Mainly because I didn’t play enough of the beta to make it to the first tier ship selection.

So I did what any Star Trek fan would do if they were going to get a starship.  I started to obsess.

I was writing down ship names whenever I had the chance.  Would I go with one name, “Whisper?” Or a two name ship, “Silent Resolve?”  Would I go serious or funny?  For instance, “Furious Diplomat,” a name that initially sounds serious but only continues to get funnier the more I think about it.

I read forums and looked up ship name generators.

I decided I was going to go with a science vessel because I really wanted to be able to target subsystems and science vessels were the only ship that could do that without having dedicated bridge officers with “target subsystem” skills.  This way, I could take down shields for my team, or just take out the engines for a quick getaway, or just take out the weapons systems and leave them powerless.

You could say that I was kind of excited.

A couple of days of play had leveled me up to the point where I was a Lt. Grade 10.  This was the last rank before new ships were unlocked.

I looked at my XP bar, and it was very close to the end.  There was no doubt I was going to make Lt. Commander this session.  Curious, I hovered the cursor over the bar.

Seven skill points to make Lt. Commander.

Seven.

In terms of character progression, seven points is nothing.  You gain a skill point for every enemy you defeat and upwards of four or five skill points depending on the level of the enemies you’re fighting.

This was going to be easy.

If I was thinking straight, I would have entered a deep space combat scenario and just helped the Federation with their Gorn problem, but instead I opted to finish an exploration mission.  I entered the Arucanis arm and headed straight for the first anomaly the Lockheed’s sensors found.  It was just some radiation samples, not a system with a randomly generated mission.  No combat.

I headed for another one.  This time, an alien artifact.  Again, no combat, no skill points.

Finally I found a system with a mission.  It was an asteroid belt, that featured an abandoned base.  But it was truly abandoned, no Gorn, no Nausicaans, no Klingon occupying force to be found anywhere.  Instead, Starfleet requested that I beam down and check to see if the crew of the Lockheed could salvage any research from the computers on the station.  This mission would reward skill points after completion.

I only needed seven points, but I had waited this long—what was one more mission?  I brought the Lockheed up to full impulse and headed straight for the abandoned research base, ever hopeful that some Gorn would warp in and protest the Federation’s incursion into Gorn space.  But it was a long and uneventful trip, even at full impulse.  The base was on the exact opposite end of the map.

I beamed down with my away team, and found the first console.  There was no research Starfleet was interested in, but they wanted me to check the rest of the station.  It was at this point, that I started to wonder if I should just abort the mission and move on.  But it was late in the evening, and I was already in mission, so I stuck with it.

I wandered the empty corridors when the crew of the Lockheed contacted me via communicator.  Orion ships had been detected on long range sensors and were approaching the asteroid base.  Combat was imminent, I thought.  Surely, any second, I would beam back to the Lockheed and take on the Orions ship to ship.

I could taste the seven points.

But then my crew said they had everything handled and I was left scavenging holographic storage chips about the mineral makeup of the asteroid.  Before they signed off though, they did note that they detected Orion transporter signatures, so I should be careful.

I had hope yet.  It wasn’t long before we ran into an Orion away team.  I set up a shield generator and a phaser turret and told the away team to hold their ground.  While the shield generator was on, the away team’s shields were constantly being replenished.  The battle was never a question of who would win, merely a question of how long it would take my away team to come out victorious.

A few minutes later I was surprised to find that I had not, in fact, made Lt. Commander.  I thought that perhaps I had missed a notification message in the fracas.  The air was filled with phaser and distruptor beams, it’s not unlikely that I had missed something.

I checked my character profile.  I was still a Lieutenant.  Still Grade 10.  I hovered over the XP bar again.

One point stood between me and ranking to Lt. Commander.

One point.

One.

The Orion away team was a six member squad, and I had gained exactly one point for every Orion.

I sighed.  It was a long, resigned exhalation of breath.  It was the exhalation a person makes when they have decided to burn everything.  I ran the away team through the deserted halls, searching for another Orion away team.  Through room after room.  Nothing.

Finally, nearing the end of the map, Orions showed on the minimap.  I ran straight for them and engaged them in battle.  I didn’t even bother setting up a shield generator or a phaser turret.  In fact, some of my away team were still stuck in another room, their pathfinding algorithms locked in a never ending slow motion run on the doorway of the previous room.

I selected the first Orion I could target and then activated sniper shot.  My phaser bolt hit true, and then—

—My screen froze.  And I nearly yelled, save for the fact that shortly afterward, the display corrupted.  And then, I actually yelled.  It was something incoherent, something to the effect of, “gwaaugh?!”  Followed shortly by an incredulous sounding, but no more coherent, “whauh?”  My brain had blue screened.

The Star Trek Online client had crashed.

It had crashed hard.  I sat there and looked at the screen.  My palms instantly struck both sides of my forehead in utter disbelief.  I stared at the screen for at least ten seconds.  This was a betrayal.  One of the highest order.  There is a tier in Dante’s hell specifically for this.  I sat there for another ten seconds, listening to the sounds of phasers firing and computer warnings about enemy combatants being in close proximity.

Then it hit me.  I was so awestruck at the irony of the moment that I did not notice.

I hit the one key to fire my phaser bolt rifle, and I heard the telltale sound of a phaser firing.

The client was still running.

It was still running.  Even though the display had crashed, it was receiving keyboard input and acting on it.  Desperate, I hit my keybinds for “target nearest” and “all allies attack my target.”

Then I fired that phaser bolt rifle for all it was worth.  Just for good measure, every now and again, I hit the two key.

This went on for an excruciating two minutes.  Without any visual indicators, I must have selected the strongest enemy combatant, probably an Orion Matron or a fully shielded Brute.  My team had no shield generator in place and my science officer was shield damage focused—not a doctor.  With no way to regenerate shields or health, I feared a total wipe.

Then it happened.

There was a triumphant sounding noise amidst the phaser blasts.

Then words.

“Congratulations Lt. Commander.”

I immediately hit the enter key and typed in, “/quit” quickly logging me out of the server and quitting the client.  The noises of battle stopped.  It was silent. I rubbed my face with my hands.  Regardless of what time it was, I was now more than wide awake, and on top of that, I needed a glass of water.  My mouth was dry.  My hands were jittery.

My desktop never came back.  It was a hard display crash.  I had to turn off my computer.

I haven’t logged back in since.

Update: I’ve since logged in and I got my science vessel.

Captain’s log, supplemental.

Our assignment was simple, scan Gorn facilities in this remote asteroid belt to make sure that they weren’t stockpiling weapons of mass destruction of any sort.

The Gorn, of course, were having none of it, and we found ourselves on the receiving end of a volley of disruptor bursts after attempting to scan the first outpost.  Calling on my background as an engineer I rotated the shield frequencies before the impact.

The Lockheed’s shields held gracefully. Rotating the frequencies had the desired effect and managed to mitigate most of the damage to the shields.

But there were still three ships.  I ordered engineering officer Ensign Kort to reroute EPS systems to boost the shield systems while I sounded the red alert.

Shields were holding, but I could see that there was another incoming volley of disruptor fire, plus photon torpedoes.  I reinforced the fore shields and told tactical to open fire on the lead Gorn cruiser.

The Lockheed’s heavy disruptor cannons locked onto the Gorn ship and opened fire.  Their shields dropped quickly, and without shielding the disruptors quickly ate through the rest of their hull.  The Lockheed was too close, and the shockwaves from exploding cruiser shuddered through the ship.  Thankfully there were no major casualties.

We moved to three quarter impulse and engaged evasive maneuvers.  Full power to starboard shields soaked a torpedo volley as we brought the Lockheed around in an arc to end up behind the second cruiser.

My science officer Ensign Sadi jammed the targeting sensors of the third Gorn cruiser, preventing them from targeting us for some of the fight although she warned that it was but “a fleeting dream that wouldn’t last forever.”  She could have just told me nine seconds.  I forget that her previous host was a poet.  Note: I need to speak with her regarding combat expediency.

My tactical officer, Ensign Noros prepared a high yield torpedo burst to impact just as their facing shields were dropped.  Commendations for Ensign Noros for her impeccable timing.

To this day, many Starfleet officers protest the academy’s admission policies from some of the more controversial systems, such as Ferenginar, but every day, new recruits like Ensign Noros continue to prove them wrong.

One on one the last cruiser was no match for the crew of the Lockheed.  We scanned the installation and moved on, although it was not the last of the Gorn we would see that day.

UI improvements are the first thing that caught my eye.  I can’t say anything about stability yet because, well, I’m here writing this and not playing the game because it crashed out when I started typing in chat during a heated space battle.

Still, it’s a lot of fun when I’m not waiting around for it to verify all of the files.

Considering that she’s an ensign, it looks like Starfleet academy started offering courses in Astroasskicking.

Upon her return to the Sol System, Admiral Quinn expresses his confidence in her and in a surprise move that shocked viewers everywhere, promotes her to Lieutenant and assigns her as the permanent captain of the Lockheed.

It’s yet another Cryptic Studios product, (City of Heroes, Champions Online) and a lot of their usual design can be seen throughout Star Trek: Online.

The ship to ship combat is a lot of fun.  There is something satisfying about rerouting power to the starboard shields and coming about to give them a broadside from both phaser arrays that takes down the facing shields just in time for a high yield photon burst to strike the unshielded side of an enemy vessel.

Away team missions are your standard MMO fare, with a third person point of view and a the usual take out X number of enemies or interact with Y, then report to Starfleet.  The ground combat tends to focus on the various firearms and their abilities found in the Star Trek universe, although that may be because I didn’t roll a tactical officer.

I’m playing the beta when the servers aren’t flooded, but so far I’m having a good time.

Protip: Enemy ships explode, and can destroy your vessel.

On the other hand, I picked up Torchlight which is basically Diablo, right down to the Soundtrack, much more streamlined, and not as annoying.

But, I’m going to talk about Borderlands now, and the references to Diablo aren’t completely apparent until I talk about guns and equipment.

Borderlands has four classes, 50 levels, and about 87 bazillion guns.  The equipment is procedurally generated, so there’s no real set list of equipment, merely modifiers for elemental types of damage, manufacturer, type of gun, magazine size, burst fire rate, melee damage bonuses—the list goes on, but you can see how you would end up with lots and lots of different guns.

Borderlands is so much fun that I have beat it.  And gone back to play it again on the harder difficulty.  I have 90% of the Achievements for it for the Xbox 360 version, including the ones for the Zombie Island DLC.  That almost never happens.  I’m also playing it again on the PC with some friends who only got the PC version.  So it’s kind of embarrassing how much I’ve been playing this game.

It does not have the most critical acclaim for the best story, nor game mechanics, nor the graphics.  What it does have is solid, fun, and engaging gameplay.  It’s well put together.  To be honest, I think they could have gone back and actually touched the main character’s back stories a lot more.  It’s just that once the main storyline starts, it’s just a rollercoaster ride because you finish quests quickly, and often.

Really, not that long.  After taking the grand tour, I pretty much dove straight in to the Mission Creator.  It’s pretty cool.  Setting up a story, and setting objectives is really simple.  You can also create your own enemy groups, with minions, lieutenants, bosses, elite bosses.  You can even create NPCs and the mission contact.

I whipped up a story about “transporter buffers” going amok after a “power surge.”  This if course, occurs in the Synergy Gestalt’s base, “The Workshop.”  As a result, every member of that supergroup now has imperfect clones running around.  Additionally, the least imperfect of the clones (the first copies) got the idea to steal the transporter components and use them to create an army of clones to take over Paragon City. I think for the finale I’ll have the heroes defend a transporter while a technician reverses the polarity.

So right there, that’s a mission with a lot of fighting, bosses to fight, and components to destroy.  I created various designs of the clones, for minions, lieutenants and bosses.  I found that the clone angle was really a “cheat” since I could just reuse the character designs over and over again.  Then I could tweak various aspects, like skin tones or add goatees to make the variations of the clones.  The bosses of course, were just character designs from the characters in my Super Group on Virtue.

Which really only has four active characters in it, so that made it easy as well.

I added some flavor text, dialogue and then saved the Arc title and I was off and running testing the new mission.  It was that easy.  I think concept to execution was about 45 minutes total.  After playtesting it for a while I’ll publish it to the main servers and then people can play through it.

Overall, it was very cool seeing something I had written become a part of a video game.

I know.

But, back to the game.  There is a feeling of coming back home, while also finding out that while you were gone, some incredible remodeling took place.  The new Street Fighter IV is a 3d fighter with a true 2d feel.  It just feels like street fighter, but with this fantastic aesthetic with some great special effects.  The collision detection for the fighting is great, and I never feel like an attack should have hit when it didn’t.  Soul Calibur and its sequels had that issue sometimes.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great 3d fighter.

There’s just something about coming back to a two dimensional fight plane. 

It may be nostalgia, it may just be simplifying the game mechanic, but whatever it is, it just feels solid.  And it’s fun.  So far, it’s great fun.  The characters are expressive caricatures (sterotypes?) from different countries and they fight each other.  An interesting addition is 2d animated sequences before the start of each character’s arc in the arcade mode.   This attempt at story is really only interesting the first time through for each character.  After that, it just becomes another reason to hold down the start button to skip through and get to the fighting.

My experience my be somewhat biased, I think it’s a great game.  This may have something to do with the fact that Street Fighter II, and fighting games in particular, were no small part of my high school experience, and to a certain extent, my college experience.  I spent many hours in front of arcade machines, and on couches with a controller in my hand playing a lot of fighting games.  It’s something I still like to do on occasion, but since I no longer live in a group house, the opportunities to engage in video fisticuffs are not as frequent.

Street Fighter IV taps into the nostalgia center of my brain, sure, but it’s not simply a rehash.  There are EX Modifiers for special attacks, Focus Attacks, Ultras, and Revenge attacks.  The revenge attacks are somewhat similar to the Desperation moves from the King of Fighters series, only command inputs are straightforward.

My experience is also biased by the fact that I’m using the MadCatz tournament edition stick.  It’s awesomeness also my be affecting my perceptions of the game.  I find I even use the Japanese layout and it works for me.  I may convert the “ball” style of the stick to “bat.”  What’s great is that it’s made so that you can do that.  It was the intention that you could change parts afterwards.  The stick is well made, solid to the point where I could classify it as heavy when sitting in my lap.

I’ll have to try out the online mode that replicates the arcade experience by allowing outside opponents to interrupt your single player arcade game.  That sounds awesome, but I can’t seem to get decent latency so my games never connect.  Until I figure that out, I’m looking forward to reliving the arcade experience at home.  Not only with the graphics and controller to match that of the arcade cabinet, but possibly some of the community as well.

Update:  The MadCatz tournament edition stick is $150.  a 360 is $300.  Street Fighter IV costs $60.   A Street Fighter IV cabinet costs 2,394,000 yen.  Which, when converted from space dollars, is $23,000.  I feel like I’m coming out ahead here.

Most of it is due to the setting.

Which is Rhode Island.

Of course, since this is a video game, it happens to be the nexus for all sorts of super powered things happening in the entire world.  As a consequence of that setting, anything goes.  Anything from a knight errant magically transported through time, to a gritty streetwise martial artist that fights crime with his bare hands is fair play in the City of Heroes, and the developers wisely gave you a convenient location for you to put all the juicy details of your heroic or villainous background for other players to read.

Most people (at least in my experience) seem to be older, and it’s many a mission interrupted by a quick chat message, “AFK, putting the kids to bed.” or its like.

Besides, in what other game could I run into “G. Gordon Liddy” and “Neal Patrick Harris?”

Both Villains, of course.

If it’s as half as cool as its trailer and comic, then it’s well worth the cost of entry.

Which is, of course, free.  A lot of it reminds me of the Power Puff Girls fan comic from Snafu comics.  Mainly the older characters and the darker tone.  Both take their characters a short time period into the future, both have a Japanese influence, and both are fun reads with story lines a little bit older than you think they would be.  I’ve yet to sign up for an account, but I’m thinking about it.

A lot of it reminds me of Phantasy Star Online, a game I played so much that I actually fell asleep while playing it.  I was woken up by one of my teammates, who was telling me they needed me to open a door, and was wondering where I had gone about four rooms ago.  I awoke to find my character running headlong into a corner in an empty room.

This was during its second release, on the original xbox, with voice chat.  I played it through on its initial run on the Dreamcast and then proceeded to play it again on an entirely different console because it was so fun.

So, I’m already sold on the gameplay.

While the single player game brings nothing new to the table, the fact that I can save my multiplayer replays is amazing.  My proposed subtitle for the multiplayer aspect of Halo 3 is the title for this post, and rightly so.

Replays are comedy gold.

That said, here’s my service record.  It’s the same granular statkeeping as Halo 2, which is say, obsessive.  But now it has screenshots from the match.

Which make great if sometimes embarrassing wallpaper.