Star Trek Online Hands On Preview [PC]

25 Dec 2009 at 02:34:20 by Bill Vaughan

In February, Cryptic Studios' highly-anticipated MMO Star Trek Online goes on sale, so we've been exploring the closed beta for the last week to see if the Trekkies will be pleased with what they find. As a massive Trek fan myself, I was keen to get stuck in and see what the game has to offer. As always, beware of plot spoilers as I take you through the first 20 hours or so of Star Trek Online.

One of my favourite parts of starting a new MMO is the character creation process. After experiencing the character creator in Cryptic's Champions Online earlier this year, I wasn't entirely surprised to find that the system in STO was just as robust. First of all, you choose your career, which is equivalent to picking a class. A Science officer can provide healing and buffs, Tactical officers are your weapons experts and can deal out a lot of damage, Engineering officers can take a lot of damage thanks to upgraded shields, and can draw enemy attention.

As Starfleet, you have a number of race choices when making your character; Human, Andorian, Bojoran, Bolian, Vulcan, Feregi or unknown. Unknown means making a character from scratch, adding forehead ridges, antennas, weird lip fringes and what not – all the racial features from the universe of Star Trek at your disposal. Each race has different abilities, such as Acute Senses which helps stealth detection. Once that's decided upon, you get to choose more character traits that improve certain aspects such as survivability or overall damage dealing. This allows players to specialise in certain areas, or perhaps create hybrids. It also helps to make characters that little bit more unique.

When the stats and abilities are out of the way, you move onto the visual customisation. In addition to a plethora of facial options including hair styles, eye shapes, skin tones, and nose sizes, there are many other customisation choices such as hand and foot size, torso build, and leg length. There's a great uniform designer too, which lets players mix and match many styles and colours. Yup, Starfleet are slackening up on uniforms these days it seems.

As usual, the first part of the game teaches you how to move around, interact with others and use objects. At this point, your character is fresh out of the academy. One of your very first tasks is to deal with a group of invading Borg drones. Anyone who's seen the series and films will recognise the expressionless faces and shambling movements immediately, and it's suitably menacing. Cryptic has done a great job on capturing the relentless threat that emanates from these cyborgs.

Fallen enemies drop items that can be used by your character and, later on, by the rest of your NPC away team. You'll find things like weapons, personal shield generators and hypersprays. If they are of no use to you, keep them, they can be sold later on, and the credits can be used to purchase upgrades, better armour or ship improvements.

Not long into STO, you are placed in charge of a ship, and must seek out and destroy malicious probes and enemy vessels. This gives you a good idea of how to cope in hostile situations when aboard your ship, but doesn't prepare you for a multi-ship encounter.

At the end of the tutorial section, you find yourself at the Starbase orbiting Earth in the 'Sol' system. This is where you can mix with other players, sell any goods that you don't need, purchase upgrades for you, your officers and your ship. This is also where you'll find the usual MMO regulars such as the bank, auction house and mission givers, and there are NPCs that you can visit to change the appearance of your ship and your character.

Your success or failure in the game has a lot to do with your Bridge Officers, and the skills they bring with them. Each officer begins with one skill that can be used when in ship mode, ie. in space, and one that can be used on away missions. Bear in mind the careers of your team – Science officers are good for healing, Tactical deal out good damage and Engineering can take a lot of damage, that's your standard tank, DPS and heal setup, however it's not necessary to stick with that formula. You could just have Science officers, allowing you to focus on healing and beneficial effects, but it would mean sacrificing survivability or damage dealing. You can pick your BOs or train existing ones with different skills, at the starbase.

The first few missions involve travelling to a planetary system to investigate potential problems, which usually have to be remedied by taking part in a ship battle or beaming down to the planet.

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