Lootcritter here: I’m a PC gamer and while I have played on consoles in the past, I’m much more comfortable with a keyboard and mouse when it comes to gaming.

Getting my ass thoroughly kicked by my nephew on XBOX likely guarantee’s I’ll never switch 😉

I reached out to my nephew last Tuesday and asked if he’d like to provide feedback on Star Trek Online’s console release. I figured he’d download the game for his XBOX and play a few hours by the weekend. He wasn’t necessarily enthusiastic on the phone but agreed to try it for me. That evening his mom was in town and she sheepishly asked me if I had asked her son to playtest a game. I said yes, and she smiled. Apparently, he took my request seriously and used it as an excuse to skip out of his chores.

My nephew doesn’t watch Star Trek, isn’t a huge fan of sci-fi unless it’s zombies, but is a huge fan of COD type games. He was going in blind.

The following day we spoke on the phone, him having played a few hours of the game. I found it odd asking him questions, trying very hard not to lead him, while at the same time holding back on answers to try to help him.

• (Ground) graphics really need to be improved, reminded him of Playstation 2 graphics.
• The graphics are way better when you’re playing in space. He preferred that part of the game over everything else.
• (He was very animated, talking about Character creation process, and why he chose the ‘Lizard-guy’) You could do pretty much everything. I tried going through each one – played as the red guys Chose Klingons cause they looked cool, but didn’t really know what they were beforehand, just that they looked mean. Especially the lizard-guy. He’s cool.
• Training missions had a lot of cutscenes – not necessary for most of it – lots of stories. Found that interesting as a lot of games don’t do that.
• Ground was weird (took) a solid ten minutes was running around to find what to interact with
• (Ships) Gettting attacked was cool, confusing trying to figure out what stuff does.
• The ship was fun to play with. Cloaking was cool. Space combat was cool – screwing around with everything was at first confusing
• Learning what the powers do was problematic – but accidentally triggering things (seemed to work)
• Not explaining what the powers do was confusing, not sure what was working
• Make the hud bigger – make the icons bigger, most of my friends play on small monitors and not big tv’s – some friends play on big monitors.
• Battlefield 4 allows you to make the hud bigger or smaller
• The menu was slow, dull colored, compared to other games with bright and open menus

As a point of reference, the families big screen TV is off-limits to the console as he monopolizes it, with him having a 22inch computer monitor in his room, and another in the family room downstairs. Typically his console(s) are in the family room.

One thing that stood out in our conversation was that he had no difficulty with the controllers – it seemed simple enough and easy to understand.

A week has passed since his initial review and I was curious to see what he thought about the game now? Does he like it?

• he’s convinced two friends to download it, a third wasn’t interested but may follow
• he’s played daily since downloading it.
• space combat is cool.

Not bad. Now I just have to get him a faster computer so I can kick his ass on the PC;)