Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed Star Trek Fan, January 23, 2004
I love Star Trek in its many forms. I am 38, I grew up with Star Trek. Unfortunately,..1. This game is difficult enough that the what fun there could have been is sucked out of it. The controller configurations are not intuitive, it takes a lot of effort to get used to them, I finally choose the second configuration. The missions are very very long, and they typically cresendo to very difficult challenges at the end. If you fail, and you will until you figure out the best strategy, you go all the way back to the beginning of the mission. What happened to intermediate save points? 2. Nice graphics but after getting over the excitement of protecting the Federation, I noticed that the missions involved the same kind of action really, and it became boring and incredibly tedious. 3. How many times has this storyline been rehashed. Let it go already. This game looks pretty for a while, but it takes advantage of Star Trek fans. We deserve better, especially for the money. I wanted to love this game, but I just cant.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, March 23, 2004
When I finished playing this game, I thought about what could have been...maybe this could have become Star Trek, "Crimson Skies" style, with the kind of great aerial/spaceborn combat that is so rare these days. Even a Star Trek version of "Jedi Starfighter" would have been acceptable. But that's not to be. This may be the worst Trek game produced to date, with shoddy graphics, awful controls, and overall terrible gameplay. The idea was intriguing: Borrowing from the classic Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror," which featured an alternative universe that was completely alien to Kirk and his crew, this game finds you as defender (in an admittedly cool small starfighter) of the USS Excelsior, captained by Hikaru Sulu (voicework from George Takei; that's Walter Koenig as the voice of Chekov, as well) in a hostile environment. The Terran Empire has replaced the Federation, and you must defend your ship from constant attacks. Sounds good so far...but when one's missions consist of little more than keeping attackers from weakening the Excelsior's shields or shooting asteroids in order to gather needed materials, one gets bored very, very quickly. The sub-par graphics (barely PS One calibre, even on the XBox) are distracting, with some of the worst visuals seen on any game in recent memory. Large explosions and impacts are graphically inferior, more like firecrackers than earth-shattering blasts. Character imagery (like Sulu and Chekov) is so bad that you wouldn't recognize either character if you didn't know what game you were playing. Animatics are nearly static and often clumsy. Controls are just terrible--your ship handles poorly (like piloting a refrigerator in a hurricane), and the built-in targeting system is inconsistent at best. Overall, I can find very few positive things to say about this game. What could have been an excellent game--possibly giving Trek a leg-up into the sci-fi gaming world that Star Wars has so long dominated--ends up being a great disappointment. One may end up feeling that this game was released simply to capitalize on the Star Trek name.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth the money, March 29, 2004
(...)This game is a real-time space fighter/mission oriented game. The back of the box bills it as more of a Capitol Ship combat game, so lets get that first part straight. There are Trekkers out there who will hate the game because of some inconsitancies in the univers, but that is besides the point. As other reviewrs have said there isn't any way to save the game mid-mission, so if you screw up or just plain die, you have to start over at the beginning of the mission. This feature [gets really bad] when you get deep into some of the more involved levels.
The individual missions are set not to be challenging, but straight up WAY too hard. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have replayed several of the missions almost a dozen times and I was playing on the "easy" setting.
The environment graphics are quite good, spectacular even. The animations of people however leave quite a bit to be desired.
The controls are quite intuitive and easy to grasp. Not a lot of excess controls that you don't need or never use.
There is a lack of helpful targeting controls (i.e. nearest enemy). Your only options are "Nearest Capitol", "Next Target", "Previous Target" or "Next Fighter".
The cut-scenes are good, but in the middle of game-play (when a ship blows up) is not good, especially when you return from it you aren't in the same place you were. Kind of like the game continued for a couple of seconds after the scene started. This may not sound like much, but when you have an enemy locked on, a cut scene starts, and when you come back you have to track them all over again it really [is not good]!
Also, when new messages come in, parts of your on screen display/HUD (which isn't always easy to translate), is covered obscuring necessary information for several seconds (such as distance to target).
There also seems to be a lack of reference to effective ranges of weapons or minimum distances to avoid being blown-up when a starship goes. These you apparently have to find out by trial and error. And just incase someone from Jack Of All Games reads this, next time leave the fighters out except as maybe an accessory to the ship (not player controlled other than "attack this", "defend that"). Include a save feature in the pause menu. Make the game about starship vs. starship. Fix the above listed problems of controls and game play. And finally, make it playable head to head either on the same console or also on XBox Live. Maybe turn based real-time combat would be a good idea.(...)
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