I like the fact the movie is both a reboot (like Batman Begins and Casino Royale) and an offshoot.  The fact that the movie creates an entirely different timeline for this batch of Trek movies opens up the possibilities for so many reinaginings of prior Star Trek stories.  Like the way current comic book movies gets inspiration from a bunch of different comics, this new Trek can take some of the best ideas in the show and put them together into one kick-ass movie.  Already people are talking about how cool it would be to bring back Kahn.

More than anything, I really appreciated how the movies had acutal production values.  I loved TNG on TV, but when it jumped to the big-screen, they always felt/looked like a made for TV movie rather than something made for the movies.  Oddly enough, the original cast Trek movies seemed to have better production values than the TNG ones.  

I thought the action was well done (perhaps a bit too much shakey-cam) and the acting was top-notch.  I thought everyone was well cast as their respective characters.  And for anyone who says that Kirk and Spoke were underdeveloped...have you seen the other movies?  Sulu, Uhura, Scotty, and Chekhov are total window dressing in the old movies with NOTHING to do.   The pacing was fast, and while some of the story really didn't make sense (did Kirk ever graduate from the Academy?  How does a cadet go from school to 1st officer just like that?  Is the entire crew of the Enterprise new grads?  Did Nero just sit around in space for 25 years waiting for Spock?  Did Nero really have a plan to destroy planets or did he come up with that after he captured Spock?) it was fun and interesting.

The biggest compliment I can give to this movie is that it managed to make Star Trek just as enjoyable as Star Wars (espically the prequel ones).  It finally managed to stop all the talking and actually do some doing (which is ironic becuase the Star War prequels took the doing the the original trilogy and did a whole bunch of talking).  

First of all, I don't really like the license system.  While I think it's a cool idea and it reminded me of the system in FFX, found that getting new gear seemed overly complicated because of the license system.  While in old games you can easily see who could use such and such weapon/armor, now if my dude didn't already have the license for the item I was thinking of getting, I have to go the the license screen, see where that item is on the license board, and if I can't see it, open up other licenses to hopefully see the thing.  It really makes upgrading your gear not that much fun.

The second thing that drives me crazy about the game is that the battle sometimes get way too crazy and out of control.  I realize that I can stop the action at any given time to select what I want to do with each dude, but when there are a bunch of ememies attacking you (usually the party leader), it can get a bit out of control.  It almost seems like this aspect of the game really wasn't balanced.  I found that the combat system worked great with attacking 1 or 2 dudes, but more than that--and the system fell apart from me.

So far, the story has been alright, but nothing really memorable.  And it seems like all the characters sound alike, look alike and all have similar sounding names.  When the story references people outside of my party, I have no idea who the hell they are talking about.  Usually the story of a FF game is game keeps me going, but so far it's the broken combat system.

I don't know.  Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh on the game.  I do like the combat system when it works, but I feel like with a bunch of enemeis, or sometimes when you come across a random superpowerful dude that kills your entire party in the frickin' overworld--it gets frustrating.  Perhaps I'll give it another shot, but inFamous is coming out at the end of the month and I still need to finish DQVIII.

Anyway--what's up with the camera controls?  The camera is driving me crazy.  It has what I consider "inverted" controls where you press left and the camera swings right and when you press right, the camera swings left.  After playing a bunch of FPS's on the consoles now, I cannot stand controls like this.  First of all, it seems like a Japanese thing to do.  What's even more Japanese is you not being able to customize your controls the way you want.  Being a long time gamer, it's seems like customization and open endedness has been a hallmark of western developed games.  I first started to notice this in PC gaming, and as a kid, didn't like it too much.  I thought of western developed games as games where you could totally screw yourself and find yourself not being able to continue (see any Ultimas).  Japanese games, on-the-other-hand, seem to be designed to have everything you need around.   Today though, it seems that western developers has gotten the hang of the "not screwing you" thing and manages to provide open ended gameplay, along with mostly customizable stuff (controls, characters, etc...).  The Japanese though, makes you play the game they want you to play.  I do appreciate both, but really hate it when people make you play with jacked-up controls, and it seems like the Japanese are the primary culprits.  

Whoa, kind of got of tract there.  Well, the game seems pretty fun so far and look forward to getting some more party members and see what this battle system can do.  I've been playing DQVIII for 53+ hrs and needed a break from the old-school game design.  I guess I've always been more of a FF fan.  Well, hopefully I can finish both this and DQVIII before Infamous comes out.