Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Klingon Academy

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There are two versions of "capital" ship combat in space. In one the starship is treated like a large fighter plane. Loops, dives rate of turn, top speed are all critical to the ship's performance in combat (as seen in ST Insurrection). In the second the starships lumber towards one another and slug it out ( as seen in ST Wrath of Khan ). Klingon Academy is the first type of game. Event at its slowest speed setting this is a joystick game where you dog fight in space. If you are looking for slower pace and a more god like perspective on the battle get ST StarFleet Command). If what you are looking for is a fast paced game where you view space through the cockpit window and twist and turn trading shots with your opponents this is an excellent game. The graphics are very good, the performance requirements are not outrageous ( I have an older system and the game works fine even at the higher resolutions ), and the detail and complexity level are there. In fact the control complexity may be a little bit to great for a game where you can't take your eyes off the screen for fear of losing track of where you opponent is at. There is a wealth of controls and systems to use. A detailed command set for controlling you ship, and your squadron (wingmen).

A few design decisions mar an otherwise excellent game. The maximum range of your weapons is around 15k ( you more powerful weapons are shorter ranged ), your speed is on the order of 1kps ( in the faster ships ) that means head on collisions between star ships is a very real problem. Further, given that the ships are very large relative (some ships are up to 1k long ) to there weapons range "accidental" contact in a twisting dog fight happens a lot. ( Purest will complain that I am using metric kilometers not in game units, but this seems to be what the in game units translate too.) Damage from collisions is catastrophic so the propensity for traffic accidents in space is unfortunate. If the weapons had longer range this would be far less of a problem, but the advantage of the extremely good graphics would be lost ( you would end up fighting it out with a little white dot all the time), so the game's designers force you to fight it out up close so you can "see" your opponent very well. This was better handled ST StarFleet Command in which what you "see" are "icons" that are "larger" than the ship they represent. This allows two icons to "pass through" one another maintaining the ability to see large ship model without imposing collisions resulting from point blank range combat.

Space is very large, and this is handled very well with in system Warp maneuvers to cut down on flying time. On the whole the "realism" of handling large distances, large ships, and weapons ranges falls between Independence War and the Star Wars X-Wings games. The game includes a limited set of tutorial missions to get you started ( it is a training academy after all ), and seems stable right out of the box. All in all an interesting take on the starship combat genre.

Its good to see that Christopher Plummer and David Warner decided to reprise their roles as General Chang and Chancellor Gorkon. The cutscenes with them are fantastic with performances that rival the movie. Seeing them alone might make several Star Trek fans want to purchase the game. However, the other actors are not as polished, which may be of some concern to some gamers.

The game allows you to fly eight different Klingon ships with various weapons and power levels for each vessel. This is one of the highlights of the game, as you get to destroy the enemies of the Empire with several cool-looking ships. The enemies of the Empire include the Federation, Romulans, the Gorn, Tholians, and the Shakurians(?). There are about twenty-five missions in the game, so no gamer can really complain about the game being too short. The graphics are good, but it looks a little dated. Maybe this is because the game was over a year late. How sad!

The game does suffer from some bugs. First, the enemy ships have a tendency to try to ram your vessel. This is extremely annoying and frustrating at the same time. This has been a problem for many gamers, and you should be aware of this if you want to purchase the game. Also, you need to be aware that Interplay will no longer offer any support for this game. The design team has been broken up to work on other projects. So if your expecting updated patches and expansion packs then you can simply forget it.

Ok, the graphics are beyond anything ive ever seen, the game play is wonderful, and the effects are unbealiveable! you can fire a photon through hulls of ships, and it will leave a hole, then, you can zoom in, and count the rooms that have been exposed to space! Phasers even leave burn marks! If you like games, or trek, you need this game!

Klingon Academy is essentially a ship-to-ship combat game set in the Klingon Empire during the period immediately preceding the ST film "The Undiscovered Country". The graphics are very good for a game of this vintage (2000), and the atmosphere is very Klingon. The cinematics and animations are excellent, many of them consisting of extended film sequences featuring Christopher Plummer (the actor who played General Chang in the aforementioned film). The game doesn't contain as many options as later titles, but in exchange for that you get the only game that really lets you be a Klingon (instead of pretending to fly a Klingon ship in simulation, which other ST combat titles generally have you do). In some ways, the game feels like a predecessor to "Bridge Commander" because much of your ordering and functioning is funnelled through your bridge crew.

Fair warning that the game is very hard if you try to do everything manually -- the ship is hard to fly using the keyboard or a mouse. Perhaps in a concession to this, the game features a tactical "gunnery chair" option whereby you can order your helmsman to handle the flying while you concentrate on targeting and shooting -- and the chair sight follows the target by swinging around so that you can target well from weapons banks at various arcs (often not very useful, actually, in many Klingon ship designs where the weapon distribution is very, um, "top-heavy" towards the front of the ship).

In all, a very entertaining, at times very challenging, game. Not up to the level of the more recent combat titles, but still very entertaining indeed.

Although there's nothing much more to say than what earlier reviews have already covered, one thing that should be mentioned about Klingon Academy is it's 'modability', that is, the ability for players to make and download customized ships, screens, star systems, and other game components. There are literally thousands of ships available from all of the five main Star Trek series (TOS, TMP, TNG, DS9, Voy & Ent), fan based designs, and ships from Babylon 5, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc, etc, etc. For me, this has been a 2½-year gaming experience, as new modifications are constantly being made by the KlingonAcademy.com Modding Community. It still amazes me that this 3+-year-old game is still gaining new fans, with a growing and thriving online community...

This game is alot of fun to play and unlike "Starfleet Academy", your ship does not move like a fighter and you really do command your ship like it is a large spacecraft. The damage effects are great! You can poke holes in the enemy's hull, knock out crucial subsystems and blow off warp nacelles.

The single player campaign is OK but it is not that rigid. It will allow you to make bad command decisions and still finish the missions. I spend alot of time playing with the Quick Battle simulator. This is where you can command any ship, pick your opponents and choose your battle environment which is really alot of fun. I enjoy luring Klingon warships into a planetary ring to watch them bounce off of the ring's ice boulders while trying to attack my starship!

Remember, KA is a Star Trek game, so you know it's going to have bugs. If you do not install the latest patch the game will freeze during heavy battles. This is bad since the game AI will constantly be playing "bumper cars" when it starts to lose a fight. If the enemy ship is smaller than the vessel that you are commanding, then this is more annoying than fatal.

I have been play klingon Academy for this pass week and this is the best Startrek game I have ever played in my life. Unlike SC this game is completely 3D, the ships are so real that it is like Watching a StarTrek Movie or the final season of Deep Space 9. When you blow up a ship you actually see the parts flying off the ship ( not just any part but the one that you fired at). There are so many different explosion types unlike most games, SFC for example, whenever you destroy a ship they allays use the same explosion for all type of ships. In addition when parts of the ship are destroyed you never get to see any real explosion except when the ship is completely destroyed. When parts blown off the ships, you actually get to get the expose desks of the ship. Some ships are still able to fight even when haft of the hall is no longer there. It is like fighting with the sourcer section of the Enterprise without the rest of the body. By attacking a Federation Ship from the aft section it is possible to see this effect. I have never seen 3D effects that were so real in including Homeworld up until now.

When the ships are moving in space you get the feel of really fighting in a 3D environment. The shield effects, power management, weapons, ships controls, and everything you could possibly want to command a Starship is in this game. You could even program the ship's power allocation from the engineering station to your own setting using power macros. Then in the heat of battle have the ships computer execute the power macro. Imagine executing MARV-1-BATA-OMEGA authorization BORG1. There are 3 times as many commands than in SFC; the book is 288 pages long and so far I have only read the parts that are important to me like power management and weapons. I have not yet use the power macro feature.

When a captain leaves the bridge of the ship another officer take command of the fight so that the captain can go to another station and fine tune this orders there. It is possible to give the helm officer orders to fly the ship, while in battle, and you as the captain get to fire the weapons from the security/gunner station. It does not get any better than this. Of course you get to command other ships as wingmen to help you destroy an enemy if you are out gun.

You start off as a cadet in the academy where you must receive training in ship command and Klingon honor (This is not as easy as it sounds). The Klingons do not tolerate failure; in other words, if you fail a mission in anyway you will get kick out of the school. Sometimes you get to asks the dean of the school (played by Christopher Plumer) selected questions and his answers are very very interesting.

In multiplayer mode you get to fly Federation, Romulan, Tholiyan, Gorn and other some other minor race.

There is not a better STARTREK GAME.

My wife got me this for Christmas and it is loads of fun. I always told her I was a Klingon in human form and tried to persuade her to let us have a Klingon wedding...she didn't go for it...I think the fresh gagh would have put off people at the reception...

Excellently conceived and brilliant graphics - BUT you will need power to utilise them properly. I have a P800 and GFORCE 2MX200 card which usually does fine. The only problems I have graphics-wise are when Romulan ships start venting plasma.

The in-between mission "movies" are nice and contain some good motivation from General Chang.

However, a couple of the missions are baffling playability-wise. The reconnoitring of the treasonous Klingon vessel without being discovered is VERY hard, and I still haven't figured out planetary bombardment.

Still, it will raise the blood in all true warriors.

Note: though he is not credited, that HAS to be Michael Dorn voicing Commander Thok Mak.

Several reasons why this game is one of the best Capital Ship combat sims out there

1.You can regulate virtualy every aspect of your ships(tractor, transporter, warp, sickbay, engineering, etc)

2.It feels like a Starship-to-Starship simulator (unlike ST:Invasion for PS which completely clashes with the Trek philosophy by offering a poor fighter-to-fighter sim)

3.It is so hugely detailed, you can blow major sections off of any ship and see the different decks, fire on the warp engines and watch the plasma drain away as they lose warp capability(personal favorite). There is an outside view where you can see your ship in great detail

4.There are so many different types of enviornments (deep space(duh),nebula, Gas giants, M-Class worlds, solar coronas, the perimiter of a black hole, etc)

5. New ships. There plenty of new ships for the Klingons, Starfleet, and the Romulans. There are a few new races as well.

The list goes on

If you are wondering why I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars, it's because the events take place in the days of The Original Series and not like the times of the "present day" Star Trek. But this game is so great and at such a low price, you cant loose. It was designed to use the joystick in conjunction with the keyboard. Make sure you have a good joystick though(the game plays horribly with a mouse)

This game is truly wonderful. It has great graphics, great sounds as in weapons and voices and a great plot too. It is easy to learn and easy to use in most cases. Each mission isn't to hard to do but still it makes you use your head. ... Thanks for reading and get this game.