Star Trek: Away Team

by ACTIVISION

Product Details

• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000035Y9O
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 14, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,545 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Star Trek: Away Team brings Gene Roddenberry's famous creation to yet another game genre: tactical strategy. Tactical strategy is typically turn-based, only this one is in real time. Still, Away Team has a lot more in common with games like X-Com, Jagged Alliance, and Baldur's Gate than it does with StarCraft.

The concept casts you as commander of a Federation commando group. Using new technology, you and your crew are chartered to infiltrate galactic hot spots and efficiently handle problems. Your best tech toy is a ship that, thanks to an experimental holographic projector, can look like anything you want it to. This variable cloak lets your team move into position to beam down and take care of the problem with minimum fuss.

Commander Data (voiced by Brent Spiner of Star Trek: The Next Generation) doles out advice as you outfit your team and carry out diverse missions, such as hit and runs, rescues, sabotage, and raids, using all kinds of cool Federation tools and weaponry. Each team member has his or her own unique skills and equipment. For example, the group leader has grenades, the Russian engineer is the only one who can use a Romulan cloaking device, and your Vulcan security officer can mind meld with the enemy, giving you temporary control of him.

The strategy is solid and the game is brisk and attractive, although it is crippled with substandard artificial intelligence. Your troops aren't smart enough to return fire on their own, and you'll begin to wonder if the enemy has any battle plan at all. Missions are puzzlelike and repetition is necessary, often tediously so. And there is only a tiny fraction of the multiplayer options a game like this should have. Multiplayer is only available in cooperative mode and only then on linked computers at home. What? You don't have two or more computers linked at home? Sorry--there are no Internet options. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

• Interesting concept
• A few really good missions
• Decent graphics

Cons:

• Poor AI
• Sparse multiplayer

Product Description

Complex alien surroundings are the setting for your stealth missions, including Romulan outposts, Borg cubes, and unpredictable foreign landscapes. Select from 17 highly trained specialists to form the perfect squad for each mission.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Interface But Becomes Boring Later, June 18, 2001

By 

Bryan Sebrell (Salem, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Star Trek: Away Team (CD-ROM)

The first time I heard about this game was from a demo, and I thought just from the two missions the demo gives that this was an excellent game, so I bought it. I didn't know the Star Trek plot, but you don't really need to know the plot in this game. Star Trek: Away Team had the most beautiful interface I've seen, the buttons and menus seemed to have had a lot of work to look great. Unfortunately, what the game has in graphics it lacks in time you'd play it. The missions themselves are challenging and unique, but after a few hours the games starts to get boring. Also the game needs more movies to add; there are only two: the opening and closing. If I could, I would rate this game 3.5 stars. I wouldn't recommend this game to strategy game lovers. This is a strategy/action game, and that means you can go through the entire game and not play it again, because once you beat it, you'll feel no reason to try it again. Get this game if you're not a big-time computer game player, like me.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Stay Away Team, April 12, 2001

By 

Marc Twaites (Naugatuck CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Star Trek: Away Team (CD-ROM)

Firstly, in common with Activision's previous Star Trek title, Elite Force, this is far too short for a full price game. The plot's none too poor, and has some pleasant twists that suprise, but the gameplay is repetitive and limited, so that by the end it has ceased to be a joy and more like a test of stamina. Of major concern is the lack of an equiping screen and though you do get to choose the team that goes out, each mission's requirements pretty much pick the squad for you anyway. Couple this with the fact that you have to micro-manage your team's every move (they won't even shoot back when shot at, just cry out) and there's no multiplayer option except co-operative over a LAN, means that this is one isometric squad-based shooter to be avoided. If you like this style of game you could do worse than buying Fallout Tactics instead, or save yourself [the money] and pick up a copy of Abomination - The Nemesis Project.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to play and Excellent Story, March 24, 2001

By 

Brian A. Wolters (Cabot, Arkansas) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Star Trek: Away Team (CD-ROM)

Star Trek games keep getting better and Away Team is good entry in the growing library of quality titles.

You are in control of 4 (sometimes up to 6) crewmembers on an away team. Before each mission, you are given an excellent briefing and then you are allowed to choose the members who are best suited to the mission. Once your selection is made, you beam down and begin the mission.

Each mission contains a briefing before and during the mission. The controls are very easy to master and memorize. While the main screen doesn't contain a "fog of war," there is still a lot of strategy involved in completing the missions.

The graphics are nice but not earth shattering. The sounds, used on my SoundBlaster Live! are excellent, using both front and rear channels.

On a whole, this game is fun but quite short. When played on the easy level, you an complete all of the missions in one night (if you had the time.)

While this isn't a major title (like Elite Force and The Fallen,) it is a quality Trek title and worth the purchase.