| Review : |
Bridge Commander is a decent game. The graphics for the ships are quite good considering the age of the game. The bridge sets and character models are a bit lacking, and the game has the worst lip-syncing I've ever seen. The gameplay is extremely good. You really feel as if you're piloting a massive capital ship, which is welcome as most space sims are based on fighters. You may also command from the bridge, in which case your tactical officer takes care of the flying and shooting (freeing you to manage repairs and power consumption) though you can give directions, such as keep your distance or try to keep one side of the ship facing the enemy. You can also fire on an enemies' subsystems, everything from weapons (it allows you to target specific weapons. for instance, you could target aft torpedo tube #2) to the sensors and warp core. Overall it's quite an immersive experience and it lets you do pretty much anything they do in combat on the show. The main annoyance in combat for me has been the AI. Unfortunately, both the enemy AI and the AI for your ship (if you're not controlling it directly) can be extremely stupid at times. On the bright side, the AI settings do work, changing the difficulty doesn't simply change damage multipliers as it does in some other games. The plot is also good for a trek game, it is written by D.C. Fontana. It is set in the TNG era, after the end of DS9. This game is special in that it has a huge number of mods (fan-created modifications you can download for free) that have been made for it, doing everything from replacing the ships in the game with more canon models and weapons compliments to allowing you to micromanage power and launch shuttles. There are even ships from other science fiction series, such as Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica. The mods turn bridge commander into an absolutely outstanding game, and the best space sim I've ever played. The primary site to get these from is www.bcfiles.com. These mods greatly improve the game's replayability, plus it's a kick to settle things like "Can the Enterprise take on a Star Destroyer" in Skirmish mode. Some of the notable members of the voice acting cast include Patrick Stewart (Picard), Brent Spiner (Data), Vaughn Armstrong (Admiral Forrest, among many others) Martha Hackett (Seska) and Max Grodenchik (Rom) though only Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner reprise their previous trek roles. |
