Reader Submitted: Game Review - No Man's Sky

By Xymbers Slade/Aegis Hyena

It's been a long long time since I've written for the Newser (only reason I don't come back to Second Life is because "Why? I did what I wanted to do there" and I'm out of touch now anyway). I've been wanting to write this one for a long time for Bixyl, so here it is.

No Man's Sky has had its share of ups, downs, and zero-g moves that make the Titanic crashing about in a storm look like a mother rocking her baby to sleep. Pushed out far earlier than it should have, it met with fury from the fans, almost dropping to less than a 18% positive rating on Steam for quite some time. As I understand it, the investors knew it couldn't be done in time, pushed the company, took the money and ran (probably to another planet).

The game was marketed as being all procedural. With over 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets, it marketed as everything being new and original. The problem is, is that it's a computer game. Computer games need assets. As I wrote in a steam review, "There's not enough assets on this planet (heh) to completely make it seem like the universe truly has random plants and animals on every planet."

On top of that (also copied word for word from my review), they took a concept and applied a synonym to it... while you might find an Abandoned Planet somewhere, you'll find the mostly the "same kind" of planet if you find one that is marked Airless, Dead, Desolate, Empty, Forsaken, Life-Incompatible, Lifeless, Low Atmosphere, or Terraforming Catastrophe -- one planet type, many descriptors to simulate depth even though it's the same bloody thing. Come on, devs, you can do better than that. Problem is it requires work time and money which most people don't have.

You start on a hostile world, having to find materials to power your Exosuit (Sodium, to be exact, as well as oxygen, dihydrogen, and carbon). You have a mining laser strapped to one arm, which can be upgraded over time if you find better models. You then proceed to find a crashed spaceship, repair it and take to the stars, exploring planets and warping from place to place, learning to manage inventory (the starter ship has very little room, as does your Exosuit and you need creative managing talents) while you piece together what's going on.

You start alone, and while there is a multiplayer function, I think it's more fun as singleplayer. Sometimes other players CAN warp into your system, and by default voice is activated, so you can communicate with the visitor for trade or PVP or whatever. I've only seen one visitor (because the universe is vast -- it's *that* rare that it happens) in my time playing and might soon jump into multiplayer and trade with whomever I randomly join.

The main storyline is something that revolves around something called Atlas, and the goal of the game seems to be to get to the center of the galaxy where you might be able to warp to a new one. As I selected "free explore" instead of going about on the main paths, I don't know a lot about it and have spent all 130 hours of my current game in my starting system, trading and shooting pirates.

There are three races in the universe: The Korvax (computer hivemind), the Gek (lizard-people) and the Vy'keen (reskinned Klingons). I haven't followed the lore enough to learn more about them.

As with any game of this large a scope, there are an unfortunate amount of bugs. There are more bugs in this game than there are lies coming out of most politicians these days. One bug is a "crate" bug, where you can't remove stuff (I find shutting down the game and coming back 15 minutes later wakes it up). This bug is almost 3 years old, so either the devs won't fix it, can't, or don't know how without breaking the game. Another bug is that locations you loot can only be looted once. If the game later assigns the location as a quest, the terminal is already looted and the quest can't complete. A third bug has quest "return locations" go to empty spots where there is no questgiver present to give the reward, so the quest has to be abandoned.

The opening questlines are very linear. You can't "hire randomly" -- you need to go to specific spots for specific races to join your base, wherever you decide to build it. If the quest requires you to make antimatter, and you find some elsewhere first to use it to warp to another system before you follow the steps / get the recipe for it in order to make it, it'll bug out and possibly lead to problems later.

Finally, and this thing bugs me, is that you can only have nine crates. These crates are twice your size, but only have five slots (a starting exosuit has about 25). If later you get a freighter, the crates you put there mimic the ones you have on the ground, sharing their inventories. What genius was responsible for that idea? This is the 9999th century up in space here. There should be planets that sell warehouse space!

The game is *very* pretty to look at if you're a casual kind of gamer, but like I wrote above, you'll run into repeats (especially locations) very early and very often. The grind especially in the early game will wear you down from a six foot long spear point to six inches of blunt shaft of wood, so be prepared to put in long hours. I like playing hardcore (one life, deleted save if you die) but after a few deaths on this game? Not here. The grind overpowers that of Minecraft's grind for iron and diamonds by a factor of about sixteen.

Overall, the devs got pushed too hard too fast, paid for it, TRIED to rebound (18% positive to 80% positive as of two or so weeks ago, it's back down to about 50% now) and are at least TRYING to come through on their promises. It's still not worth the $60 asking price, so I say get it if it's on sale as an impulse buy. It gets three dragon hoards out of five from me, because at least they're trying and will continue to try.

Aegis

Editor's note: When I wrote about the problems of "No Man's Sky" in Sept 2016, it looked like the game's days were numbered. It seems it's been sticking around due to enough people continuing to buy, the developers determined to redeem themselves, or something of both.

Eve Online: The (Goonswarm) Empire To Strike Back

By Bixyl Shuftan

Eve Online was once described as "Second Life's Evil Twin." While not a sandbox virtual world, players do have a lot of options in playing alone, or part of a group, to mind one's own business, or raid other players. What would be branded as "griefing" in Second Life can reap rewards here, and raiders can and will enjoy the "yummy tears" of the targets they've successfully demolished. One faction in Eve Online that's been around for years is Goonswarm. Supposedly, it was where a number of former Second Life griefers ended up when they got bored and left, heading to Eve. But it also had some men of obvious distinction, such as Vile Rat who was one of those killed in the terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Libya in 2012.

Factions often form alliances that can and will fight major wars over territory and resources, and sometimes revenge. But in early 2016 came what was billed as "The Largest PVP War in Gaming History." The biggest alliance known as The Imperium, led by the "Goonswarm Federation," threatened smaller alliances in low-security space with invasion unless they paid up protection money. But instead of giving in, some of these alliances formed a coalition and to the surprise of onlookers, the Imperium suffered a major defeat. As a result, old enemies of The Imperium "quickly came out of the woodwork," and what became known as "World War Bee" was in full gear, "with over 60,000 players around the world choosing sides." The fight has also been called "The Casino War" as the owner of an Eve gambling website began bankrolling the war effort against The Imperium. The result was a series of defeats for The Imperium as key stations were overrun and factions left it. The Imperium's strategy was to try and outlast it's enemies, then retake what they lost.

Finally on August 2, there was an announcement that The Imperium would be on the march again. And soon close to a thousand capital ships from Goonswarm moved to a strategic location close to two areas held by their enemies, sometimes called the "Moneybadger Coalition." The goal of the ships there seems to be to mainly harass the enemy for now by sending numerous lone ships to multiple hard to defend locations. "Massively" writer Brendan Drain felt, The Imperium's plan was a "highly aggressive" one, not to worry about losing the economic war, "relying instead on it's huge industrial and (cash) farming base ... to replace lost ships quickly. That sounds good in theory, but losing the (money) war on paper can give the enemy a huge morale boost and a reasonable claim to victory, even if they concede star systems and lose citadels.

The "Casino War" hasn't seen a fight yet on the scale of "The Battle of B-R5" in which over $300,000 USD worth of ships went up in flames. But in a game noted for not just massive battles, but suprpising political moves, backstabs, and drama, a lot can happen. About the only thing writer Drain felt was certain was, "with the game's largest and richest alliances involved, at the very least we can be sure that some very expensive stuff is going to explode."

Source: Massively

Bixyl Shuftan

This And That: WoT's "Tankmas" and Swedish Tanks, War Thunder's Official Release, Rust Junks XP System, WarFrame, and Astroneer

By Bixyl Shuftan


Although my focus has been on Second Life, I've been hearing about a few developments in gaming. Some of my Second Life friends have been playing a new MMO game a lot, a new one in development caught the attention of a few, and there's been some developments in a few old favorites."World of Tanks" is going through it's yearly "Tankmas," with some goodies for it's players. For fun, this includes a tree and a snow tank players can decorate. They can get decorations by performing missions, and can level up their trees and snow tanks, getting a reward for doing so such as discounts on certain tanks or female crew members. There's also a new nation available: Sweden.

The Swedes were neutral in World War Two as neither Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia felt the risks of trying to conquer them were worth the rewards. The nation had it's own line of tanks, originally inspired by German designs but eventually finding it's own path in armor. Players have two lines of tech research: tank destroyers and a mix of light, medium, and heavy tanks. Rita mariner, one of the top tankers that I know of in Second Life, called the Swede tanks a mixed bag, some great, some okay, and some that she felt were just target practice for the opposition. But in addition to the Czech tanks that were introduced a few months ago, they do add to the variety of tanks (and spending more money for garage space).

Source: worldoftanks.com 

War Thunder hasn't gotten quite as much attention among my Second Life friends as it's more difficult to team up, but I've still been hearing about developments. Some months ago, they introduced then expanded the list of, British Combat vehicles. This left Japan as the only nation in the game with airplanes only, but not for long. Japanese tanks are currently in development, currently available to those as part of the "testers team." An update in the mechanics in the game now allows for hydrolic suspension in certain vehicles. Also in development, naval combat. The first vessels won't be the destroyers, cruisers, and battleships of "World of Warships," but small craft such as PT boats. This means the game will eventually cover land, sea, and air.

With these developments, on December 21 the director of the game announced that "we have completed all the goals we set for ourselves in the early stages of development" and the open beta testing of the game was concluding after four years as the game was being officially released.

The road to release for War Thunder has been a fantastic journey, packed with development,  we have from the outset been active in development and content heavy in regular updates to the game. Our commitment to the game has provided players with millions of hours of passion filled gameplay and we have gained many, many players as well as the veterans who have been with us from the very beginning. To all our fans, we sincerely thank you, we are so grateful for the continued support of our project and look forward to your continued support into the release.

We will continue to develop the game we all know and love but you won’t be seeing the same major changes in direction we have all been part of throughout the testing, gameplay and core mechanics can now settle down and we can at last concentrate on giving the game the polish and content it deserves. Additions will continue, there are still many military vehicles that can be included, our mapmakers will still create wonderful vistas and beautiful scenery to wage war in, of course there are still exciting features yet to be added - such as World War mode, new nations, new tournaments and more.

It’s been a pleasure to provide you, our players, with such an already filled out  battle simulator and we look forward to even more happy times together as we continue to tread the path of the warrior.

Source: warthunder.com

When we last looked at the survival game "Rust," they had just introduced their experience, or XP, system. But not only did a number of players complain about it, the development team soon came to the conclusion the system wrecked the feel of the game as an open sandbox with exploring and random encounters and turned it into a grinding slog. So they got rid of it and put in it's place a "component system."

Players are able to build all items from the start. But some things require additional items to make. So when you go around smashing barrels and opening crates, you'll find items such as road signs, pipes, used propane tanks, tarps, and sewing kits. The sewing kits are needed to make clothes beyond the basic burlap coverings, such as pants and t-shirts. For the shoddy armor made from road signs, naturally you'll need a few of the road signs. Pipes are one of the items needed for shotguns, and so on.

You can also recycle the metal and cloth items you find in the recyclers, that one can find in the warehouses across the island. Just put in the items and a little wood, and press the green button. Tarps are made into cloth, metal parts into low quality and high quality metal. It you throw in tools and clothes, you'll get back half the metal it takes to make it.

While you can still find lone barrels around the island, you can also find them, along with crates and food boxes, on new junkpiles, which appear around the landscape. You can also find oil-bearing barrels on them sometimes, which means you don't have to make long treks to the oil storage facility or airport or kill a critter to make a little fuel, or make a trip to and use an oil rig which in itself uses up fuel. 

With players able to get metal and oil easier, I wondered what the catch was. As it turns out, an old nemesis from Rust's earlier days is around a lot more: radiation. It had appeared earlier, but was in a few small areas that could be easily avoided. This time, it's encountered more frequently. While the oil storage area is still rad-free, other places I've been in so far will start the Geiger-counter ticks. At least the water treatment plant was only half-contaminated. There are also small power stations around which while having oil drums around also have radiation hazards. This means the radiation pills you occasionally come across are going to come in handy to avoid poisoning, in addition to the radiation suits you'll occasionally find. The downside, they're not going to provide much protection against bullets and blows. Plus most players will prefer wearing something else. You're going to need to save space in your inventory for your clothes when switching to the suit. Which means your forrays into the ruins have gotten more complicated and less rewarding. On the plus side, in servers with more and hostile players, you may have less competition.

Source: Rust Devblog

So what's new that's gotten the attention of my Second Life friends lately? Two games come to mind. One is Warframe, a first person sci-fi combat MMO game. In the game, the player takes the part of a "Teno," a warrior in a faceless biomechanical suit or "Warframe" whom has been reawoken after ages in hibernation to combat the Grineer, an army of clone soldiers trying to take over the Solar System. Players have a choice of what kind of fighter to be, as well as a choice of ranged and melee weapons. Beyond the turorial mission, from what I have heard missions are all multiplayer with no solo fighting, with some story and plot involved as one goes on.

I personally haven't had much experience with the game as I found it difficult to "get," and before I could meet up with Skylark Lefavre and Pagan Sunburn whom are fans of the game, the game fouled up while updating. My friends have had similar trouble, to the point of occasionally calling the game "Glitchframe." So unless someone does a reader submission, there may not be much more to say about Warframe.

Another game that's gotten attention of my friends is "Astroneer." This game, still in Alpha, is in it's very early stages. Players take the part of an astronaut stranded on an alien planet trying to build a base, trying not to run out of oxygen. The game is somewhat similar to "Space Engineers," but is more cartoony, simpler, and no PvP option so far. Players can get together to work on a single base. Thankfully, some needed materials are slowly renewable, but things are complicated by occasional sandstorms.

"Astroneer" is very new, so if you get it, expect some changes as the game goes on. The game is currently available on Steam.

That's all for now in gaming.

Bixyl Shuftan

"No Man's Sky" Game Under Investigation By UK For Deceptive Advertising

By Bixyl Shuftan

Hello Games, the people behind "No Man's Sky," is in trouble. Most computer and console owners have been disappointed by games they bought that they feel didn't live up to the anticipation. But in the case of this particular game, so many have expressed disappointment that it's being investigated by an advertising regulation agency.

"No Man's Sky" by Hello Games was one of the most anticipated computer games of the summer, promising an unbelievable huge universe to explore, "epic space battles," challenging planetary survival conditions, and more.

That the game was boasting 18 quintillion planets (that's an "18" with eighteen zeroes after it, compared to a million which has six) did get some wondering if perhaps the makers were exaggerating things a little. But with the hype and videos having wetted the appetites of gamers, when it was finally released, thousands of computer and console owners bought the game. At one point, "Steam" recorded over 200 thousand people playing the game on their PCs at once, and was the top selling Playstation 4 game in August.

To make a long story short, most everyone found the game a disappointment. There were numerous bugs in the initial release, as well as advertised features that simply weren't there, "There are things missing that I didn't even know were missing." One person who did like the game admitted, "It took me about 12 hours to realize that No Man’s Sky is basically an intergalactic mining simulator. ... there isn't much to do ... other than to gaze at the humbling wonders of the universe, and ponder your absolute insignificance in the cosmic scale of things." Even the President of Sony, Shuhei Yoshida, which distributed the game for Playstation, felt Hello Games had promised more than it delivered.

Word got around that the game was underwhelming, and people either demanded and got refunds or simply quit playing. By September 21, Steam was detecting that the number of people playing at once had dropped to under a thousand, less than half a percent of it's peak in just a few weeks.

If bad publicity wasn't enough for Hello Games to worry about, the complaints got the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom, an "independent regulator of advertising across all media." While the ASA can't enforce regulations and laws, "it does have the power to have advertisements which breach its code of advertising practice removed," with the threat of sanctions if such ads are not taken down.

For Hello Games however, the damage may already be done. As the maker of such a high profile flop, it may find further games difficult to market. For consumers, it may mean better games in the future as this may serve as a cautionary tale for developers to not make claims that their products can't live up to.

Sources: Wikipedia, Forbes, gamezone.com, Arcade Rage, PC Gamer , 

Bixyl Shuftan

Gaming Review: A Look At Eve Online

By Bixyl Shuftan

Eve Online is not a new Multiplayer Online Game, but has been around since 2003, slightly older than Second Life and a year older than World of Warcraft. Unlike some other MMOs, it was able to stay somewhat in the gamming public eye as unlike most it's a science-fiction space game. It has made news time to time due to the money and time some players are willing to invest in the larger ships, in addition when one of the US personel who died in an attack on a diplomatic building happened to be not just a player but one of the top men in one of the game's factions.

Eve Online has once been described as "Second Life's Evil Twin," and not without reason. Every ship beyond the newcomer vessels players use was made by other players. Unlike the more cooperative culture that predominates the virtual world in which people are not supposed to bother one another, what would be called "griefing" by SLers is often rewarded in Eve. Although some areas are protected by local security forces, some are places where anyone is fair game to anyone else's guns. And those whom venture in such places are subject to being blown apart and the surviving parts and cargo plundered. But it's not just for resources some commit such acts for. Aparently there's a concept that one called "yummy tears," players taking joy at the misery of others. For other gamers, they would just simply prefer fewer rules rather than worry about being banned for an activity they didn't know was wrong.

Players band together in groups, the largest ones being corporations. And often these corporations band together in temporary alliances. And when they fight, the result can be battles involving hundreds, even over a thousand players. No other game can boast this kind of Player Versus Player combat! Probably the most noteworthy battle took place a year ago on January 25, 2013, which saw the destruction of 90 Titan ships alone, a gargantuan vessel needing $7600 US Dollars worth of game currency to build.

Although the fleets of ships created by these corporations can be quite a force, nothing is certain. Espianoge and backstabbing is always a possibility, and corporations have been done in because a trusted member turned out to be a mole whom once in the right place at the right time was able to transfer all or a great deal of the financial and material assets to an enemy.

With this in mind, perhaps an older gamer like myself who knew no one in the game would have been wiser to look elsewhere. but When an opportunity came to give it a try for a month for a fraction of the usual price, I was willing to give it a chance. So I downloaded it and gave it a try. And if it was worth playing, maybe I'd keep on by paying the monthly fee ($15 to $12 a month, or 10 to 7.50 Pounds) depending on how much time you pay for).

The plot of the game is that far in the future, humanity came across a wormhole that led to another part of the Milky Way galaxy. Thousands settled on the other side in what came to be known as New Eden. Then the wormhole collapsed and society on the other side fell into a dark age and high technology forgotten. Thousands of years later, the humans on several of these worlds would discover space travel again, and eventually form five interstellar states, four of which are playable.

After creating an account, one chooses how one's avatar looks. This is currently a cosmetic feature that does not affect gameplay, as players interact only in messages and group chats, besides acting upon each others ships. After that, one is directed to fly one's pod to their first ship, where an AI will begin helping the new pilot learn basic techniques. After that, the player is contacted by five people from five different fields, business, combat, advanced combat, industry, and exploration. These people offer some begining missions with gear and sometimes ships, in addition to credits for rewards.

Although ships can be flown manually, most players usually just point and click, giving the ship commands and let the automatic pilot turn the ship. One can't be damaged just by bumping into another object, so no worries about scraping space stations, asteroids, or other ships. Maybe it was just the quirks of my system, but lag seemed to be less of a problem then on some other games, including Star trek Online. I was never disconnected. Although the scenery was limited to space scenes, the ones I saw were done very well, with good use of lighting to produce picturesque scenes of stars and nebulae.

One of the features in Eve is Skills, the knowledge your character has to perform certain actions and operate certain pieces of equipment, such as repairs and operating certain types of weapons. Without certain skills, you will not be able to operate the equipment they need, or the actions required by them. They are learned in real-life, and progress continues even when the player is not logged on. They are either bought from the market or awarded for completing a mission. But just because you get a skill book doesn't mean you can start learning it. Sometimes you need the prerequisite skill. to learn certain skills.

When trying out these first newcomer missions just after the AI training, I soon began running into trouble. First a cargo bay expansion I needed to do one mission couldn't be installed because I lacked to particular skill to install it. Frustrated, I went to another that required me to scout an area. But I couldn't complete the mission without finishing off a pirate, and I found my weapon was somehow useless! I had the idea of buying another on the market. But as it turned out, I lacked the required skill to use it. Being blocked from doing all of the second group of newcomer quests, well, my desire to play any longer was pretty much killed for the day.

I talked to a few others whom had played the game in the past, and was persuaded to give it another go. One had to tell me that it wasn't enough to just carry the ammunition, like one could carry probes when one had a probe launcher, but one had to click and drag it to over your weapon. I was also told not all of the skills I would be needed would be rewarded from quests, but would have to be bought from the Marketplace and then learned. Fortunately one can queue a number of skills to be learned later, up to fifty, so one can still be learning when not playing for a few days.

Since then, I've continued to make slow progress, running more missions for rewards. I've also made contact with one other player from Second Life, so it seems I won't be alone here after all. Another friend told me she had also given it a try, but also lost interest quickly due to it's steep learning curve. Another told me this wasn't a game that one could just play for fun for a month, but that it was one a player could spend months trying to figure out, "it's a lifetime game."

One told me even in the safe areas piracy can be a problem as there are some willing to make "suicide attacks" on ships in which the pilot seems to be Away From Keyboard, such as mining vessels in an asteroid belt, if they think the rewards from the debris to be recovered later outweigh the police forces quickly arriving on the scene and blowing them up. While there was a way to turn the tables, she requested that her technique not be published in case she goes back to pirate raiding.

I'll be continuing to play the game for the remainder of the free month at least. So my verdict on the game, it has a higher learning curve than other space games such as Star Trek Online, so it requires more patience to figure out. On the other hand, there seemed to be less of a problem with lag. While one doesn't have to be a "gaming god" whom enjoys blowing people up "for the luz" to play, one has to take precautions when going into zero security areas or risk getting blown up. If you're a casual gamer whom would rather spend just a little time learning the ropes and going in alone, you' may want to skip the wild world of Eve Online. But there are devoted players whom have spent years there, amassing wealth and power, so there is the possibility of gaining some powerful allies.If you already know people here, even better. So if you don't mind taking a little time to get the hang of the game, who doesn't mind the lack of rules, and you already have friends playing the game here, you may want to consider at least giving the free trial period a try.

Links: Wikipedia, eveonline.com , "Eve Online Beginners Guide (Youtube)"

Bixyl Shuftan

Game Review: Star Trek Online

By Bixyl Shuftan

Even if you know next to nothing about science-fiction, chances are you've heard about "Star Trek." Taking place in a future time, humans of a long since united Earth along with alien comrades "explore strange new worlds and new civilizations." Since the original show aired in the 1960s, there have been numerous additional telivision series and movies, in addition to books and comics, as it's popularity has grown. And of course there have been games. And more recently, a Multiplayer Online Game based on Star Trek has appeared: Star Trek Online.

Development of Star Trek Online started with the company Perpetual Entertainment in about 2004. But in 2008 they went bankrupt and sold the rights to Cryptic Studios, the makers of the MMO "City of Heroes," which then took over working on the game. Some friends of mine heard about the game sometime around this period of development, saying an alpha version was supposedly playtested at a sci-fi convention. But the game had a lot of problems, notably players had to team up for missions, and when someone had to leave, that left his/her friends unable to finish what they were doing. Even the Trekkers didn't like the game, I was told.

What to do about this problem? Cryptic's designers soon had a solution: make all the players ship captains. Beginning players do a series of missions on foot, eventually ending up in charge of a small ship. Once in charge of a vessel, the player controls its movement, weaponry, and other actions in the game's starship setting. This dual game play of both playing as a character and to "play as a starship" distinguishes Star Trek Online from other MMOs. As players progress in levels, and rank, they work their way up to larger ships.

The setting of the game is that about three decades have passed since the time in which the last of the "Next Generation" movies ("Nemesis") took place. Relations between the Federation and Klingon Empire have deteriorated and the two are once again at war. Meanwhile, a supernova has destroyed Romulus, the homeworld of the Romulans and the capital of their empire. The result are the Romulans spliting into two factions, the Romulan Empire under the old Imperial government, and the Romulan Republic, which favors peace with the Federation and Klingons and doing away with their culture of secrecy from other interstellar societies.

It used to be all players had to start with Federation characters, Klingons available only after players had progressed a number of levels. Now from the start you can play as either, a Romulan, or have a character from each. Players can play up to three characters without paying extra. Federation characters can be human, Vulcan, Andorian, or a number of well-known and not so well known races from within its borders, as well as Ferengi whom presumably some have left their home to become Federation citizens. Klingon characters can play Klingons of course, and a few races under the Empire's dominion, including the reptilian Gorn and the Orions. Romulan background characters are limited to just Romulans. For a real currency purchase, Federation players can have a Caitian (feline), Trill (joined), or Klingon character. Klingon players have the option of a Ferasan (a feline race that possibly might be the Kzinti from the Animated Series under another name) or Trill, and Romulans a Reman (a subject race of the Romulan Empire). All factions are open to having a liberated Borg character (think Seven of Nine) with a real currency purchase as well. You can have either a tactical (fighting and strategy skills), engineering, or science background. Each has it's own perks in the game.

Begining Federation players start out as graduates from the Academy at the top of their class, assigned to be on the fast track to command and made second in command on a ship of cadets under an experienced captain for a training cruise. But disaster strikes, and the Captain is taken by hostiles. Should the player pull through, his character ends up promoted and given official command.

Klingon players start out as a promising warrior who's risen up to the third in command on a Bird of Prey transporting a captured Federation spy. But the ship is attacked on the way, and events result in the player taking command and resuming the mission to take the spy to the Klingon homeworld for questioning. But this isn't the last you hear about the spy, and trying to track him down results in a long quest chain that leads to the character meeting two of the characters from "The Next Generation."

Romulan players start out as residents of a colony world made up of refugees from the chaos that followed the destruction of their homeworld twenty years earlier. Since then, they've gotten along without help from the Imperial government, and are content with doing without them. But just as they're throwing a party to celebrate, they come under attack by some strange aliens aided by the Imperial government's secret force, the Tal-shiar. The player has to fight them, and with the help of an old Romular Warbird parked in orbit gets some of the poplace to escape. The player and his crew end up meeting with D'Tan, the leader of the Romulan Republic whom enlists them to join his cause. Subequent missions involve the player helping to find a world for the Republic to establish itself and getting recognition and aid from the Federation and Klingons, whom at first think they might be some kind of trick by the Imperials. Success however comes at a price. Then Romulan players need to make a choice, will they have the Federation or the Klingons as an ally? Choosing one means access to their ships and some missions.

In carrying out their missions, players will have to do them out both on foot as either alone or the leader of an away team (character or ground mode), or out in space using the ship from the bridge (space mode). For instance, a mission may require the player to destroy a force of attacking ships in ship mode by manuvering the ship and using it's beam and torpedos to destroy (or cripple) them, steering the ship to keep one's strongest shields between they and the enemy. Then the player has to go in character mode to beam over an away team to a nearby planet or space station to deal with attackers whom have beamed down, as well as fix any damage done by them. Enemies destroyed, both in space mode and character mode, leave behind pickups, such as weapons, batteries, and parts. Ships and players, as well as members of the players bridge crew, need to be outfitted with weapons and shields/armor in addition to other fixtures to be more effective in battle. Players and Bridge Crews/away team members also have skills that are useful in fights and can be raised with experience points. Promitions lead to the acquiring of more skills, and able to use better weapons and shields/armor. From certain missions, players earn Dilithium ore, which when refined can be used to purchase special gear and ships.

Besides the missions, players can also get in line for PvP battles, in addition to PvE Fleet Actions in which up to 20 players can take part for a common goal such as beating an invasion fleet. There's also one feature unavailable on most other MORPGs, missions designed by other players. From The Foundry, players can access and play out missions made by others, a unique feature to the game, and can rate them once finished.

As one advances in level, players also advance in rank. At Level 3, players rise to Lieutenant. At Level 10, Federation and Klingon characters rise to Lieutenant Commander, Romulans to Centurion. At Level 20, Federation and Klingons rise to Commander, Romulans to Subcommander. At Level 30, Federation and Klingons achieve the rank of Captain, with Romulans becoming Commander rank. At Level 40, Federation players are promoted to Rear Admiral, Klingons Brigadier Generals, and Romulans Subadmirals. Players get more promotions every five ranks up to Level 60 for Fleet Admirals for Federation and Romulan players, Dahar Master for Klingons. With the rise in ranks comes accessibility to higher tiers of starship, where one can get larger and more powerful vessels, up to Tier Five for the admiral ranks. There's a variety of ships available, such as Federation Lieutenants being offered a choice between an escort vessel with an emphasis on combat, a science vessel that does well with researching and versitile in supporting other vessels, or an all-purpose light cruiser designed to perform multiple roles fairly well. Your character and your bridge crew have skills than can help out in space combat.

There's a kind of crafting system which one can research and develop then build items, presumably one that gets a boost if you're in a science ship. There's also a Duty Officer Assignment screen in which officers of your crew other than the bridge crew can be used to perform various assignments that can take from half an hour to over a day. Completing them can earn experience points and other rewards. Catastrophic failures can lead to the officer developing negative personality traits, or even it's removal.

There are guilds players can join, each with guild banks. Like many other MMOs, there's an exchange where players can buy and sell goods to and from other players. There's also Tribble Breeding, which can be a fun little distraction.

Star Trek Online is Free to Play, but some options are open only if you want to spend a little money, such as wanting to play as a Caitain character. These microtransactions require the use of ZEN credits from the company behind the game, Cryptic Studios. Besides ships and gear, one can use them to buy outfits for one's character, redesign the bridge, get pets, and more.

While there are some things that some players may have a problem with, as some commented the ground and ship modes made it feel like two different games. Or players may feel that some races aren't shown right, such as the Caitians in the game having plantigrade rather than digigrade feet. But all and all, I can only consider this a great game and something Trek fans with PCs (sorry, no Apple OS version) should consider playing. So far I've gotten three characters, one from each faction, to over level 25, and have had plenty of fun doing so. Some "Delta Rising" missions involved characters from the "Voyager" crew, such as Lt. Commander (now Rear Admiral) Tuvac. Some missions involved a bit of time travel, interacting with characters from the Original Series.

Oh, under one faction's quest before you get to Level 25, you will witness one character from one of the TV series meeting his end (No, it's not Wesley Crusher).

So "Live Long and Prosper" and enjoy this (almost) free MMO.

Bixy Shuftan

Game Review: Space Engineers

By Nydia Tungsten

First thing I would like to do is to thank Kit, one of my friends and readers, for buying this game for me to review. That being said, let me tell you about it.

Space Engineers, or SE as we have come to call, it is a very addictive game. I was on it for several hours into the night on my first try. I was pleased to find out it is a multiplayer game so Kit played into the night with me while I was streaming it on my Twitch account (www.twitch.tv/nydia_tungsten) and getting comments from some of my regular viewers.

Now, once you see this game, it is one of those you have to try it so, the next thing I knew, I was joined by quite a few of my angels. We have been rebuilding the starter base and built another one right next to it to grind up all the little yellow starter ships. These ship are the ones everyone was spawning in every time they joined the game until we found out that if we built “med bays,” we would spawn there and not litter the area with “Cheddars,” a nickname my mousie started calling them because of their color, and it stuck with the group. The second base we built was to help with disposing of them. A HUGE grinder was built to grind up a ship whole, breaking them down into their components. We would drag the “cheddar” over to the grinder to “cut the cheese” ( rim shot here ). We even put one of the largest ships to spawn in the game through the grinder.

http://www.twitch.tv/nydia_tungsten/c/4278353

http://www.twitch.tv/nydia_tungsten/c/4278369

Those are the two grinding shots I have for now.

Grinding and mining are just two of the ways you get your resources. You can also capture random ships just by going and getting them. Well, you could until this last update where now they shoot at you, so if you want what they have … you have to fight them for it, which brings in a whole new element. Now you have to build fighters with missiles and machine guns to even hope to have a chance, which gives it a bit more of a challenge. We are playing in “safe,” which means no random asteroid to come crashing through your base but now we have to fight harder to survive.

The biggest con about this game isn’t the fact that your “server” is only up when you’re playing. This means a shared world is only shared IF you are on and in the game to share it and not wanting to let your crew down by not having it available to them. The worst is the fact that it has a MAJOR memory leak. After 2 hours of playing, everyone that is on has to empty their inventory so they don’t lose anything and then the host has to totally exit the game to let the cache clear. I have 16 gigs of ram, a 1 gig video card and a 8 core 3.7 CPU so you wouldn’t think I would have any problems, but you would be wrong. This game takes my ram all the way up to the max and if I don’t restart it soon after, it will either crash the game or my system. It sometimes kills my video drivers so I have nothing on my screen, it is like I powered my system down except it is still running, I just have no video.

The only reason we put up with it is because it is a fun game and it IS so addicting (Yeah we’re hooked) The game is still in Beta and still costs $20 USD. On Steam, which if you look at it compared to the games that are $50 to $60, this one is a bargain, if you can overlook the occasional crash and memory leakage.

Now here is the BIG question, would I recommend it?

YES! I have even helped a few to get it.

Like I said at the beginning of this, I THANK Kit for introducing me to it and buying it for me. So I have to give it a thumbs up and a recommendation and bare with it as they fix the bugs.

So until next time Good hunting and good gaming to you and if YOU would like to see a game reviewed let me know and it will be GAME ON!

Nydia Tungsten

Editor's Note: For players whom aren't sure what to do other than help out their friends, and need a little encouragement to figure things out, I would recommend the "Crashed Red Ship" scenario, in which the player has to fix up a large busted ship. Since you don't start out with a refinery, assembler, or cargo hold, you'll need to make those. To make the first two, you'll need to use parts of your ship to make them (without the benefit of "cheddars"). Keep an eye on your energy level, and don't be afraid to fly to another asteroid if you can't find a ore at the one nearby. Before you build the assembler, make sure you have both gold and silicon on hand (you'll figure out why when you get there). Once you have those and a cargo hold, you can began rebuilding what you took apart (one thing you'll have to rebuild immediately before making the hold), and otherwise modify the ship to your hearts content, such as a mother ship for smaller vessels, or rebuild it into a space station.  

It took me a while to figure many things out, but it is a great game, especially when playing with friends.

Biggest Battle in Eve Online's Ten Year History, Over $300,000 USD Worth of Virtual Weaponry Lost

By Bixyl Shuftan

The game Eve Online on Monday Jan 25th saw the biggest battle in it's history. The "Battle of B-R5" involved 2,200 players between two alliances of two factions each, and the loss of hundreds of ships on both sides, including about 90 Titans, an unprecedented number lost in a fight.

In Eve Online, the competitive nature of the game results in occasional warfare between factions of players. With diplomacy and dealmaking, sometimes the result is fights between alliances of factions. And the game allows major factions to build some pretty big ships if they have the resources and time.

In Eve, the biggest ship that can be built is the appropriately named "Titan." These ships are truly gargantuan in both size and cost. In the game, they are kilometers long and "capable of disrupting the tides of planets." How much does it take to build one? A total of 3400 hours, months to build, and about 7600 US dollars worth of game currency. If committed to battle, they're a force to be reckoned with as it's main weapon can blow away smaller vessels with a single shot. But it's not indestructible, and can be lost. Because of it's cost in time and resources, the loss of one is the loss of a strategic asset. It doesn't happen too often. In the past, a faction than managed to wipe one out and put it up on Youtube could enjoy some bragging rights for a while. More recently, there were some fights that saw the loss of a few. In February 2011, 12 Titans were lost in the Battle of Uemon.

What caused this battle? A space station controlled by one alliance of two factions ended up for grabs after they lost ownership of it. Not because of enemy action, but because the rent wasn't paid on time, possibly because of espionage. The station was the alliance's headquarters in their war against another alliance, and the opposition jumped at the opportunity to try and take it. Success would mean their enemy would be prevented "from accessing a great deal of their strategic assets and war material." Faced with losing the base, and with it probably the war, the defenders made the decision to risk their Titan ships. The attackers brought in theirs, the result being a unique battle in Eve's history, "for over 100 of them to just leap into a toe-toe slugging match where their chances of survival are quite low is... unheard of. These two powerblocs are really taking an insane risk here."

Compared to a game like "World of Warcraft" in which a player getting clobbered results in the armor needing repairs worth roughly a fraction of an hour's worth of game cash, the losses in BR-5 were truly staggering. Iris Ophelia put it, "To understand the true scope of what happened in Eve last night, imagine instead loosing that same round ... And then loosing your car ... And that unfinished manuscript you've been putting all your free time into for months. ... 90 times."

One player posted in Facebook chat, "I lost a dreadnaught, but I'd been planning on loosing it gloriously for a while. ... Sadly, the node was totally borked. I never even got to fire a shot, since my grid never loaded for my client, but everyone who was already on field and had grid loaded nuked me in spades." Of his corp, FinFleet, "We got prison sodomized."

The battle went on for a while, until reinforcements for the attackers gave them the edge. The defenders then gave the order to withdraw to try to preserve what they could. The attackers continued to press their advantage scoring more kills and adding to the losses. "Both sides had lost an incredible number of dreadnaughts, and the price of Tritanium has been creeping upwards, anticipating the flurry of industrial production to come. While the final kill numbers aren't in yet, this fight has already blown past every single record for damage done in Eve."

And blown past every single record in damage done to dollars invested in virtual goods.

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(Click Here if the video fails to load)

*Update* For more information, check out Eve Online's Twitter feed at: https://twitter.com/eveonline

Sources: Polygon, New World Notes, Reddit Eve Online B-R5 Thread, The Mittani

Bixyl Shuftan