Cryptic Studios has been working hard this year. Not content with just releasing the super-hero MMORPG Champions Online only a few months ago, their next big game is right around the corner. Now announced for February 2nd, Star Trek Online is going to be warping into the red matter with subspace turboflux quantum phase-inducing temporal fission torpedoes.

The game claims to be the first spanning both space, and planet-side activities. From the thousands of races in the Star Trek universe you'll be able to choose from either the Federation or the Klingon Empire, for your adventurous persona. Even the noobs will have their own spaceship it seems, in this game, and you'll be flying all over the galaxies looking for some stuff to shoot in order to gain levels. Wooie! Exciting stuff.

There hasn't been tons of information released on what this game is all about, so this early, it is anyone's guess. To my trained eye it like Cryptic Studios hasn't done much with the potential of the IP and Star Trek Online looks like fairly standard MMORPG -- we can probably also expect it to have many game mechanic similarities with Champions Online. It's a shame that they decided to focus on combat for this one, as this isn't the main thrust of the fictional multiverse of Star Trek, from what I recall.