These are the voyages of a troll

Two games this week. Shadowrun Returns and (why? OHGODWHYYYYYYYYYY?!) Star Trek Online.

Shadowrun on the Sega Genesis. Or Megadrive, depending on where you live.

That thing up there was my first contact with the Shadowrun universe. Pen & Paper? Didn't even know what that was back then. Where I'm from, it was practically impossible to get your hands on anything P&P or tabletop, especially if you didn't want it to be outdated by a decade and ridiculously overpriced. Well, unless it was somehow related to Warhammer, Magic: The Gathering or stuff actually made in Germany.
Still, that old 16bit game was one of my favourites, I really loved the setting and I still fire it up on my PSP now and then. Ahh... homebrew.

When Shadowrun Returns successfully kickstarted, I really just gave it a try out of boredom. The visuals somehow reminded me of the old Sega game, which would have been a bad thing if it wasn't for nostalgia. I mean... come on:

It looks... okay... I guess?

This is a trend I absolutely HATE! Today's hardware is more powerful and affordable than ever, a mid-range gaming rig has enough power to render the nostril hair of every fucking character and we get graphics like this. Because "indie", "retro", "gameplay>graphics". I can't get myself to enjoy games like Cubeworld, Minecraft, Terraria and countless other popular, allegedly fun games, because they look so incredibly shit. Shadowrun Returns has some nice artwork, the character portraits are great, but the rest of the game looks shit. When you zoom in on those character models, they look like something from Quake. The first ever Quake.

Anyhow. The game is fun. Any reviewer seriously comparing this game to Baldur's Gate deserves to be shot even more than idiots rating the visuals 7/10 or higher, but it's a fun game.
My main problem with Shadowrun Returns is the complete and utter lack of freedom. It's entirely linear and on rails. If the story wants me to talk to a guy or find an item in a particular area, then I have to stay in said area until I do what the game wants me to do, I cannot leave, I cannot explore the rest of the game world. There is nothing to explore, there is rarely ever any reason to stray from the obvious path and there are no side quests to speak of, unless you wanna count one or two "hey, wanna kill some guys real quick for extra money?" stuff, which has been crammed in between two story sections. So no, it's not like Baldur's Gate. It's not like fucking Fallout. Zero exploration, random events, anything. Fine, the turn-based combat is like a simplified version of Fallout's combat. Which is good. Good combat.

What's really great about Shadowrun Returns is the writing. The story, the characters, the setting, it's all fantastic. Now, I'm a notorious hater of the dreaded wall of text. Give me a game with zero voiceovers and lengthy quest descriptions, I'll just click okay on all that shit and play it by ear, because having to read all that crap bores me. This game has no voiceovers. And so much dialogue. You're solving a murder case. So much sleuthing. Investigating, talking, digging around, 75% of the game is just that. Heck, you don't even get any good gear or experience ('karma') for killing stuff, so the game encourages you to avoid combat by talking your way out of it. Thing is, the writing is so fantastic, I didn't even mind. I've finished the entire game in one sitting (supposedly takes up to 12 hours, I didn't count) and read all the dialogue, all the descriptions, everything. There's just something about being a big, fat, grumpy troll in a trench coat, who is trying to figure out who killed his friend. Well, or you could be an elf or a dwarf or some shit, but come on.

Scary, hulking badass with horns. Or an elf. COME ON!

Oh well. And then I'm playing this:

This picture of my crew stands for everything that is wrong with STO and their vision of Starfleet.

My biggest problem with Star Trek Online is its greedy, evil Chinese publisher. They're both the best and worst thing that ever happened to STO. When the game went from Atari to Perfect World Entertainment, the game suddenly had localized version in all kinds of languages almost over night. Suddenly there were cutscenes, voiceovers, remade tutorials, ship interiours and a whole lot of polish, that the game had been lacking since day one. PWE are pumping a shitload of money into this game and it shows. When I gave the game another try last night, I bumped into one of the original characters from TNG. Yes, it was only Tasha Yar and nobody gives a fuck about her, but she was voiced by Denise Crosby, the same actress who played Yar in the tv show.

When STO first went live, there were some references to Kirk, Sulu, Picard, Worf, Data and the like, but you'd never meet any of those iconic characters in person. Instead, you got to hang out with Riker's transporter clone, Q Junior or Tom Paris' kid. Who the hell gives a shit about these people?
They did add Scotty and McCoy in a weird time-travel mission later on, presumably, because their original actors are long dead and it was probably a tad cheaper to legally put them into a video game. We may never know.
Somehow I doubt that they'll ever manage to drag Patrick Stewart into voice acting a special Picard mission on there (shame, he's lent his voice for Oblivion and Castlevania), though they have both the old and new Spock, which is nice.

Long story short, the game got better with its rich new publisher. More content, more features, more polish. More love.
And a whole lotta pay2win.
PWE have added a mechanic, which I consider to be the most evil, bastardic and annoying thing I've ever seen in any F2P game. Well, except Allods Online, the level of greed there was legendary. Ahem, anyway: Lockboxes.
Every so often, a defeated enemy, be it in space or on the ground, will drop a lockbox. Said lockbox has a minute chance to contain an incredibly awesome, incredibly rare, powerful, amazing ship, which you can only obtain by lucking out on a lockbox or buying it off another player for an obscene amount of money. And you open up a lockbox by throwing money at your screen.

Okay. Not really. You have to buy a key with real money. You MAY also buy them on the auction house for about 1.5 million credits (which is as much as it sounds) and then you get a .1% or so chance to win the rare ship. If you do (don't worry, you won't), the server will broadcast a message to every single player out there: [Player Name] has obtained [Rare Ship Name]. Yeah. You get those annoying popup messages every other minute and they can't be turned off. Make sure people get jealous and start spending money on keys.

Greedy publisher. But they added giant scorpion boss battles! Giant! Scorpion! Boss! Battles!!

The main problem with these ultra rare ships is how none of them have anything to do with Starfleet. They're Jem'Hadar ships, Romulan Ships, Fish'n'Ships (scnr) and when you hang around earth these days, you see all of those crazy ships and pretty much nothing that comes to mind when you think "Star Trek".

Okay. A super rare ship with some cool new weapon and/or ability isn't really pay2win. A super expensive bundle of three ships, which can be combined for insanely powerful set bonuses, on the other hand...
Yes. They've added the Scimitar from Nemesis. Claire saw it and I had to spend the rest of the night removing the wet patch from our sofa using a hair dryer. I don't care how much some of you assholes hated Nemesis - this is the single-most awesome ship in the entire Trek universe. It's also the most overpowered one in this particular game.

Some ships in STO cloak. You know, go into stealth, become undetectable until they attack. This is balanced in a way so you can't stealth while getting shot at, your shields don't work while you're cloaked and attacking automatically breaks stealth. With the Scimitar, well... not so much. Fire while cloaked for a whole 15 seconds, keep your shields up whilst cloaked AND get an oh-shit-button, which adds a second set of shields on top of your main shields, which need to be drained before you can be damaged. Oof!
If you want all of these goodies, however, you're gonna have to buy the ship not once, not twice, but three times. There are three slightly different versions of the Scimitar, all of which come with one of these OP abilities - collect them all, to get the full monty. They're offering the whole set in a nifty package for only about 50 bucks (or over 30 Euros, if you will).

I don't know what to do with all this. In terms of quality and content, the game is better than ever. It's a really good game! But when I see a publisher pulling off greedy shit like that - and getting away with it - I fear I may have to find a new hobby, because gaming is getting too expensive. Maybe I should breed unicorns or something.

-Cat