Those with longer memories will remember that I am something of a sucker for all things Trek. I will play a mediocre Trek game just for the experience (Star Trek: Legacy anybody?) and so I naturally grabbed Star Trek Online when it came out. I played for a bit, took a gamble that it would be something I would want to drop into over time and went for the lifetime sub. Then I didn’t get around to playing it much more. I’m good at this.

When the series of 5 Breen episodes were being released weekly I didn’t really pay attention, but the email saying that I only had a few days to get a Breen bridge officer (um, whatnow?) clicked somewhere in the “what if I want to have that in the future?” part of my brain. The cynical “You know they’ll sell that as DLC in the future don’t you?” part of my brain had a bad day so was out drinking alone in a bar so into Trek I jumped.

I’d played a few hours at the weekend (first time in months) so I had a brand new Constitution class cruiser to take out for a spin. I told you I’d not played much. After figuring out where I needed to be for the start of episode 1 I started the long trek from Earth to the other side of the galaxy.

They haven’t made map travel any better then? Oh well.

I was then up until 2:30 completing all five episodes in one sitting. I didn’t plan to be, I just found myself having a really good time.

As usual the missions are a combination of space and ground combat. I’m still not a fan of the ground combat, but there was a moment where I beamed down to a busy plaza in a city and it suddenly felt all TNG. Well, like TNG would have been with a hundred extras. The Breen turned up and started causing trouble so I delivered some diplomacy Kirk style and shot them all until they were dead.

There were also some of the “follow the tunnels/corridors shooting groups of bad guys along the way” missions that STO is so keen on, and they don’t feel very Trek to me at all. There were also two puzzles which although being very simple were a nice diversion. So far so good. I actually enjoyed most of the ground sections. The one slight problem was a rather boring mission to a damaged friendly ship. First I had to diagnose and treat a patient, then I had to diagnose another patient, interrogate some Breen prisoners in order to figure out how to treat him and, well, that was the whole episode really. Bad choices fail the mission, which is annoying, but I’m unsure how I would have felt if I’d come across this as a fresh weekly content release. I might actually have enjoyed it more as it was something different; something a bit more Trek episode than just combat.

The space combat side was much better as this is where the game really shines. Because me ship was new, I was rusty and didn’t have good gear the first fight against a battleship took 40 minutes. Part of that was me just playing around with the combat and having fun with firing arcs so it wasn’t all just that I sucked, but after that fight I made a quick refit in space and looked at what all my abilities actually did and from then on fights were a lot easier. Well I say easier but I still managed to get down to 2% hull at one point, but it was fun none the less.

I came away from the evening with a desire to play more, which is good, but I know I’ll never be able to obsess about the game.

The whole plot was a nod to a TNG episode and the Breen as seen in DS9. It really is paced more like the movies than an episode of the show with more space battles and less solving personal problems, but that was always a budget thing for the show anyway. You can afford X special effects shots per season so if you have some stories confined to the sets you already have then you can afford some bigger bangs for the season finale. STO doesn’t have this problem and seems to be incapable of delivering a narrative along the lines of The Inner Light due to the nature of the game. To be fair not many games could deliver that narrative, and even if they could it would be less fun to play rather than to watch.

I think this is where STO has made some of the right decisions. The medium doesn’t allow some parts of Trek to be explored so it’s concentrating on the saving planets, making big discoveries and blowing bad guys up side.   

When the new season of content kicks off I suspect I’ll be playing STO at least once a week.