Dream out, with your Steam out

So, I have discovered that one of the easiest ways to distract me from study is to queue up and old faithful TV show and check out Steam sales.
I think the Steam people ACTUALLY know when I have my university exams, and put on all their good sales at that moment.

Even though I am swearing to not play even a minute of Neverwinter, Dragon Age or ANYTHING ELSE while exams are right around the corner (4 days = I hate life), I saw that Anna (A game I have been curious about for a while) was on sale so nabbed it up.

In addition to now wanting to download it immediately and try it out, I’m holding myself back under some kind of pretext that I can still read study notes while rocking out the story lines that were Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Dem special eeeffects

Despite this, I do thoroughly enjoy my Trek, and it’s made all the more amusing when you see Wil Wheaton in his younger years on TNG and know that he grows up to be an awesomely respected super nerd. Good going, bro.

Although…I would have reconsidered that jumper….

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Two Posts So Close Together?

Yes so, in the spirit of “I’m on a role”, here’s another post.

The topic for, er, this hour is Star Trek: Online.

Now, I don’t know how many of you know Star Trek, but I’ve been watching this show since I was a kid. It’s a proverbial ‘staple’ in the diet of my families TV watching. For some reason despite it’s release some time ago (Wikipedia tells me it was Feb 5th 2010 for the Australian’s in the audience) I hadn’t really gotten around to playing it until now.

So, I thought it was kind of a nice touch to allow you to ‘create’ your own uniform.

Look! I flash and what-not!

The biggest thing that I suppose that appeals to me about this game, is my own personal history with the franchise. Being about to hail my own ship and get them to beam me up, is probably more tantalizing for me – and far more tedious to others.

Beam me up, plebs. I need a coffee.

Now – I doubt anyone noticed this, but maybe as time goes one someone will see it – but all of my ‘customizable’ game characters look similar.
They follow a suit of short, slender, pale, longer black hair and blue eyes (Except my Dragon Age character is rocking green due to a miss-click).

I look so pretty in the glow of a shuttles dashboard….

I don’t know the psychology behind it but there is something cathartic and personal about being able to base my ‘in-game’ character on the basics of my own appearance (although, let’s not think for a second that I in fact LOOK like a body rocking Vulcan from the future).

AAANYWHO – this game takes place in 2 modes, character controlled and ship controlled.
The character controlled side I find far more engaging than I do the ship. Running around as part of an away team taking scans and shooting aliens is just my jam. Space shoot’em ups, not so much.

As you can see, the green arrows are directing you to how I control movement, speed and weapons, and the red in an indicative that my forward shields are losing power (or at a lower % of life than the others).

Again, fancying myself a pho-digiter, digi-tographer, snap-happy camper … whatever you call them, I took some shots.

We come in peace! Ready the torpedoes boys.

Crew members on LSD taking up my sick bay beds.

And finally…

A level of nerdy excitement ensued here. I love the IDIC symbol.

All in all, I’d give this game a 6/10. It get’s points for being ‘Trek’, and kind of engaging – but there’s something about most of the free-to-play MMORPG’s coming out at the moment that doesn’t really draw me in for the long term. Basic repetitive type quests, too many items/buy now/upgrade to premium rubbish all over the joint and an unfortunate abundance of keyboard warriors claiming you’re a noob after they’ve played the game ‘hardcore’ for at least 4 days now.

Dunno, bring back subscription for some I think? Just because then at least I was partially guaranteed that the people that were there did really like the game and weren’t just bumming around looking for a troll-op harbor.