A couple of days ago, Star Trek Online was finally released to consoles, with the Xbox One not releasing until the 9th September in the UK. With Star Trek's only modern PC game now on console, what did Cryptic change in this endeavour? How does it play compared to PC? These were the questions I explored.

The first thing to note with the console version, was lack of clutter - specifically with the HUD. The obvious reason for this is the lack of inputs on console controllers, when you compare it to keyboard and mouse, leading Cryptic to design a system and UI that would work with a limited control scheme. The new HUD only displays the key information that players need to know, making a cleaner, more organised UI that doesn't take up too much of the screen.

With the move to controllers, the game was adapted to do as much as possible with as little effort as possible, one key issue that would arise for this was the many abilities both Captains and their officers have to use - which led to the auto-use system. Cryptic allowed users to set the auto-use on all but your essential abilities. The auto-use settings allow you to specify when your abilities activate, for example you could set a shield heal to activate when a shield facing is down or have high yield torpedo activate whenever it is available.

Whilst this does limit the user interaction and make it slightly easier for the player to play the game, the player does have direct control over five abilities (when in space): one ship device, one captain, one science, one engineer and one tactical ability; whilst on the ground it is focused on your weapons abilities, one module ability and one captain ability. This feature allows the player to still take direct control of multiple key abilities, and yet use all of the abilities at their command. If you aren't a fan of the auto-use feature, you can access all of your abilities through radial menus, however in combat this makes it difficult to use your abilities quickly and easily.

With the key UI features covered, the only other main change is the player movement and combat attacks. Space combat and flight acts very similar to how Star Trek Legacy moved, with the right stick acting as the aimer/camera controls with the left stick changing the direction of the ship. Energy weapons are controlled with the right stick, whilst projectiles are activated by the right bumper button, making the player have direct combat effects, similarly to smashing the spacebar but split across two controls.

On the ground, the game acts as if it is permanently in the shooter mode, the feature that I doubt anyone has used since it's original release, but it works perfectly for console. This makes the game act more like a third person shooter, making the experience more interesting than the PC counterpart, in my opinion.

With the main base changes covered, have you been able to play a console version of STO? If so, what are your thoughts and opinions? Would you want the ability the have this control scheme on PC?

WRITTEN BY Adster94
EDITED BY Three of Seven - rena.hobden@ufplanets.com