At least zero of you are wondering: “Hey Dan, where’s this week’s Let’s Play Star Trek Online?”

Couple problems:

1) Lord of the Rings Online.

2) I’m (hopefully!) buying a house this week, which is kind of over-stressing me.

3) Star Trek Online has been frustrating me lately. I’ve been comparing it to LotRO, and I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion.

That conclusion is simply that Star Trek Online was not ready for release; it needed (needs!) another four to six months of development.

Compare the amount of content between levels 1 and 30 in Star Trek Online with the amount of 1-30 content in Lord of the Rings Online (that’s well before you hit expansion territory). The difference is staggering.

Compare the graphics between the two games. Despite LotRO’s older engine, it offers far more appealing landscapes. STO’s levels are blocky, repetitive and… boring. Visually speaking, that is.

What’s more, the playable area in LotRO is… vast. You can literally walk for nearly an hour (not in a circle!) without hitting a loading screen. Start at Elrond’s place in Rivendell, and walk to Needlehole in the Shire… and that’s mostly east-west. There’s tons of area to the north of that path.

Compare that to STO, where you can traverse basically any playable area corner-to-corner in five minutes (assuming you ignore enemies shooting at you).

STO has space combat down pretty well, but ground combat leaves much to be desired, especially if you’re a solo player.

The more I think about this, the more I wish Cryptic (or Atari, whoever made the decision) had waited another six months before releasing Star Trek Online. They wouldn’t have fixed all of my complaints, but they could have improved a lot of it.

What it comes down to is that LotRO has so much more content to offer that I have a very hard time making myself choose to re-play old missions in STO instead.

At any rate, I just need a break from STO for a week or so. I’ll hopefully be moving to my new house a week from Saturday, at which point I’ll probably feel a lot less stressed out and hopefully return to my former full enjoyment of STO.

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As we begin another episode of Let’s Play, we find O’Malley in his ready room shortly after rescuing the crew of the U.S.S. Azura.  What new adventures will Starfleet have for him now? (If you’re new, you might want to start with Episode One.)

I flop into my chair in my ready room.  I really need to find new bridge officers…  maybe a Klingon, who won’t object to just doing things the direct way.  I hear there are some ex-Borg in Starfleet, I could ask for one of them.  They value efficiency, right?

A hail from Admiral Quinn interrupts my musing.

“Just in time, no thanks to Tarah,” I grumble.  “But a new crew member for me?  It’s like you read my mind!”

“Don’t get too excited,” he replies.  “You should probably hang on to your existing crew.  You’ll need them.”

I sink into my chair.  “Yes, sir,” I reply weakly.

“I’ve got an important diplomatic mission for you.  We’ve got the Vulcan Ambassador Sokketh here at Earth Stardock; I need you to come pick him up and take him and his cargo to the Vulcan monastery at P’Jem.”

“Sounds easy enough,” I reply.  “Do you have any reports that the Klingons or Orions actually know about the Ambassador’s return?  You’re acting like you’re sure they’ll try something.”

“I don’t know,” he says.  “I suppose you’ll find out.  Good luck, Ensign.”

I stand up to head back to the bridge, and take a long, mournful look at the replicator.  Someday I’ll make replicated bananas taste right.

I’m about to leave when I receive a short text-only message from Starfleet Headquarters.  “We’re giving you a field promotion to Lieutenant.  Congratulations.  — Admiral Quinn”

[In-game, there's absolutely no fanfare when you automatically rank up from Ensign to Lieutenant other than Leonard Nimoy's voice saying "Congratulations".  Later rank-ups require a visit to Admiral Quinn and get you a little ceremony in the Stateroom.]

Wow.  He won’t even tell me to my face.

I walk out onto the bridge and order a course laid in for Earth Starbase.

[The astute observer will notice that this bridge is not the same as the Innovation's bridge from Episode One.  I remodeled two episodes ago, but lost those screenshots.]

I spend the return journey looking through personnel reports, deciding who is going to take Tarah’s place as my primary tactical officer.

So, I have two things to do while I’m at Earth Stardock.  First, I go talk to Ambassador Sokketh, who is waiting for me in the Stateroom.

“Ambassador,” I begin, “it’s good to meet you.”

“Yes, yes.”  He replies.  “You’re the one taking me to P’Jem, right?”

I nod, somewhat taken aback at his tone.

“Good.  It is imperative that these artifacts not fall into the hands of the Orions or Klingons.  They’d hold them hostage or use them against us in other ways.”

“What kind of artifacts are these, exactly?”  I start to worry that maybe someone had found another Stone of Gol, or something like it that would be equally dangerous in enemy hands.

“Oh, nothing important,” he says, “just some artifacts from the days before we were space-faring.  Purely of historic value, nothing more.”  He eyes me as if he’s daring me to question him.

I shrug.  “Alright.  Transport your stuff over to the Innovation; we’ll head out shortly.”

Next up, I need to recruit myself a Klingon tactical officer, and maybe an engineering officer.  As luck would have it, I find both:

Golrok, the Klingon, is quite eager to begin his tour of duty as my new tactical officer.  He seems pleased that he’s replacing someone else.

Two of Five, a Liberated Borg, has valuable experience upgrading equipment like replicators.  I’m sure she’ll be of use on my quest to make the perfect replicated banana split.  Oh, and she’s good with shields, so that should help if Ambassador Sokketh’s fears for this diplomatic mission are justified.

My tasks complete, I beam back to my ship.  “Set a course for P’Jem,” I order.  “Engage.”

Join us next week to find out what happens at P’Jem!

[This episode was a bit shorter than I would prefer, but I'm short on time...]

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This was Brooke’s first time walking outside.  Isn’t she adorable?

She turns one year old in ten days.  It doesn’t seem like it has been that long since she was born…

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Welcome back to Let’s Play.  Last time, O’Malley explored Earth Starbase before embarking on his first assignment – to rescue the S.S. Azura.  Will our intrepid captain be able to handle this task?  Let’s find out!  (If you’re new, you might want to start with Episode One.)

Well I’ve used up my recreation time, so I’d better head back to my ship.  I beam back up, and head to sector space to look for the S.S. Azura.  Their last known coordinates are just a few light years from home:

We approach the coordinates as quickly as we can, and soon receive a short-range distress call:

Sounds like we arrived just in time!  I order an immediate approach.

(more…)

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I saw several reviews of C&C4 yesterday indicating that the single-player mode of C&C4 is absolutely horrible.

I got it in the mail today.  I’ve played part of the single-player campaign now… and I have to say, it’s even worse than the reviews have said.

There is virtually no background given for what’s going on.  We’re given no explanation for why GDI and Nod have both, simultaneously, completely and fundamentally changed the way they do war.  The cutscenes are far worse than anything they’ve ever done before – atrocious acting, cardboard characters, awful script…  even Kane himself isn’t a very compelling character (though I blame the terrible writing, not Joe Kucan).  There is very little tying one mission to the next – contrast this with C&C3, where each mission has clear implications on what’s going to happen later on.

You can enable subtitles during cutscenes; I make a habit of doing this in any game that has the option, so I don’t miss anything.  Unfortunately, the subtitles in C&C4 are in serious need of proofreading.  There are numerous misspellings and typos, sometimes of the most obvious sort.  It’s obvious they didn’t do any QA whatsoever on the subtitles.

A minor spoiler: After you play the introductory GDI missions, you’re given a choice whether to continue with GDI, under Colonel James, or to join up with Nod under Kane… except it’s very unclear exactly what’s happening.  GDI doesn’t know Kane has betrayed them, and apparently GDI doesn’t realize you’ve left them for Nod.  Somehow.  Even though you no longer show up for work at GDI HQ.

Whatever.

The whole plot with your character’s wife is completely tacked on, cheesy, unnecessary, and stupid.  During the Nod missions, at one point, you inexplicably show some doubt about betraying GDI – and suddenly Kane is threatening your wife’s life in exchange for your loyalty.  Didn’t you already betray GDI?  Yes, you did!  You’ve already betrayed GDI, so there is no logical reason your character would hesitate about doing it some more.  The next few cutscenes don’t even mention Kane holding your wife hostage.  (This tacked-on feeling persists all the way through the final cutscene for both factions, believe it or not.)

The single-player missions themselves are extremely difficult solo, even on “Easy” difficulty.  Based on what I’ve played, I’d bet they’re far more doable in co-op; solo, you can’t really hold more than one objective point at a time, which makes objectives like “capture all five anti-air batteries” nearly impossible.  Your command point limit is absurdly low, and your tech level is consistently lower than that of your enemies.  One mission I beat by literally spamming Engineers to capture enemy Avatars and keep them healed while they took a beating from a large number of enemy units.

Other glaring issues with the game include:
- It freezes if you alt-tab during the video that plays when the game launches.
- The menu background is, quite frankly, garbage.  2-D sprites as ships, pretending to orbit by moving horizontally, and not even moving smoothly?  Why on earth couldn’t they even make the movement smooth?  It’s not exactly quantum mechanics!
- In stark contrast to every other C&C game ever made, the installer for C&C4 is a bog-standard Windows installer.
- The soundtrack has far too few songs; it gets far too repetitive far too soon.

I won’t even go into how unbalanced multiplayer is, but we’ve known that since beta.

Oh, and remember how I’m boycotting Assassin’s Creed II because of its “you must be online all the time” DRM?  Turns out C&C4 has it too.  If your internet connection drops during the single-player campaign, you lose any progress you’ve made.  Had I known about this, I would not have made the purchase, last C&C game or no.

Overall, my impression is as follows: “EA, why do you hate us so much?”

I can’t even make myself go back through this and proofread, let alone try to finish the single-player campaigns.

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