Lets face the facts! Most three part (or more) movie series end up finishing on shaky ground. The latest Shrek movie has failed to inspire what the first two movies had, the last Aliens movie was nowhere near as good as the early ones, The Matrix had its two sequels scrapped in production because everyone knew they would be so crap and the less said about the Predator movies the better. So in light of this, with 10 years since the last movie, what can we honestly expect from Toy Story 3? Is this movie really that good?
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Star Trek Online: A Review
I, as you probably are not aware, love video games. I have since the late ’80s and I still do today, despite the lack of progress in video games as a creative medium. My current run of the gamut is MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games for the few of you that don’t know). I decided, despite my reluctance to have anything to do with anything related to Gene Roddenberry and dullness of City of Heroes, to try Cryptic Studios’ Star Trek Online.
Now, let me get one thing straight right off the bat. I have watched pretty much all of Star Trek, with the exception of about half of Star Trek, and all of Enterprise. There is nothing wrong with Roddenberry’s vision of the future. But if you are expecting to peacefully explore the reaches of the galaxy, you are going to be sorely disappointed. The game is built on Rick Berman’s pissing all over the original, idealic vision of the future that Gene Roddenberry strove to create.
The game is a clunky mess of different ideas clobbled together with, possibly, the best of intentions; however, it is still a clunky mess. To begin with, you don’t just have one character. You have two. Your avatar and your ship. For the most part, the avatar is useless, not because the gameplay is too terrible to stand. Rather the avatar’s portions of the game are buggy beyond use. I have crashed the game eighteen times, not intentionally, but because the engine was designed for the space side of the game.
Next, you have two playable factions in the game. The Federation, and the Klingon Empire. To unlock the Klingons, to have to get a Federation character to level- excuse me- grade 6. And then you get to play as a Klingon, which was apparently rushed through development.
Also, you get to play as a crapton of different aliens. However, you will probably notice as I did that, for the more part, the species are all equally useless. The aliens, and humans, no need to exclude them, all have a trait or two that make them special. Then you can choose another two or three traits to get yourself to a solid four traits. Or you can make your own alien species and choose all four traits with no real added benefit.
As 9 and I have discussed amongst ourselves, the game seems as if one of two things happened during development. One, the project director was weak willing and approved every idea thrown at him. Or two, the project idea had no real idea and just didn’t care about the property.
Instead of just being one of those reviewer that just tears crap down, here are some ideas that actually could make STO an enjoyable game. One, increase the size of space and spread the missions out a bit. Two, faster transit. Three, finish building the Klingon side and introduce the other factions in the game as playable (Really. Romulan Birds of Prey kick ass.). Three, either cut down of the avatar portions of gameplay, or fix them so the game doesn’t crash whenever you are not in your ship. Four, have someone on the development crew realise that space is completely three dimensional (I want my death from above and below tactics). Five, complete understanding that the game is skill based from the developers so they can actually make the skills worthwhile. And finally, change the setting from right after the Dominion War to a couple of centries later, so that you don’t have the super cheese of sticking in etablished characters in a desperate attempt to give your game credibility.
My final verdict on STO is that it could be a fairly fun space MMO (Not as much fun as Star War Galaxies though.), but it is marred by obvious failings.
VoR Review: Dream of Mirror Online
It's Robin! Look familiar?
DOMO (Dream of Mirror Online)
by Robin Prescott of VoR
Ok, so to start this, we got a request from one of our readers, asking us to take a look at DOMO, this MMORPGthing that honestly, I had never heard of. That I hadn’t heard of an MMO was already odd, but what was even odder was that Garrett (Yes, that Garrett) had already played the game a few months ago. Seriously. So, Garrett tried (vainly) to keep me from getting this review. He wanted it handed to Josh. Why? Well…
Oh my god, this game is cute. CUTE, I tell you! As in so cute your ears will bleed! And, to use Erin’s word, I “lurve” the cuteness. It even more cute than Phantasy Star Online and its Mags, which I loved. Garrett was trying to keep me away from it so he wouldn’t have to hear me squealing all the time at the cuteness, so Mitch said I could play it at his house, which was fine by me since I could play the game, visit the cats, and hang with Mitch, all at the same time! So, here’s the deal, I was going to write a review with the whole like “Day one” and “Day two” thing, but I really got sucked into the whole thing. I’m writing this on day five, so I guess you’ll just have to make due with that. :p
As much as I want to start with all the positives, I think I should get all the negative stuff out of the way. First, the UI is absolutely confusing. It took me a few hours to figure out just how to do simple things. It took me two days to figure out how to just take things off the freaking action bar. Also, it seems that the fonts on my game were really messed up. So messed up, in fact, that I could never actually read the last few lines of my missions, which really sucks because I happen to like reading. I like it a lot. Grrr.
Second, the controls suck. I mean, they really suck. Especially when you’re used to things like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. The only way to turn left and right is to right click and move the mouse, which is frustrating because moving the mouse all the way across the screen only turns the character halfway, like, 90 degrees. So, just doing something simple like running around a corner becomes this marathon of clicking and mouse waving. On the plus side, I have started building my biceps because of it. Ooo, sexy!
None of that would be a big deal though, if I had some freaking way to change the controls and key bindings, or mouse sensitivity or something. I guess I could do it by asking Mitch to change his peripheral settings, but should we really have to do that just to make a game playable from the beginning?
Last thing on my list is bad animation. I know I said that the game is really cute, and it is. Even the bad animations are still cute, but some things seem like they need more work, like the running animations, combat animations, standing animations… Actually, I think most of it needs a little bit of work. Most of them are really kinda chunky, like the animation team was drunk at work. [Dear God, wouldn’t that be the life? –Ed.]
Even with that stuff though, the cuteness of the game really pulls it through. I mean, seriously, I am absolutely in LOVE with this game.
- Story line is something about a mirror
- My character is a swordswinging badass with fuzzy ears.
- A lot of people compared it to Final Fantasy, when it’s more like Guild Wars, because Guild Wars is free, but other than that, it doesn’t have too much similar to either one. Really, I think it’s closer to Animal Crossing.
Compared to Guild Wars, yeah, Guild Wars is probably the better game, but GW is also very… not cute. And GW has this big thing about killing, and death, and destruction, and fire, which is all very cool and stuff, but it’s not cute. And DOMO is CUTE.
Oh yeah, and it’s free.
