Thursday
28Jan2010
Van Hemlock Episode 87
Jon Shute | Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:00AM 
This week we return with more about the games we've been playing. LOTRO, EVE Online, Guildwars, Bayonetta and more!
Oh, and something called Star Trek Online. I think it's based on some old TV show or something.
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Reader Comments (4)
Hail the mighty Hobgoblin II! The Helios gets +50% thermal drone damage, so with perfect skills that little drone can put out 30 DPS according to EFT. Certainly enough to tear through T1 frigs and destroyers.
VH - you mentioned last news show that Wormholes are scary - is there an interesting story behind that?
Might see you in The Citadel space, if we're on at late/early - I'm Oz TZ. Hands off my Radar sites!
Spurred by your talk about Bayonetta I doenladed the demo on the XBOX and tried it out. It's... weird. Definitely not my kind of game. But the art style is awesome. Being old and feeble I could probably use an option that slooowed the thing down a lot.
STO:
Good to hear it has Trek feeling in it. But how do the 2D space work? Is it hampering or is it so well done it's not a (noticeable) thing?
Is STO a good MMO for non-Trekkies?
Definitely a hard question to answer. It's a pretty-good MMO, but it does have a couple of fairly big flaws:
-- The crafting is poor at best. I got to Lieutenant-Commander (level 12) and still didn't have enough gathered items to start crafting at Memory Alpha.
-- Sector Travel is a pointless time-sink. For Trekkies it's kinda cool to see your ship traveling at Warp 7.7, but for non-fans, it's very, very boring.
-- The non-combat missions (or episodes) are extremely poorly done. There's no puzzles, they're just another time-sink.
-- Since I only played the Beta for about 5 days (and it was a Beta) the economy is a complete unknown. However I did note that Bridge Officers, personal equipment and ship equipment were very reasonable to buy from NPCs. In addition, you could switch Bridge Officers skills out at any time.
-- Server build is just like Champions, so if you hate that...
-- Re-playability may be a big issue. Limited character slots, and limited missions make it a big question mark.
EVE: forgot to mention that the only ships with scanning bonuses larger than frigates are T3 Strategic Cruisers with the Emergent Locus Analyzer electronics subsystem. I reckon you'll need to sell a few datacores to buy one!
The Recons have EW and combat bonuses, although the Force Recons can fit CovOps cloak.