| Review : |
At last, my time has come! Command! Power! Total control! Well...not really. Bridge Commander - the game that was supposed to be the flagship Star Trek game, sadly failed to live up to its potential. The basic idea is that you command a starship, and go around and save the galaxy. This part of it is very well done, to the point where you actually feel like you're in command. You face a pair of Romulan Warbirds...fight or talk? If you fight, you might take them...but then the Romulans hate you, rather than turnig up twenty minutes later and saving your butt. Choices, choices is what makes this game. But the big kicker is that you can't simply issue orders, especially to the tactial guy, and simply have them carried out. Or, at least, as well as you can to manually. It makes the game a little more exciting, but personally, if the kid's not competent to operate the phasers, can I trade him for someone else? The Speak-Up system, which theorectially meant you could use a microphone and issue actual orders just by speaking, is a complete waste of time. My friend and I (with 20 years computer experience between us) could just about get the system to recognise basic instructions, which have to be issued in a specific accent and syntax, with very exacting pronunciation. It's very annoying and doesn't half kill the sense of realism. Nevertheless, it's about as much fun as you can have without breaking the law, especially on the easiest difficulty setting which allows you to breeze through enemy ships like they don't exist. The storyline needed work, but is sufficient to allow a great deal of variety in the missions you have to try. One minute you're hiding behind an asteroid, listening on a Ferengi smuggler, cutting non-essential systems to avoid detection, nxt you're thundering around a Starbase trying to blow the hell out of kamakazi barges loaded with explosives. And if you've just finished watching DS9 and want to give those blasted spoonheads a taste of there own medicine, this is the game for you. Overall, I give this game 4/5, just because it took a radical approach to a difficult problem, and in memory of many happy nights spent turning Galor-class cruisers into scrap metal. |
| Review : |
I can see it now, at Paramount Headquarters. "Well, we've done flight sims, strategy games...even that clever Away Team thingy. What's left?" "I know! A first person shooter!". And if it had been left like that, it would have been awful. But some bright spark grabbed the Quake engine, and a team of talented writers created the Hazard Team, and then they got the tech weenies to make up a whole batch of weapons and Ta-da! A really classy FPS. Technically, not astounding, but how many other games give you a phaser rifle and tell you to go nuts? |
