Amazon.com Product Description
Ever wonder what it would be like to be commander of one of the starships from the
Star Trek series? With Simon & Schuster Interactive's
Classic Star Trek: Captain's Chair, you can find out. This program gives you a personal tour of the USS Enterprise, the USS Defiant, and more. Star Trek officers narrate your virtual trip, visually enhanced by photo-realistic QuickTime graphics.
You explore five ships inside and out, panning, zooming, and rotating your way through dozens of 3-D props and objects. Along the way, you can activate consoles, phasers, monitors, and tricorders as if you were in command of the ship. The program features more than 1,600 linked hot spots that simulate real Starship commands. The graphic simulations of the ships are impressive, and moving your way around is easy. No doubt this is the closest experience to being on one of the Starship bridges you could have without actually being there (or on a Star Trek set).
There is only one problem with this program--nothing happens. Once you've looked around the ships, there's not much else for you to do. You may be disappointed that there are no Klingons to fight and no place to beam to. Unless you are a Trekkie fascinated by every ounce of Star Trek trivia, you might fall asleep in the Captain's Chair.
Although Capt. Kirk might have saluted this disc's realization of its meager goals, it's far more likely that he would have found its slow multimedia a shameless gimmick from the galaxy Schmuck.
Not that walking around the bridges of five starships isn't spiffy. Scrutinize each wacky gadget, with complementary animation. Anyone new to the Starfleet can take a guided tour narrated by the actors, er...crew.
But the virtual reality can be S-L-O-W. The scrolling text boxes don't exactly match Enterprise technology. And you can't shoot any Klingons - just look at flashing buttons.
The Last Words:
Mark: This QuickTime VR tour accomplished its modest goals. But I'm not sure how much mileage I get out of prowling the deserted bridges of five Trek vessels. More background text would flesh it out nicely.
Judy: Nifty to check out the ships, the high-tech equipment, and Capt. Picard's Australian fish in a tank, though the resolution could have been better. I'm interested, so I was patient. But patience doesn't buy respect, nor does it replace lack of ambition.
Joe: Aside from it all seeming a little silly, the disc doesn't go past the standard walk-around-and-look-at-things motif, and it doesn't excel even at that.
Rating:2/4
©1999 MacAddict
