Review by: Dave VanDyk

If you think Star Trek Online is a game where you will engage in glorious space combat, find yourself considering the meaning of terminology like "predetermination paradox", and try to hock your massive collection of Tribbles on the player-run Exchange market for 6,000 times their net worth (and succeed), you're probably about right - just expect a few speed-bumps along the way.

The character creation system lets you implement an insane amount of customization for yourself and the various "bridge officers" who can follow you around on away missions (enabling you to create everything from a fat black-skinned Ferengi who dual-wields phaser pistols, to a freakishly tall abomination of nature who has something of a slanted tree trunk growing out of his gigantic cranium, green hideous elf-like ears, and a visor that looks like Geordi LaForge's), and you can also select from a decent range of paint jobs and customization options for your ships - and yes, those hardened nerds out there can rejoice as the fully customizable ship names (and registry numbers) will be visible on your ship's hull for everyone to see.

This is all well and good - and for the first few hours, you'll be gleefully romping around in your pimped out starship, taking down Klingons, beaming down to planets, and raking in vast amounts of loot from the game's wide range of quests.

The game actually does a decent job of providing a nice sequence of story-driven missions (with each quest tying smoothly into the next, all to the tune of a major over-arching plot narrated in some respects by the venerable Leonard Nimoy), but don't expect to be floored by the storyline. While it was pretty sweet to team up with a friend and go through some of the crazier missions - particularly the ones where you end up going back in time, or engage in an all-out joint fleet assault against swarms of enemy vessels - these missions are over all-too-quickly and you'll be back to doing the same patrol missions over and over again. On the bright side, the missions do a pretty good job of providing you with enough experience to make them worth your while to the point that the need to "grind" the same basic missions simply for experience points is almost non-existent. Almost.