Diary — Page 69

Star Trek Online (PS5)

Posted on 13/05/2021 Written by deKay

If you’re a long time reader of this diary, or you follow me online generally, you probably know I don’t play games online very often, and I never play MMORPGs at all. Well, not since a brief dabble into Anarchy Online some 17 years ago, anyway. Why, you might ask, am I playing Star Trek Online then? And I would answer you with, I Really Don’t Know.

As a free to play game, I did a bit of research first. Mainly to find out how free “free” was: Are later bits impossible without spending money? Are you limited to just a few areas/missions/etc. unless you subscribe? That sort of thing. It turns out that Star Trek Online is surpisingly generous – there are something like 15 main “stories” (at least if you play as a Federation character – I think they’re different if you choose Klingon or Romulan) which are fully playable without paying for anything, and you can reach Level 60 with your character before you hit the “endgame” content which may require some outlay. In all, it looks like you get a good 100-odd hours out of it for nowt. Not bad.

But why would I play an MMO? Again, research suggested it’s all playable single player. And, having reached Level 30 and the rank of Captain, I can confirm I’m yet to see anyone else in the game at all. Apart from a strange impromptu party which happened on the space dock at Earth, but that hardly counts:

I think the party was for me?

What I’m saying is, I’m playing a big ol’ Star Trek RPG, on my own, for free. So it’s not really an MMO at all, is it?

Not that you get the best things ever for free, of course. There are compromises, and it’s hardly Mass Effect levels of slick or Fallout New Vegas in Space in terms of combat or plot. It’s clunky, it’s jerky, it’s wonky and it’s fiddly. There are so many menus and items and options that it’s overwhelming. There are bugs galore, which seem to break quests for people frequently enough that they give you a “skip quest” option. It screws with Star Trek lore, although it does try to reference everything Star Trek has ever done, and some of the voice cast are actually straight from the various Trek series. There’s LCARS everywhere and all the ambient Trek noises you’d hope for – ship hum, door swish, computer bleeps, etc., so it’s trying very hard at least. It’s also set some time after TNG/DS9/Voyager.

As a single player RPG it’s a Numbers Go Up game. A boggling array of weapons, shields, upgrades and technologies for you, your crew and your ship ensure that at least 10 minutes of every hour’s play is poking around in the inventory checking to see if the DPS of your latest gun pickup is 0.1% better than the one you’re currently carrying, or if the 414 DPS antiproton phaser bank with a 250 degree firing arc and a 2s cooldown is better or worse than the 382 DPS plasma bank with a 360 firing arc but a 3s cooldown, or if you should ditch one of your quantum torpedo launchers so you can have both the antiproton bank and the plasma bank together instead. It’s like a complicated optician’s appointment.

Just icons and bars and number and words everywhere.

In terms of gameplay, missions are split between space and ground events. Those in space usually involve dogfights or scanning stuff, and those on the ground are typical Star Trek away mission fare, albeit without dead redshirts. You explore planets and caves and derilict space ships and board the odd vessel to assault it from inside. As I said, there are about 15 stories in total available, each with around 10 missions. The stories link together too, with the overall plots involving Romulan rebels, the resurgance of the Klingon Empire, and Iconian gateways. It’s interesting having new Trek stories, if nothing else, and it’s certainly better than the nonsense Discovery came up with.

I’ve completed six or so of these stories, with my randomly generated Bajoran officer who looks just like Major Kira from Deep Space 9. I have a ship which looks a bit like Voyager only is black and translucent and has 4 nacells, and it’s called the USS Shootyboi. I think I’m having fun, but I’m not entirely sure why. The Numbers Go Up draw, perhaps. There’s always a new ability or target to reach. It’s how they getcha.

USS Shootyboi is the pride of Star Fleet.

Returning to the clunkiness though, it’s hard to ignore. From the terrible animation and collision detection, to the PS2 graphics and environments, to the overly complicated systems (especially the seemingly superflous crafting and duty staff management), let alone stuff like the video below, it’s not a well game. The camera is wild, the controls unresponsive, and your away team frequently get in the way or get stuck in or under things. One mission I had to complete five times because the final “trigger” to send a report back to Star Fleet never appeared. If I’d paid money for this, I’d be somewhat miffed. As I understand it though, “clunk” is pretty synonymous with MMOs, and this one is now over a decade old (and free, I think I mentioned), so I shouldn’t be too harsh. Plus, being on my PS5 rather than PS4, the loading times are virtually removed, so that’s something.

This is the first game I’ve ever seen objects pop OUT instead of IN as you get closer.

Anyway, I could just walk away, right? Right. After the next mission.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 26/04/2021 Written by deKay

There was no way I was ever going to not buy a game called Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. It was even more likely I’d buy it when I saw the graphics, in their Zelda sort of way. And I’m glad I did get it because it was lovely.

Bad things first though. It’s short. Very short. I was expecting a Zelda length epic, but got maybe two hours tops out of it. Swapping items requires pressing Y and then choosing from a list of things, many of which you can’t actually use as they’re passive or to pass on to other characters. Since you swap between your sword and your watering can very frequently, it’s annoying you can’t assign each to a different button, or have a button to swap between the two. And speaking of buttons, the game uses B to “accept” and A to “cancel” and it’s very very annoying because that’s just wrong.

This barn could be considered a dungeon, I suppose?

But the good outweighs the bad. It’s a funny game (as you’d expect from the title) where you play as a naughty turnip who has been evicted from his greenhouse by Mayor Onion because he hasn’t paid his taxes. To make up for this, Mayor Onion gives you a number of tasks to perform, most of which have several diversions en-route. The other fruit and vegetables you meet are are quirky, from the gherkin mafia boss locked in a jar, to the baby acorn who gives you his leaf as a downpayment on some real estate. Gameplay is in the Zelda mould, with overworld wandering (and killing snails and worms) and buiildings and forests that act as short dungeons.

When you collect the little hearts (which replenish health), you burp,

You come across a few bosses, there are puzzles involving watering watermelons and portals, bombfruit to kick, babies to return to parents, books (and flyers, and bills, and anything else made of paper) to rip up, and lots of side missions which are all stupid as you uncover stuff about both your past and why all the vegetation is sentient. A compact little game with some laughs and and a few niggles, but definitely worth a play. Perhaps not at full price (about £13 I think) given the ease and length, but certainly in a sale.

Timespinner (Switch): COMPLETED!

Posted on 24/04/2021 Written by deKay

The problem with Metroidvania games, like Kunai which I are completed just last week, is they’re somewhat moreish. Thankfully, Timespinner – which I’ve had my eye on for a while and was on sale recently – was there to feed my habit. And it is excellent.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s no Hollow Knight or Axiom Verge, but it is a really well put together action platformer with some time travel elements and nice pixel graphics, as well as some great music and a confusing but engrossing story. A story about you, a Time Messenger who has been trained to give up their history in case of attack so you can go back in time and warn your clan in advance. In a way, it’s a bit like that short-lived sci-fi series Seven Days. Only very different.

You end up a thousand years in the past, rather than a few days because of $storyreason, and flick between then and a few weeks after The Event trying to put right what once went wrong as another time-based sci-fi series would put it. Mostly this involves the usual genre thing of unlocking abilities that allow you to reach new areas, although time travel plays a role in opening a few areas too. Not many, though – and it’s a bit of a missed opportunity for the whole time element of the game to be more frequently used for puzzles and such as it’s disappointingly rare that anything you do in one period has a major effect in the other meaning they act rather more like two different worlds that happen to have very similar maps.

The gameplay is excellent though, so it doesn’t really matter much. There’s a lot of variety in the weapons you can equip (although I was happy with a big swingy sword for most of the game) and you also have additional passive powers and larger special attacks to choose too. And you can pause time, which is rarely needed to the point where I forgot it even existed for most of the game.

Placeholder text to be replaced with hammer time joke later.

Overall, it’s a great example of its genre, but falls a little short when it comes to making use of the main things that differentiate it from other similar titles. After completing it, you really should do what I did and go back to complete one of the optional quests in order to unlock the good, and whaaaaaaat-invoking, ending where you break time itself, No, really.

Racing Fever (Evercade): COMPLETED!

Posted on 23/04/2021 Written by deKay

My new Evercade cartridges arrived! I have no idea why this is the game I played first, but I did, and because it’s very easy, I’d soon completed it too.

I’d never heard of Racing Fever before, but it’s clearly an attempt to bring a game like the Neo Geo titles Over Top and Drift Out to the Game Boy Advance (where this first appeared). I think this also marks the first Game Boy Advance title to appear on the Evercade too, actually.

There are 12 tracks, many of which feel the same despite the changes in scenery. Some of this is probably because you never actually drive down the screen, despite the fact you have several laps of each track! That is to say, you only go left, right and up (and diagonally up) on the screen and yet still somehow end up back where you started.

It’s a bit low rent, and as I said, very easy, but it was fun enough until I finished it.

Immortals: Fenyx Rising (PS5): COMPLETED!

Posted on 20/04/2021 Written by deKay

The name change from Gods and Monsters to Fenyx Rising was enough to put me off ever buying this, and the quick price drop on release and middling reviews did nothing to convince me otherwise. What did convince me, however, was actual Real People saying it was alright actually but more than that was the dearth of things to actually play on my PS5. yes, Spider-Man, I know, but this was £21.

Also a negative was just how much like Zelda: Breath of the Wild it appeared to be. It’s all just in the graphics though, right? It’s actually more like Assassin’s Creed, right? Well, no. It’s actually much more like Breath of the Wild than I’d imagined.

That’s not to say there’s no Assassin’s Creed here – it still feels a bit like it, albeit in a fantasy rather than realistic setting, and the voice cast is made up seemingly entirely from the same people as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but yeah, it’s Zelda. You climb things and have a stamina bar, just like Zelda. You can glide from high places, just like Zelda. Ride horses? Zelda. Shrines with puzzles or feats in? Zelda. Crafting buffing potions? Zelda. Four main “bosses” then a final “dungeon”? Zelda. Magnesis powers? Zelda. Bow and arrow? Zelda. Baddies that explode when you kill them? Zelda. Trees to chop down? Heart and stamina upgrades? Switch puzzles? Zelda. It’s very Zelda.

But that’s OK. Breath of the Wild was A Very Good Game, so anything which manages to be half as good – especially in the absence of Breath of the Wild 2 – is fine, really. And it’s not all Zelda!

Fenyx’s quest is to restore some of the Greek Gods back to their former selves, and defeat Typhon who has beaten all the Gods and turned almost everyone to stone. So you set off to find and return the Gods’ essences which restore them back the way they were – Ares has become a cowardly chicken (literally), Aphrodite has lost her vanity, and so on. Doing this mostly this involves climbing tall places, fighting big monsters, and solving block-on-switch puzzles and shooting arrows through a series of axe handles. Because, you know, that’s what I’d lock progression behind if I were a Big Nasty.

Besides the main quest, there are the usual Ubisoft plethora of side quests, things to collect, skill trees, upgrades, chests to open, and so on. I did quite a few of these, but some of the vaults (the Immortals version of BotW’s Shrines) were too fiddly, difficult, or dull for me to bother with. Turns out you don’t need to upgrade yourself anywhere near as much as I spent time doing anyway, as the final boss is a walkover and I didn’t need more than a couple of my potions or special moves I’d taken in with me.

Difficultly being all over the place aside, it’s a really enjoyable game. The mostly blue skies and great traversal and combat mechanics more than make up for the repetition and lack of variety in the enemies (there are only really about six types in the game!) and it’s much better than I was expecting.