Cryptic Studios is clearly ready to show people what they can do with a game that isn't a super hero based MMO. After creating the original City of Heroes (now owned and developed by the game's publisher NCsoft) and releasing their second such game, Champions Online, earlier this week, the dev team showed off a brief but playable demo for their next game, Star Trek Online.During PAX 2009 we got a chance to play the hands-on demo which showed off both space-based and planet-based combat. The first mission has us commanding a Defiant-like starship who warped to a planet and found itself attacked by three Klingon Birds of Prey. The space combat was rather like the classic Star Trek: Starfleet Command games. While the ships were in 3D they operating in a 2D environment (no Wrath of Khan three dimensional thinking here, unfortunately). We could fire phasers, photon torpedoes both automatically and in arcs as we targeted the three ships. Our starship made quick work of the Klingon vessels so now it was time for our planetside missions.

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