#oneaday Day 870: On the Exploration of Space Via the Medium of Video Games [UPDATED]

[Now updated with some titles I meant to include in the first place but forgot because it was late when I wrote this and I was tired and WHARGGGHHH. Or something.]

Space, they say, is big. Really big. There’s a whole universe of infinite possibilities out there, and being boring old humans we’re (mostly) stuck on this planet, unable to explore the great black beyond. We can, of course, observe it and take exciting pictures and footage, such as what we’ve seen from the recent Venus transit. But for the everyday person, exploration of space is the stuff of pure science fiction.

Video games are a great way to immerse yourself in that sense of exploring the great unknown. Plenty of games are set in space, obviously, but it’s a smaller subset that actively deals with exploration and discovery rather than simply blowing shit up. Star Trek as opposed to Star Wars, if you will, though I’m aware that’s a gross oversimplification of and a great injustice to both series. But never mind.

Here are some of my favourite space games.

Star Control II

What a fantastic game this is, well deserving of its classic status. Star Control II casts the player in the role of a human captain returning to Earth after a long stint on a faroff colony only to discover that our homeworld has been captured and enslaved by the evil Ur-Quan. Thus begins a galaxy-spanning adventure of diplomacy, combat and collecting lots of minerals.

Star Control II is one of those games that blends lots of different play styles together to create a distinctive whole. You have Asteroids-style combat incorporating ideas from one-on-one fighting games — each ship has its own “special moves” and is well-matched against certain other vessels. You have space exploration — the game tells you very little about where to find things, and God help you if you don’t note down the offhand mentions of alien species that some characters make. You have resource management in the form of keeping an eye on your ship’s crew, fuel and cargo space. You have RPG-style upgrading as you turn your ship into an unstoppable behemoth and recruit various escort vessels to accompany you. And you have adventure-game style dialogue trees as you make contact with the weird and wonderful races of the galaxy in an attempt to recruit them to your cause.

Best of all, you can grab the enhanced port of the 3DO version for modern computers here, or pick up the original version and its prequel from GOG.com.

Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online is an excellent Star Trek game, although it may be a little too heavy on the combat to be completely true to its source material. The game does successfully capture the feeling of piloting a huge vessel around the galaxy to seek out new life and new civilisations and all that jazz, though, and the fact that the game has a strong focus on user-generated content ranging from player-constructed alien races to full mission sequences makes it a great deal of fun. It’s not as polished as it could be and PvP is broken as hell, but it’s a free-to-play title that doesn’t gouge you for in-game purchases at every opportunity.

Find out more here.

Endless Space

I wrote a little about the upcoming 4X space strategy title Endless Space a little while back. The game is now in beta testing as it gets closer to release. I haven’t tried it yet but am planning to give it a go over the weekend.

Endless Space is less “personal” than other titles due to the fact that you’re not controlling your own individual vessel, you’re overseeing a whole empire. That doesn’t stop it from being full of the joy of discovery and exploration, however — finding a star system with planets rich in valuable resources is immensely satisfying, and successfully defending it against incurstion from your opponents is even more satisfying.

X: Beyond the Frontier

I haven’t played this game for ages, nor have I played its sequels and expansions. But the original game struck me as an impressive experience that truly made you feel like an insignificant speck in a massive galaxy that would most certainly go on with its own business without you. Over time, in true space opera style, you could make a name for yourself and work your way up to being an immensely powerful individual, but the journey was a long, slow, tough one — rewarding, though.

Grab it from Steam.

Spore

Having returned to playing this recently I had forgotten quite how excellent the space section of this game was — it’s certainly the most well fleshed out component.

After designing your custom race’s custom spaceship, you then take to the randomly-generated stars to colonise new planets, trade with other spacefaring races, toy with the natural order of things on developing worlds, discover lost relics, complete missions, mine for valuable resources, paint planets and carve obscenities into the ground using rivers. It’s very freeform in how the player can tackle it, which gives each game the potential to be completely unique.

Will you seek peaceful solutions to conflict? Will you only expand your empire to planets already capable of supporting life, or will you terraform barren rocks into new Edens? Will you go to war with rival empires or attempt to buy them out? And will you satisfy yourself with building out your empire, or will you embark on a quest to get to the centre of the galaxy and uncover the mysteries of the universe?

Grab it from Steam or Origin.

Starflight

I played this game on the Atari ST. It was brilliant. It was a relatively early title from Electronic Arts, and was immensely freeform in its gameplay. Taking on the role of a starship captain, the player was simply tasked with exploring the galaxy. This involved flying to new star systems, descending to planets, exploring in a “rover” vehicle, engaging in diplomacy between alien races and battling enemies. There was supposedly an overarching plot, but I never got that far when playing it as a youngster — I simply enjoyed flying around and exploring space. It may well be one to revisit with the eyes of an adult.

Space Rogue

A space sim from Origin (as in the software company, not the digital distribution platform) that cast the player in the usual role of a “privateer”, Space Rogue was interesting for the fact it wasn’t just about flying around shooting things and hauling goods from planet to planet. Landing at a base launched a top-down roleplaying component during which you could explore, talk to people, engage in combat against enemies and take part in a galaxy-spanning plot that, again, I can remember very little about besides a series of fetch quests that involved you ferrying messages back and forth between two sisters called Cebak and Tiwa. There were text-based adventure sections, too.

Space Rogue, then, was something of a precursor to the next game I’m going to mention.

Space Rangers 2

An utterly bizarre yet lovable game from Russia, Space Rangers 2 takes players on a wild ride across the galaxy, taking in turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, third-person shooter combat, text-based adventures, trading, RPG-style levelling up and all manner of other crap along the way. It’s an absolute Frankenstein’s Monster of a game and all the better for it. It’s almost futile to describe the experience of playing it, particularly when you can check it out for yourself for super-cheap thanks to GOG.com.

#oneaday Day 842: The Captain’s Chair

I’ve started playing Star Trek Online again. It’s been a good couple of years since I last tried this game, as I played in the beta and subsequently for about 40-50 hours or so immediately after launch. I liked it a great deal back then, but wasn’t playing it enough to justify the monthly subscription fee so, like many other MMOs I’ve left in my wake, I set it aside, saying to myself that I might check it out again were it ever to go free-to-play.

The astute among you will be aware that Star Trek Online has, in fact, been free-to-play for some time now. I, too, am aware of this and have had the thing installed for quite a while but never got around to picking it up again. Until now.

It’s been so long since I last played I ditched my old character and recreated it to play from the start again. I was originally doing pretty well, but I can’t remember what the hell I was doing, so I figured it better to start again and re-learn the game mechanics — along with discovering what’s been added since I last played. (Quite a lot, as it happens.)

For those groaning at the prospect of yet another MMO with a hotbar, hold it right there. Star Trek Online is worthy of note for several reasons. Yes, it has a hotbar, but no it most certainly isn’t World of Warcraft in space. I remember thinking on its original release that, slightly rough edges aside, it’s the Star Trek game that I always wanted to play. And my opinion stands today — arguably even more so.

For the uninitiated, Star Trek Online starts with a bang. The Borg are attacking, and the player, a new Ensign serving aboard a fairly pathetic little ship, is tasked with helping out. This process conveniently introduces all the basics of play, including running around inside places, shooting things, talking to things and interacting with things. The player subsequently gets to join a bunch of other Federation vessels in taking down a crippled Borg ship and eventually, thanks to the rest of the crew ending up dead, gets a promotion to Lieutenant and the chance to take command of aforementioned pathetic little ship. Thus begins their grand adventure in the stars.

Once the player is out of the introductory tutorial series of missions, they’re able to explore the galaxy and take on a wide variety of missions, ranging from story-heavy “episodes” to exploration missions where uncharted sectors have to be, well, charted. Along the way, they’ll engage in space combat, beam down to places and investigate mysterious goings-on, reconfigure the tachyon pulse emitters to scramble the grub-nuts frequencies and generally do all the things that Star Trek people do.

It’s a deep game that has only grown and changed for the better since launch. There is always something for the player to do, be that pursuing a mission, participating in a multiplayer “Fleet Action” cooperative event, taking on the Klingon Empire in PvP combat, taking part in any of the nightly special events, exploring the stars looking for research material which may be used to develop better equipment or simply chilling out in some recognisable Trek locales like Deep Space Nine or Starfleet Academy.

The space combat is worthy of special note. It’s often said that the space combat genre is all but dead, but it’s most certainly alive and well in Star Trek Online, though X-Wing this ain’t. Since pretty much all the ships in Star Trek are what other games would refer to as “capital ships”, combat unfolds rather more like a naval skirmish than a fast-paced dogfight. It’s all about manoeuvring around your opponent, flying alongside them, then letting rip with a broadside of phaser fire from both arrays, punching a hole in their shields and filling them with hot torpedo death.

If it were just a basic space shooter, it would be quite fun, but there’s plenty of depth there, too. You can tweak the power systems to prioritise attack, defense, speed or whatever, rebalance the shields to provide more protection in a particular direction, use your three bridge officers’ special abilities to aid yourself or hamper the enemy, and use your character’s own personal specialisms to turn the tide of the battle in your favour. At times it’s like being in the middle of a battle from something like Homeworld, particularly when taking part in the cooperative “Fleet Action” events or flying with some companions.

As you progress through the game, you get new ships and equipment with which to customise them, including some recognisable models from the Trek series. Yes, you can essentially fly Voyager, Defiant or the Enterprise if you want to. A bunch of alternative ships are available for real-money purchases, including some absolutely hulking behemoths that look very impressive — particularly when you’re still in the pathetic little starting ship.

And this isn’t even getting into the flourishing user-generated content community. Star Trek Online features the ability for players to create their own missions using a tool called The Foundry (that will also be seen in Cryptic’s upcoming D&D MMO Neverwinter) and then publish them for the community to play at any time. I haven’t yet delved into this side of things, but it’s a big part of what drew me back in. The Architect facility in City of Heroes was a source of considerable entertainment for me, so I’m looking forward to something similar here.

Above all, Star Trek Online is a great example of how to get a free-to-play MMO right — and a truly excellent sci-fi game to boot. You can have a completely satisfying experience right up to the level cap without paying a single cent if you want to, or you can pick and choose how you want to customise your experience. So far as I can tell, none of it unbalances the game — always a big concern in titles like this — and is primarily there for bragging rights or visual customisation.

Check it out on Steam. No, there’s no Mac version. (Boo!)

One A Day, Day 7: Achievement Unlocked!

That’s one week of continuous blogging. Achievement unlocked! Okay, some of the entries have been fairly pointless so far, but at least I’m writing something, and there’s no better practice at writing than to actually do it.

Just been for a run – my third this week. This means I’ve successfully completed the first week of the course I linked to yesterday. Achievement unlocked! Here’s the route I took today, in case you were curious. Going over the Itchen Bridge meant there were a lot more hills than usual, so my legs feel like they’ve had a decent workout today.

I have a meeting with my boss on Monday to discuss my leaving date! Achievement unlocked! Possibly!

Enough of that. Achievement un… Stop it. Seriously.

Today’s been another quiet, dull day. Played a bit more of the Star Trek Online beta earlier and tried out a character on the Klingon side. It seems that Klingon players mainly play PvP missions – or perhaps that’s just what’s in the Klingon sectors. I wonder what happens if you go further afield?

On the writing front, it’s been great to see members of the Squadron of Shame getting well into contributing to BitMob, one of the best community-driven games sites out there, with lots of “alumni” from the 1up blogosphere (ugh… hate that word) finding a new home there. I’ll definitely be contributing more as time goes on – if nothing else, it’s good practice for thinking up interesting ideas for articles which I could pitch to potential freelance clients. If you haven’t checked out my articles there yet, go do so! (The Bayonetta article is by far the most popular. I’m not sure what that says to me.)

That’s about all I have to say today, apart from the usual “I really don’t want to go back to work on Monday”. But let’s try and be positive. There’s still some of Sunday night left. Dinner, avoiding seeing Dancing on Ice and probably Star Trek Online await.

One A Day, Day 6: LOADING…

I’m writing this while I’m waiting for BitMob’s idiosyncratic blog editing software, MyBlog, to load. The tag database on BitMob is now so big that it takes 2-3 minutes to load the editor now. It was irritating the first time it happened, but I’m sort of used to it now. You quickly get into the habit of doing something else while it loads. And talking of BitMob, if you haven’t checked out my “Bayonetta as a text adventure” article over there yet, go take a look. People who have read it seem to dig it, so thank you so much to those of you who have read, commented and retweeted it. There will be more along those lines sometime soon.

Today has been a pleasurably useless day. Got up late, played a bit of Demon’s Souls, including beating the second boss first time thanks to the assistance of a phantom I summoned in to assist. That is a fantastic feature – players being able to mark themselves as available for assistance, and other players being able to “borrow” them to help them through tough sections. It’s a nice idea, and the fact the other player enters your world as a phantom at least goes some way to justifying the difficulty in voice chatting on the PS3. Sort of.

Then I had lunch and played a bit more of Star Trek Online. The open beta is coming to an end soon, and they’ve unlocked the other sectors and removed the level cap for now. The intrepid Mike Minotti took an expedition over to Deep Space Nine and immediately suffered an intense nerdgasm. I’m looking forward to seeing it for myself – going to play a little more tonight. Cryptic have done a great job of creating an MMO that’s a little bit different from all the me-too WoW clones out there. Ground combat is a little more fast-paced than most MMOs, while space combat is just magnificent, particularly when you’re working with other players.

Then I went for a run. For those of you who were asking about the site I mentioned a few days ago, this is it. I’ve done two of the first week’s workouts this week, and need to fit my other one in tomorrow to keep on schedule. Should be eminently doable though. My current “pace” is to run for 60 seconds, walk for 90 seconds, then run again, then walk again, and so on. It works, and I felt like I could have kept going for a little longer than the just-under-30-minutes I did today. It’s definitely better to do it like that rather than attempt to keep running, running, running and become completely demoralised when you realise you can’t do it, gasping for breath after a few hundred yards. And when I say “you” I, of course, mean “I”. Want to see my route? Here. Gotta love the iPhone.

So this evening will be more of the same, I imagine. Planning on hitting up Star Trek Online for a bit more space-based entertainment in a little while, though I have a rough idea for an article on BitMob to fiddle around with first.

Have a fine and pleasant evening, y’all.