial experience was one of frustration and revelation. I liked what I saw however due to connection errors, piss poor graphic driver support and server downtime I was left wondering what the game really involved.

Well after my initial teething issues and a heft 900mb patch from Cryptic, the game suddenly came alive for me. Finally I was able to log in, finally the graphic driver issues were gone and I could really have a go at the opening part of this game.

The player creation I found to be pretty good, the detail in which you can alter your Star Trek character is pretty good and I found myself playing and tweaking with this for a good half hour before I finally decided to play the game proper.

The opening missions are pretty standard in terms of getting you familiar with the controls and guiding you to your destiny of getting your own ship.

Once you have your own ship you are sent to the SOL system, for those who don’t know that would be our galaxy. You are stationed around Earth Base. This is the player hub that allows you to get to walk around talk to people, buy items, sell items, the usual really. Picking up quests from people is pretty simple too, just go to someone who has a “Q” over the head and hey presto they will have something for you to do.

Skipping forwards and beyond the initial quests, I managed to experience space travel which I have to say the mechanics take some getting used to as sector space is like a big map that you move your ship over to reach the next galaxy. This allows for player encounters, trading ships and random missions to interrupt your journey. If you look at the Star Trek Online forums you will see a lot of fans hate this sector space approach and wanted more of a Bridge View travel and warp system. I am sitting on the fence at the moment as what is there works and serves a purpose.

The missions structure seems to be pretty much the same and I am hoping in full release to see some more variation from the what I have seen. You essentially have a space battle, then beam to a ship or a planets surface, kill some people then beam back to you ship and warp out of the galaxy. Turning in quests is pretty easy seeing as we are in the age of Star Trek we can just simply hail Starfleet and talk to the quest giver and hand it in. Saves having to fly back to the person in question and hand it in that way.

So I know this is brief as was my time in the Beta due to the hassle of getting in. However I can say right at the end it seemed to all slot into place. Now I need to play the game for real, I want to boldly go and discover new worlds and races. I hope Cryptic keep adding to this game, refining it and I hope for a real experience soon. Will let you know how get on after my first week of play, I will be in the Head Start which starts on Friday of this week.