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These are the Voyages… Let’s Play Star Trek Online – Episode 5

Episode 5

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In today’s video I briefly cover ship equipment in more detail, and then go on to the next main story mission, Diplomatic Orders. Similar to Stranded in Space, Diplomatic Orders was remastered, but not to the same level as Stranded in Space; the changes were primarily to make the mission flow better.

In this mission, I also talk a bit about skills. A list of all the skills that I can gain, either through applying skill points or by equipping gear, can be found over at the STO Wiki. A while ago, Cryptic did a pretty intensive overhaul of the skill system, and reworked things so that in general, any given THING that would benefit from a skill (core stat, weapons, abilities, etc) would only benefit from ONE skill, instead of a somewhat arcane configuration that wasn’t always obvious.

As well, I jump into another new ship for this video: the Original Series Constitution-Class. Based on the original USS Enterprise, this ship was originally given out with preorders, and later became one of the first ships for regular purchase to actually be a new ship, instead of a different skin for an existing one. As well, it was the first example of gear that scaled to your level, having phaser arrays that roughly matched gear you could equip at whatever level you currently were. Due to the way the scaling calculation works, however, it’s almost always possible to find gear that is, in fact, better, but it may require more work. Beyond the special phasers, the TOS Connie’s stats are a little better then the Light Cruiser, and lean towards the Cruiser side.

For those reading this update on my blog, you can join in on the conversation at Talking Time!

Snap Judgement: Mass Effect 3: Citadel (Bioware, 2013)

I own a heck of a lot of games, and as a result I tend to play only a very short amount of any random one before the next one comes along. While I would like to get over this and finish more of the games I own, in the meantime I have started Snap Judgement to make use of the impressions I get from the start of a game. I do believe that the start of a game is one of it’s most important parts, and if it doesn’t catch you, then even if the end of it is awesome, you’re not likely to continue on. Hopefully my comments and opinions will help someone on the fence about trying a game!

Amount Played for Review: ~6 hours
Platform: PC (Origin)

 

If you still have any attachment for the characters of Mass Effect, you need to get Citadel. While it’s meant to be in about the midpoint of the story of Mass Effect 3, it is far more of what it is outside of the game: a fond farewell to the things you love about Mass Effect.

Citadel is split into 2 main stories, and also includes a number of permanent side content to the game, such as an arena and a combat simulator not unlike Pinnacle Station from the original game. The first story is a small adventure about someone trying to kill Shepard, while the second story has you meeting up with your crew for various small events, before finally bringing everyone (you want) together for a massive shindig at your new apartment.

The writing in this DLC pack is just so well done. They could have taken things as seriously as they did the rest of the game, but the writers knew what their audience wanted. Even with the serious events going on, the crew of the Normandy (past and present) still find the time to crack wise about it; from Shepard worrying about how he sounds like to other people, to Tali wanting to get back at a sushi shop that shunned her so many years ago.

The combat arena is a welcome addition, and almost worth the price of the DLC alone. The arena is based around a condensed version of the co-op multiplayer mode that only lasts 3 rounds and has it’s own set of maps. You can assign various settings to a match, from what enemies you want to face (all the MP enemies are here), what maps you want to fight on (including at least one that seems to be based on Pinnacle Station…!), any type of score modifiers you want to have, and finally your teammates (including allies who you can’t even get in Mass Effect 3!). Victory ears you tickets based on performance, and the tickets can be exchanged for more unlocks in the arena, or straight up for money, which means you can start getting unlimited cash to fuel all the other gaming in this pack, or just to help you finish off buying everything you’ve been holding out on.

And probably one of the best things about the combat arena is that it also serves as a much better implementation of the firing range at the Spectre offices, since it has you engaging actual enemies so you can see generally how well the weapon will fare against your enemies.

 

I’ll finish off this review with a collection of screenshots I took while playing the story of this pack. While they’re all mostly out of context, some people may consider them spoilers, so please be aware of that. You’ll find them after the break.

 

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These are the Voyages… Let’s Play Star Trek Online – Episode 4

Episode 4

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In today’s video I introduce you to Earth Spacedock (ESD), and then go and complete the first real mission in the game. Stranded in Space has been a part of the game ever since launch, but during the first anniversary it was upgraded to make use of new tech that was developed for the Featured Series (sets of special missions); namely, the ability to have enemies that scale to your level, as objectives that vary depending on your profession.

In addition to this, I also show off a new ship: the NX-Class Light Escort. Based on the NX-01 Enterprise, this ship is a replica that has been overhauled to be compatible with modern technologies. Like phasers and shields. I got this ship through the C-Store, alongside the uniforms from Star Trek Enterprise. Unlike every other ship to bear the name Enterprise, the NX-01 is actually classified as an Escort in Star Trek Online, though to be fair it’s specs are pretty much in-line with the Light Cruiser so it’s not that tight of a distinction.

For those reading this update on my blog, you can join in on the conversation at Talking Time!

These are the Voyages… Let’s Play Star Trek Online – Episode 3

Episode 3

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In today’s video, I roll up a new captain. Unfortunately I didn’t really get a whole lot in the way of suggestions, so I went with what a friend of mine suggested. The tutorial for STO was overhauled about a year ago, and includes a few new things to go along with a change in design that occurred a little before then, where they added tech to the game that allows them to have different mission paths depending on your character’s class.

In the middle of the tutorial, you get awarded your first ship: a Miranda-class Light Cruiser. In STO, the Light Cruiser is designed to be a tutorial ship, as it is capable of using basically everything you can get for the first 10 levels, and has fairly balanced stats. There are 3 other alternate beginner ships, and I’ll show off at least 2 of them in upcoming videos (I’d have to confirm if I’ve purchased the third one, since I don’t remember…).

For those reading this update on my blog, you can join in on the conversation at Talking Time!

These are the Voyages… Let’s Play Star Trek Online – Episode 2

Episode 2

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Star Trek Online launched February 2, 2010, which makes this past week it’s third anniversary. To celebrate the game’s anniversary, Cryptic released a special mission and reward for those who play from Feb 1 to Feb 14th. For those who want to play along, you only have a few more days to get to level 6 in order to be able to get the bonus reward for this mission! The mission will stay after the anniversary, but you’ll only get one ship instead of two.

For those reading this update on my blog, you can join in on the conversation at Talking Time!

These are the Voyages… Let’s Play Star Trek Online – Episode 1

Episode 1

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Star Trek Online is one of my favourite online games. While it may not be hewing very closely to what you might think of as Trek, it is still one of the best video implementations of it that has come out; because let’s be real here, most of what you would consider “Trek” is things that would be hard to make a game around anyway.

Star Trek Online was made by Cryptic Studios, and uses the same engine as their other title, Champions Online. It also has a similar character editor, though for obvious reasons some options are not quite as fully featured. Cryptic’s strength has always been in it’s high degree of customization, and while Star Trek Online is less-so of that then Champions, it still has way more then you would have expected from any MMO, let alone this kind.

Star Trek Online is currently Free-to-play, so anyone who wishes to join in in certainly welcome to!

In this series I plan to record a video of every mission in the game, which means that as special events come up I may deviate from the storyline I was following, or may switch characters if it’s an event that, well. I would be more benefited from if I did it on my main instead of this character. But first, this is the part where you, the viewers, come in!

As mentioned in the video, there’s a number of default races as well as an alien generator available when you choose to make a new character. What I’m looking for from you is four things:

1) What class do you want me to play as? In terms of what a player can do, there’s not much that’s limited by your class, though some missions have optional side objectives that people of specific classes are able to complete, and there’s also the various unique abilities, which you can view at the STO Wiki.

2) What race do you want me to play as? The races available to the Federation, as well as their special abilities, can be found at the STO Wiki. For the most part, the choice of race isn’t important, as they are designed to impart small bonuses

3) What ship category do you want me to focus on? This question is less important, though. Over the course of this series, I will attempt to show off as many of STO’s ships as I can, as I do happen to own… quite a lot of them. But what ship type I would focus on also affects what skills I should put points into as I level, be it focusing on the “exotic” powers or on weapons or on defenses. Like with the other 2 questions, details about the kinds of ships I can fly can be found on the STO Wiki. There’s 3 major ship categories in Star Trek Online, that I cover briefly in the video: Cruisers, Science Vessels, and Escorts.

Cruisers are the workhorses of the Federation. They’re large, carry lots of people and equipment, and have the best defenses. They can fulfill any role, but are masters of none. Since Cruisers are generally so large, they tend to have poor maneuverability. This generally results in combat tactics for a Cruiser to be “circle-strafing” the enemy, allowing all of your beams to fire in a massive fussilade.  For an in-series example of a Cruiser, every starship to bear the name Enterprise in Star Trek (minus one) is considered a Cruiser in STO.

Science Vessels are where the science happens. These ships were generally built for research, exploration, and to be incredibly ugly. In STO, these ships tend to have strong shields, but weak armour. Good maneuverability, but few weapons. They’re very much the idea of a support ship. All Science Vessels have 2 inherent abilities: The first is Sensor Analysis, which gives  a stacking buff to damage against a target the longer you have them selected, but is lost when you change targets. The second is that they inherently get all the subsystem targeting powers as a ship ability, when other ships need to get these powers from somewhere else. An in-series example of a Science Vessel is the USS Voyager.

Escorts are the fighters of the Federation. These ships are built primarily for combat, and are good at it. They tend to be small, and have relatively weaker hulls and shields, but are fast and maneuverable, while also able to equip beam cannons which can deal more damage then regular beams. Generally, an Escort would be doing fly-by attacks on an enemy, as the cannon weapons have a very thin arc of fire. An in-series example of an Escort is the USS Defiant and the USS Prometheus, though the Akira-class is also considered one.

A sub-type of the Science Vessel is the Carrier. Carriers are more common on the Klingon side, but the Federation has a few of their own that they got access to recently. Carriers are capable of having hangar bays that they can use to deploy small ships which can be used to attack enemies. As a result, Carriers tend to act more like a mix of Cruisers and Science Vessels: They have the reduced weapons and abilities of a Science Vessel, but they have the speed and maneuverability of a Cruiser. Carriers themselves are split into 2 main types: Carriers and Escort Carriers. Escort Carriers are a funny one, in that they tend to be much more aggressive ships in both weapons and maneuverability, in exchange for reduced hangar capability. In this sense, they’re more like an Escort mixed with a Science Vessel instead, but they don’t have the Sensor Analysis or subsystem targeting powers. As Carriers are fairly uncommon in Star Trek, there aren’t really many canon ones, however the Akira-class was originally designed to be a sort of carrier, so Cryptic has made a variant of the Akira as an Escort Carrier.

4) A name! STO allows for a first, middle, last, and nickname. The nickname being what is generally used to refer to you by. Due to the way Cryptic handles character names, these don’t have to be unique from other players, though it does have to be unique from my other characters. And I believe that it only looks at the nickname for that, and doesn’t  care if you happened to give all your characters the same full name.

That’s it for my introduction. Next time, I’ll actually build my character, and start the tutorial. Until then, please feel free to comment or ask questions. For those reading this update on my blog, you can join in on the conversation at Talking Time!

Snap Judgement: XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games, 2012)

I own a heck of a lot of games, and as a result I tend to play only a very short amount of any random one before the next one comes along. While I would like to get over this and finish more of the games I own, in the meantime I have started Snap Judgement to make use of the impressions I get from the start of a game. I do believe that the start of a game is one of it’s most important parts, and if it doesn’t catch you, then even if the end of it is awesome, you’re not likely to continue on. Hopefully my comments and opinions will help someone on the fence about trying a game!

Amount Played for Review: ~6 hours
Platform: PC (Steam)

Among the countless game franchises that exist in the industry, there are few that have the same level of fan love (and nostalgia) as X-Com. Notorious for being brutally hard, even with a bug that locked the game on Easy, X-Com has earned a place in the hearts of many gamers. People who make it clear how they feel about any use of the brand (I wonder where they were for Enforcer and Interceptor, though…). So, it comes to no surprise that there was quite the outcry about 2K’s other XCOM reboot (exasperated by the fact that their PR teams entirely bungled presenting what that game even IS), and why there was tempered relief about news from Firaxis that they were also making a new XCOM strategy game.

To put it simply, Firaxis did a great job at taking what made the original X-Com tick, and then modernizing it for today’s audiences. Soldiers are SLIGHTLY sturdier (though not by much; a good comparison would be to the default armour soldiers got in Apocalypse), they can take cover on the battlefield for defense bonuses, Action Points have been simplified into discrete actions, equipment management has been streamlined, and more. It lets you get down to the business of killing aliens without distractions.

Distractions you can’t afford to have. You need all these improvements because otherwise your soldiers will be coming home in a bag. Right from the start, the game throws your mostly untrained soldiers against vicious aliens who have way more firepower then you. And before you can get your research up to bring you on par with that, the game has already stepped up the stakes, sending much more powerful aliens, more often. It’s always a game of catching up.

It’s also a game of trade-offs. Everything from the powers you can choose when a soldier levels up to what missions you can take are a matter of managing trade-offs. The most up-front is the typical alien abduction missions. When these trigger, you get a choice of 3 locations that are under attack, and you can only save one. Each location offers various rewards for taking that mission, but the most important one is that the panic level of the country to choose to help will go down, but the panic of the other countries will go up. And if a country’s panic level gets too high, they’ll choose to leave the XCOM program entirely. If half of the countries in the XCOM program pull out, the operation shuts down entirely, and it’s game over.

Even your base is a sequence of trade-offs. You only have one base in XCOM, unlike previous games (though you can house your interceptors in generic hangars all over the world), and so space is limited. As well, the game provides incentives to build the base in certain ways, as like facilities put next to each other give an increased effect.

Now, one trade-off that Firaxis made is that your squad starts off at only 4 soldiers, and can be upgraded to a maximum of 6 soldiers, well under the maximum size of a team from X-Com. But with the higher average survivbility and firepower of your team in XCOM, it evens out. Speaking of your soldiers, at the start of the game you get your typical rookie, but when they get promoted to Squaddie, they get assigned one of 4 classes: Heavy (LMG and rockets), Assault (shotguns, rifles and front-line fighting), Sniper (sniper rifles and long-range fighting) and Support (buff and healing). Each class has their own set of talents, typically a choice of two at any given rank.

For example, an Assault can choose to either take bonus defense for each enemy they can see, or take bonus critical chance for each enemy they can see. Or a Sniper can choose to have the ability to move and shoot with their rifles (they can’t normally), or have the ability to take advantage of any ally’s line of sight in order to engage an enemy. The abilities trade off of each other at each rank very well, and generally make for an interesting choice.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an X-Com game without research. And there’s a good amount of it, all of which having great writeups to go alongside. Typically things that involve “We could have studied this for years, but we don’t have the time, so, uh… here!” And of course, once you research stuff, you also have the ability to produce it as well. In XCOM, they streamlined the resources a fair bit, having things generally require only alien alloys, fragments from their weapons, or Elerium (though some special things may need intact UFO power sources or nav computers). Most of these only come from alien UFOs, making those missions a high priority, and also introducing even more trade-offs. Do you want to spend your limited number of alloys on making new laser weapons, or on making the new armour? Thankfully the game gives you back all of a soldier’s gear should they perish (at least, if you’re not playing on Impossible), but it still means you have to work with limited gear.

And as mentioned, even with improved gear, your forces are fragile. It’s tough to go out there on a mission and have that soldier you spent so many missions building up get eviscerated by a chryssalid, or blasted by some Muton’s plasma rifle. Especially if it was because you stretched yourself a little too far. And to help drive the point home, they even have a memorial board (complete with bagpipe music) set up in the barracks so you can see all your soldiers who died during the war.

All in all, XCOM is a worthy entry into this long line of games. If you have a hankering for saving the Earth from the hordes of brutal aliens, then XCOM is certainly a game for you. I’ve also been hearing that, as the game was also developed for consoles, that handling the game using a 360 controller also works very well, and in fact makes some of the controls a little less awkward. I’ve found a few times that the game gets confused about where exactly I’m pointing my cursor at, though it usually fixes itself if you scroll up or down the layers.

The story is a little thin, but that’s only in comparison to modern strategy games. And not even in comparison to past Firaxis titles. It’s far more then you got from X-Com in the past, and works perfectly well enough to let it be YOUR story. The tale of how you and a rag-tag group of soldiers saved the planet from impossible odds… or died trying.

 

 

Full Reviews:

Giant Bomb – Quick Look

Snap Judgement EX: Torchlight 2 (Runic Games, 2012)

I own a heck of a lot of games, and as a result I tend to play only a very short amount of any random one before the next one comes along. While I would like to get over this and finish more of the games I own, in the meantime I have started Snap Judgement to make use of the impressions I get from the start of a game. I do believe that the start of a game is one of it’s most important parts, and if it doesn’t catch you, then even if the end of it is awesome, you’re not likely to continue on. Hopefully my comments and opinions will help someone on the fence about trying a game!

Amount Played for Review: ~11 hours
Platform: PC (Steam)

So, if you already read my previous Snap Judgement on Torchlight II, things have not changed a whole lot between the beta and the final release of Torchlight II.

The main difference between the beta and the final release is that they changed the skill system from instead being a tree of sorts to being a flat set of 7 active skills and 3 passive skills per tree. They still don’t require points put in earlier skills, instead being gated by level. The only main difference is that active skills how have “tiers” that you unlock every 5 points you put into them that give various extra improvements to the skill, such as adding damage reflection, increasing attack range, or setting hit enemies on fire. However, like I mentioned in the beta, I’m still not sure how I feel any more about this kind of talent system, but in the end it works well enough for the purposes of the game. The addition of the tier structure also makes points more then just tiny improvements.

My strongest impression now that I’m 11 hours into the official release, is that the game REALLY feels like Diablo 2. The story is very similar and the areas you are in for each act (up to 3, at least) are very similar. But also changed enough to fit their own internal narrative. I can’t fault them for this, though; Torchlight was made  by Diablo vets, after all. And they do a great job at realizing their idea of the loot-driven action RPG.

Another major difference between Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3, besides TL2 being based on Diablo 2, is that TL2 doesn’t care about if you want to mod or hack your game and get items easier then you would normally (or super busted items that aren’t even in the game at all). In fact, there’s even achievements for running the game with a bunch of mods installed, and the game will have Steam Workshop support for mods as well. If you really care about the sanctity of your random drop system, you may find this irritating if you go and play online with random people.

All-in-all, I found Torchlight 2 to be well realized game, and still want to put a ton of time into it, even after 11 hours already.

 

(For the record, though, I’m definitely expecting Act 4 to be set in some kind of volcano.)

Snap Judgement: FTL (Subset Games, 2012)

I own a heck of a lot of games, and as a result I tend to play only a very short amount of any random one before the next one comes along. While I would like to get over this and finish more of the games I own, in the meantime I have started Snap Judgement to make use of the impressions I get from the start of a game. I do believe that the start of a game is one of it’s most important parts, and if it doesn’t catch you, then even if the end of it is awesome, you’re not likely to continue on. Hopefully my comments and opinions will help someone on the fence about trying a game!

Amount Played for Review: ~5 hours
Platform: PC (Steam)

At a first glance, FTL is a kind of game that I probably wouldn’t like. Maybe using the term “roguelike” is a bit misleading, but the whole “superhard, random generated adventure” type of thing was not very appealing to me. Something about FTL just really agrees with me, though. Maybe it’s the space? Or maybe it’s the strategy.

But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. In FTL you control a starship as you try to outrun a rebel army and deliver important intelligence to your HQ. Except you’re not controlling the ship, per-say, but you’re instead directing crewmen to various locations to repair damage or manage systems, and directing ship power to various things like shields and weapons.

And it’s really hard. As you progress through the various sectors, enemies hit harder and have more abilities, and you start to encounter random events that are more dangerous. And on top of all this, the forward wave of the rebel army is always advancing, taking over systems as they hunt for you to stop your journey.

All this pushes you forward into more danger, though it’s not fast enough that you can’t take some time to wander around a sector and grind out events and battles for money and gear. All of this you need if you want to make it to the end.

Battles are where the bulk of the strategy comes in. You can’t control your ship’s movement, and it’s seemingly inferring that you and your foe are moving around each other even if it doesn’t look like you are, because weapon fire always comes from random directions. During combat, you need to assign power to your weapons, up to the maximum amount of power your weapon systems can handle (all of this is upgradable). You then direct the weapons to fire at specific rooms on the enemy ship, which allows you to do things like focus on taking out enemy shield systems or life support.

As a result, there’s actually a number of ways you can defeat enemy ships. An easy strategy is to beat on their shield and weapon systems until they die, without dealing much damage to you. But by using various means, you can also do things like destroy the enemy’s life support systems and wait for them to suffocate, or send over an away team to kill the enemy crew. If you defeat an enemy ship without blowing it up, you can get more salvage from them, but many of the means to do so are much higher risk then just blasting it to pieces.

That combined with various crew races with different stats, and a large variety of unlockable ship types with different powers (such as one that starts with an ion gun that’s useful for taking down enemy systems without actually damaging them, or even just taking down shields easily, as well as a drone launcher that costs a resource, but is a very consistent source of damage; or another ship that doesn’t have shields, but instead comes with a stealth system and better sensors, thus having you want to avoid combat more) makes for a wide range of various tactics as you work your way to the end of space and your army’s base, hoping to deliver the intel before you get blown to pieces.

FTL is definitely a game for a patient man, as someone who goes in without thinking will find themselves looking at the game over screen often. But even in death you tend to learn more about the game, though some of it’s random events are TOO random; I would have liked it more if some of the events were more hard-coded, so that something that punished me one playthrough was fairly consistent at being dangerous, while something that rewarded me tended to do the same. I’ve had too many cases where I got burned bad doing something that worked before. But for some people, that’s part of the fun. For the rest of you, it may be the only annoyance in what’s otherwise a very solid game.

Snap Judgement: Orcs Must Die! 2 (2012, Robot Entertainment)

I own a heck of a lot of games, and as a result I tend to play only a very short amount of any random one before the next one comes along. While I would like to get over this and finish more of the games I own, in the meantime I have started Snap Judgement to make use of the impressions I get from the start of a game. I do believe that the start of a game is one of it’s most important parts, and if it doesn’t catch you, then even if the end of it is awesome, you’re not likely to continue on. Hopefully my comments and opinions will help someone on the fence about trying a game!

Amount Played for Review: ~2 hours
Platform: PC (Steam)

Orcs Must Die! 2 is basically more Orcs Must Die!. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, but if you were hankering for more wisecracking tower-defense with the lovable warmage, then this game is right for you. If you DIDN’T like his dumb goofiness… then you probably will continue to not like it.

The big change from OMD! and OMD!2 is the addition of co-op mode, which is a MASSIVE improvement over the original. While Orcs Must Die! was a fun game, it came out against Dungeon Defenders, a similar game that still benefits from constant content infusions, as well as having co-op modes by default.

Co-op in OMD!2 is a two-person affair, hence the addition of a new player character. When starting the game, you are prompted to choose a character, who is then tied to that “account”, so to speak. This is because both characters have different starting traps and equipment, and different unlocks.

Basic gameplay is much the same. Orcs come out of a portal, and are trying to escape out into the open. Or, at least, that’s what the first act is about, since apparently the warmage’s skills were not so much in demand after OMD!, so he’s resorted to being a miner to make ends meet. There’s some new equipment (or, at least, new to me since I never did get around to fully beating the original), though I wasn’t very keen on them starting the warmage off with a shotgun instead of the crossbow from the original game. Unlocking the bow is easy, but I missed it for the first few maps.

The upgrading system was also overhauled in OMD!2. While each stage still gives you up to 5 skulls based on performance, there’s also bonus skulls given for… a variety of reasons. And skulls that can drop from killed orcs. This means that if you just can’t get a better ranking on a map, you can still improve your weapons and traps by just replaying previous maps. However, you don’t reget the skulls from performance on a replay, of course.

Your traps and weapons all have a single upgradable bonus, which ranges from increasing damage to decreasing costs, and your choice of two mutually exclusive bonuses. Once you’ve bought one of the mutually exclusive bonuses, you unlock them both Some also have a special unique bonus that changes the way that trap works, be it allowing it to be placed on a ceiling, or what have you.

For the most part, the sorceress isn’t really any different from the warmage. She starts off with a freeze trap instead of a slow trap, and ACID instead of arrows, and her starting weapon has an alt-fire that mind-controls orcs, but other then some other unique traps in her unlock inventory, she gets a lot of the same things as the warmage. Her dancing isn’t anywhere near as good as the warmage’s, either.

So, as mentioned, if you really enjoyed the original Orcs Must Die!, then this sequel is just about everything that was needed from the original title. If you didn’t check out OMD!, but are not AGAINST tower-defense style games, then OMD!2 is something you might want to check out anyway, as knowledge of the original is unnecessary to enjoy the sequel.