A couple of posts ago, when discussing Star Trek games, one of the games I mentioned was Star Trek Online. As I stated at the time, I didn’t really think I had the time to get into an MMO, and the fact that it was PC-only was another turn-off. While my battlestation is still capable of running the game, I would much rather play games on my Playstation 4.

Apparently one of my reservations about the game has been taken care of, as there’s a console port in the works.

I have to admit that the game looks good, and the fact that they’re taking great pains to make sure the game works well on a gamepad is appealing as well. In addition, my argument that I don’t have much time for an MMO tends to ring hollow, considering I try to keep up with Destiny.

On the other hand, I have two big issues. The first is that I barely have time to game as it is, MMO or no; these days my non-mobile gaming is restricted to weekends, and even then I may get a few matches on Overwatch or missions in Destiny before I get tired and need to go to bed. The second is that Star Trek Online is free-to-play, and my general experience with free-to-play is that it really means “pay-to-win”. Unless you do an insane amount of grinding or plonk down some cash, advancement in the game is slow-to-nonexistent.

(Honestly, my thoughts on free-to-play could probably fill a post on its own. :-) )

As it’ll be a free download, I’ll very likely give the game a try once it becomes available for Playstation 4. I’ll try and temper my enthusiasm (as I tend to get obsessed when I get interested in a game), but hopefully it won’t be an annoying timesink and will actually be enjoyable to play while providing a good Trek experience.

Yesterday, on a whim, I changed the site’s theme to Coral Dark. I mainly wanted to change the functionality of the comments field to use the WordPress standard provided by the Jetpack plugin, as opposed to the Disqus plugin I had been using. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with it; I haven’t needed to make any changes to the theme coding itself to fit it with the site, and the theme has built-in mobile support that looks better than the theme provided by the mobile site plugin I had been using. I also changed the “lightbox” plugin I had been using to display images to something that looked better and was still being updated.

It seems like a lot of work for a site I rarely post to and not many people read. :-)

Really, I never kept the site alive because I thought I had an actual audience. I simply like the challenge of keeping such a site operational and maintained. I consider it a good exercise to keep the site up to date and using the latest technologies, especially from a sysadmin perspective.

I admit that I had considered returning back to doing something a bit more along the lines of Mortal Kombat Online. I had retired from there because I had burned out on doing Mortal Kombat related news, but I didn’t mind the actual writing. I simply couldn’t think of a niche that already wasn’t well-covered that I thought I could bring a unique perspective to. Of course, I could have returned back to doing Mortal Kombat, but the community these days seems more focused on tournaments and technical aspects that, as a casual player, I feel too ill-equipped to speak on.

I also admit that I was also intrigued by the concept of doing video blogs or streaming gameplay. That also brings a set of challenges. Again, I don’t know if anyone really wants to hear what I have to say. More importantly, though, is that I am completely unsuited for radio or video, as it were. I tend to stutter and my mouth tends to run before my brain has considered what needs to be said. The best evidence of that are my video interviews for Mortal Kombat Online; of the three interviews I gave, the only one that doesn’t make me cringe with absolute embarrassment is the interview I did with Ed Boon at the media event where Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was first announced. They’re just painful to watch. Streaming gameplay would have the same challenges, with the additional problem that I’m simply not that great of a player. :-)

As an aside, there were plans for a Mortal Kombat Online podcast, and a couple of episodes were actually recorded before the entire project was scrapped. The guy who did the editing was pretty up-front that he had to do a lot of work to make my contribution usable, thanks to my stutter et al.

Needless to say, I think I’m much more valuable in front of a keyboard than I am in front of a microphone or a camera. :-)

All of that being said, I’m pretty fine with how things are. Like I said before, this site was never anything more than something to occupy my time and hone my sysadmin skills, while posting about things that I wanted to get off of my chest. In addition, it looks better than a standard Apache default page or an “under construction” page, the latter of which actually WAS my site for several years. I honestly don’t think I have the time to create something that would take as much effort and resources as Mortal Kombat Online, anyway.

Still, I’m definitely open to suggestions regarding content. If there IS an audience, I’d be willing to branch out if anyone has any good ideas. I like working on the site, and it’s nice to be able to stretch my writing chops every once in a while.

We’ll see how things go, but for now, I’m okay with my site and where it sits in the grand scheme. :-)

Jennifer and I saw Star Trek Beyond this past Sunday. In my opinion, it’s easily the best of the “Kelvin-verse” movies, and felt like a true Star Trek film. I kind of want to see it again, but am perfectly willing to wait until it comes out on Blu-Ray.

In the run-up to the movie and after seeing it, I’ve become somewhat nostalgic about Star Trek video games, and have been kind of jonesing to play some of them.

Funny enough, the one I’ve been missing the most has been the original arcade game from 1982, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. It’s a somewhat fast-paced arcade game where you pilot the Enterprise in battle through various sectors of space, defending starbases against attacks from Klingon warships, and occasionally battling the malevolent probe Nomad (from the original series episode “The Changeling”) as it creates minefields around you. Admittedly, when I was a kid, my friends and I used to play the hell out of the ColecoVision port of the game, pretending we were commanding the actual Enterprise. These days, it seems that the only way to play it is via the emulator on archive.org, as there have been no modern re-releases.

The closest game I’ve found to replicating the feel of the arcade game is Star Trek: Starfleet Command, which is a strategic ship combat simulator based on a tabletop game called Star Fleet Battles. It’s far more detailed and complex than the arcade game is, but on the other hand it replicates the feel of actual ship combat in Star Trek more closely. As much as I wanted to get into it, though, I simply couldn’t get the hang of it and got my butt kicked on a regular basis. It’s actually available for sale now, via GOG.com.

Of course, if one wanted to replicate the feel of the actual TV series, the game to get would be Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Originally developed for MS-DOS, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary is an adventure game set up as several “episodes”, where Kirk et al have to deal with puzzles and obstacles using diplomacy, problem-solving, and the occasional use of brute force. While the game allows you the option to be a jerk and selfish in gameplay dialogue choices, you get the most points for taking actions as the original crew would… and for keeping your redshirts alive. ;-) This game and its sequel, Star Trek: Judgment Rites, are written as if they’re the unofficial fourth and fifth years of the Enterprise’s five year mission, and even have the voice talent of the original cast. Like Starfleet Command, both games are available on GOG.com.

As for modern games, though, I’ve mostly been disappointed. There was an action-adventure game based on the Kelvin-verse for consoles, but I didn’t enjoy playing the demo so I didn’t bother getting the full game. As it turned out, the full game got savaged by critics, so I ended up dodging a bullet (or phaser) there. I’ve heard decent things about Star Trek Online, but I simply don’t have the time to play an MMORPG, especially one for PC. I tried Star Trek Timelines when it was released for iOS, but ended up deleting it when I found the ship-to-ship combat was mostly hands-off and the rest of the gameplay was free-to-play/pay-to-win nonsense. It doesn’t help, either, that several reviews of the game accuse the developers of poor customer service and making underhanded changes to gameplay rewards to try and force players to spend money. There’s also a RPG puzzle game called Star Trek: Wrath of Gems, but to be honest I got bored with free-to-play RPG puzzlers after Doctor Who Legacy.

I suppose, then, I shouldn’t hold my breath for a decent quality Star Trek video game to come out anytime soon. As long as games like Strategic Operations Simulator and 25th Anniversary are still available to play, I should be okay. I just wish it wasn’t so seemingly hard to make a Trek game that’s fun to play.