Hunting Bugs in Delta 3

Brian in #ballistic alerted me to this fun little game that is in alpha testing right now.  It’s called Armada Online.  It’s a multi-player online game where you choose a faction a name and an icon to represent yourself and then you jump into a top-down 2d style gameplay where you strafe around alien space crabs and scorpions and blow them up diablo style for fun and profit.  The graphics are all full 3d, the starfield backgrounds are gorgeous and the menus are all very simple and familiar.  Eat hot torpedos scavenger scum!  Space crabs phear my terran payload, yo.

I also rummaged up this link off the Armada forums; It has some more screenshots and some basic information for newbies: http://www.freewebtown.com/brimragenshome/

Over the weekend, the countdown timer on Cryptic Studio’s homepage turned into a launch of the new Star Trek Online website.  The gameplay plan for this seems pretty different from what Perpetual Entertainment had in mind.  Instead of serving as a crewmember aboard a ship, you will be either a Federation or Klingon captain with control over your ship which is definitely a step up.  The screenshots on the website are currently lacking crewmembers at the moment; it will be interesting to see some more of the art direction in a few weeks.

“Everything from the elegant domes of Starfleet Academy to the ancient temples of Vulcan, from the towers of Qo’noS to the Fire Caves of Bajor, from the mysterious Mutara Nebula to the unexplored voids of deep space, all will be represented in stunning 3-D graphics. Immerse yourself in the future of the Trek universe as it moves into the 25th century: a time of shifting alliances and new discoveries.”

According to the website they will be unveiling some gameplay footage on August 10th at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.

The only worrisome aspect that I see about this launch is that they plan on supporting the game in console format.  Past experience with console and PC launches generally has meant limited graphics and a dumbed down UI.  It will be nice to see the gameplay video in a couple weeks to aleviate some of my fears here.  Still, the screenshots look fairly acceptable graphically.