Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Tactical Assault

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

 

 

Pros
- a pocket version of Starfleet Command (SFC) that you can carry around.
- opening menus are very nicely done.
- contains campaign, skirmish and multiplayer modes.
- compaign plays like in SFC. You finish a mission and it awards you upgrade points that you can use to assign to your crew to improve your ship's performance (so it's like upgrading in RPGs).
- You are incrementally awarded command of better ships as you progress thru the game.
- Skirmish is instant action mode where you can choose from fighting in 1 to 4 teams of either ally or enemies simultaneously.
- AI is not bad. Enemies will keep their exposed shields away from you and cloak and re-appear on your weaker side to attack.
- Missions do not have to result in a large fight. By hailing ships negotiations are possible in certain levels.
- Load times are very fast compared to other PSP games.
- User interface is easy to handle.

Cons
- game graphics is under-detailed and quite aliased.
- sound effects are rather weak.
- gameplay is repetitive. You are constantly circling each other firing at openings.
- space scenes are not dense enough (nor interesting enough) so there is limited ability to use asteroids etc for a tactical advantage.
- no ability to beam commandos to take over other ships.
- no tractor beam to hold ships.
- ie it is a really watered down SFC.
- no targeting of specific systems so hull damage is defined as on the whole ship.

The short load time suggests that more could have been done but wasn't just to play it safe with this first release.

Buy this at full price if you want to encourage them to release future versions. Otherwise wait for it to come down in price.

Ok, so it's not as deep or as polished I'd like. But you can't compare this game to X-Wing or Tie Fighter (Oh how I miss those.) You have to compare this game to every other Star Trek game out there. In which case it comes out (sadly) near the top.

The Good:
It is fun. Once you get used to the controls and the emergency power system you realize that there is some strategy after all. The crew upgrades were a cool idea. Though if they're gonna flirt with Japanese design conventions they should have just gone all out and given each crew member a special action of some sort that could be used during battle.

The Bad:
The controls are so-so. The play is 2D. And while you always auto-dodge other ships, you will run straight into asteroids and die while you're locked onto that Bird-of-Prey behind you. Grrr!

Also, if you've ever seen some of the goofy ship designs from the Star Trek technical manuals that FASA put out years ago for Starfleet Battles, I am sad to say that quite a few of those made their way into this game. Some good ship designs from the films are absent (Grissom?), while the big Klingon Dreadnought from ST:TNG is now a "Klingon Destroyer". That's as bad as using the Bird-of-Prey model as a Klingon cruiser was during the NextGen Episode "Yesterday's Enterprise". But then again Trek fans are used to such sloppiness.

This game is pretty good..
I like it WAY better than "Encounters" for the PS2...THAT game had TRUE clunky controls...

It IS sort of a hybrid between Starfleet command and Starfleet/Klingon Academy...

Most of the complaints seem to be complaining about things that could ONLY be fixed if the game was on a computer, not a HANDHELD....

I like it alot...
missions are challenging and the cheats for unlockables come in REAL handy!!

TOO bad either SONY or Bethesda/Quicksilver decided NOT to allow modding of the game AFTER 5 or so were ALREADY introduced!!!

Whats up with that...

Good game Good star trek game..Hope they make another!!

This may be a biased review as i love pretty much anything star trek. Its a good trek game with simple gameplay mechanics. I think if this game were not portable it would probably not work as well for me. I like that i can pick it up and play for 15 mins here and there doing simple escort, seek and destroy type missions. There is ship advancement and you can upgrade your crew which adds a little rpg element. It you don't like star trek, you will probably find this game kinda bland.

... same old mistakes.

It's fun! If you like Star Trek, add a star here or there. But they get the same thing wrong that all the others do, these are supposed to be BIG Star Ships. You can't "Dog Fight" in a ship like this, they should be huge, lumbering ships that turn slowly... SFC is the closest thing to getting it right so far.

This is a fun little game for PSP with decent graphics and well thought out controls. I've been pretty entertained by it the whole time I've had it rented and now I'm planning on purchasing it. There are two full campaign modes one as the Federation and the other as the Klingon Empire and while both campaigns end kind of abruptly, respectively the skirmish mode offers a lot of fun instant action allowing you to set up your own opposition and choose any ship available in the game once you have them all unlocked by going through both stories. The game is called "Tactical Assault" so a fair amount of tactic planing and strategy will need to be employed depending on your difficulty setting this is not just a run and gun shoot-em-up style game for instance if you're in a Constitution class refit (Enterprise from the movies) against a Klingon Dreadnaught you will need to employ some serious strategy just to survive long enough to get through their shields.

Although it's a fun game it's not without it's flaws, there's not much to the game the campaign mode is really just a series of skirmish matches made to feel like a story and it's very combat-centric and you don't get the feel of classic Star Trek exploration which would have been a nice touch but really it's just locating a cloaked enemy and engaging them which is about the extent of the games use of scanners and sensors. Occasionally throughout the story mode you can employ hailing strategy and try to talk your way out of a fight and in the Federation Campaign this usually yields a better final mission rating resulting in more upgrade points for your crew. I honestly think they could have added a few more ships and maybe different skins instead of them all just being listed by class. The final class is Sulu's ship the Excelsior although it's not used in the story mode it can also be doubled for the Enterprise "B" seen in the film Star Trek: Generations which was an Excelsior class "refit" but I would have preferred some more ships at least for the skirmish mode and maybe different skins and textures to set Constitution class to look like she did in the original series as opposed to the movie look. But I guess I'm just being nitpicky now it's still a fun game and I really did like the one FMV it had which was a variation of the TV intro and features William Shatner's voice. Anyway, if you're a Trekkie and you want some Trek fun on your PSP you should totally grab this game because it's totally worth it.

It is a hard game and all but if you are a true ST fan you will appreciate it. If your not that much into ST I would prob pass on this unless it's -5$.

This is an average space battle game but not really a shot'em-up. The game moves too slow and the weapons take too long to recharge. The graphics are also average and not engaging.

Loved this game. Great even in skirmish mode. The federation missions are a blast as are the klingon and they play much differently because the ships are different play styles and strategy. If some reviewers don't think there is strategy to this game, then obviously they played it like some stupid sci fi shoot em up instead of the methodical game it is. The better you do, the more you unlock allowing different kinds of ships for multiplayer or skirmish. I HIGHLY recommend this game for anyone.

Star Trek Tactical Assault - I was really looking forward to this game for my PSP - the ability to command starships on my PSP made this Star Trek fan really excited. Imagine my disappointment when I fired up the game and the first screen, a Star Trek quote had the word "Dr. MCoy" (sic) misspelled! This didn't bode well for the gameplay that followed. Navigating through the menus, I was aghast to see the individual low polygons on the starships - these ships have never looked worse in a Star Trek game, unless you go back to the days of DOS or Windows 95. The designs for the Federation and Klingon ships are unimaginative, and not based on anything in Star Trek lore (except for a couple signature vessels) - they look really slapped together. A Destroyer has two warp pods underneath, the Dreadnought three on top, same markings, same drab textures, same hacky modeling. The gameplay is "Starfleet Command - ultralite". But it is really boring. You basically, give the ship some throttle, then spin in circles until your ship's weapons come on line. Spin, fire, spin again, fire again, blow up your enemy or be blown up - sounds really fun, doesn't it - NOT!

The game takes place in 2d space (no ability to move in 3d) - so you have amusing situations where you are hovering on top of your enemy - no damage from ramming, you're just able to (unrealistically) fire over and over again, and the enemy too. It looks really bad.

Another ill-informed design choice was to remove the player from targetting mode when he is about to impact one of the objects in space. This is because you are typically running away from your enemy to fire rear weapons, and so you can't really see where you're going. But it is hard to reacquire your enemy quickly after you have dropped them. There are several better choices that could have been made here (like giving the player the option of "auto-avoid"). It's just bad and unimaginative again.

I am really thrilled that EB Games was nice enough to take this waste of plastic back - I really felt like a sucker after buying this game.

Send a message to Bethesda, Quicksilver and CBS Paramount that hack, retread Star Trek games [Star Fleet Armada III? = Legacy; Star Fleet Command 4 UltraLite = Star Trek Tactical Assault] won't be tolerated - don't buy this turkey. It isn't even worth $1 - maybe the unsold copies would make good landfill though, although I suspect the trash birds would probably gag on it.

Couldn't give this "0" stars or I would have.