by John "Mjolnir" Reynolds

Campaign Mode

The heart of Starfleet Command is the campaign mode, which, unfortunately, is also the source of most of its flaws. In order to increase the title's gameplay, Quicksilver created what they call their Dynaverse, an in-game generator that essentially creates a dynamic campaign by offering random missions. These scenarios are interrupted though by hand-crafted, campaign-specific missions, particularly when players are eventually prompted whether or not to join their race's unique special forces.

The main gripes with the Dynaverse system is that as often as not, players will find themselves struggling to ascertain mission requirements, or faced by enemies illogically placed, such as Romulan vessels deep within Klingon space. Most of these problems have since been resolved with a patch, but they are nevertheless an annoyance to gamers lacking internet access (something that'll one day be displayed at the Smithsonian, unjacked human beings).

Having gotten the less-than-fun stuff out of the way, let me talk a little about the richness of Starfleet's campaign mode. You create your character and track his/her progress throughout the campaign, earning medals, receiving promotions, acquiring new, larger and more powerful vessels to captain, eventually commanding up to three crafts in later missions. The game allows ships to be renamed and almost completely refitted in spacedock, where you can upgrade both weapons and crew. Most of these decisions cost in terms of the game's one resource, which is prestige.

As you move through the campaign, successfully completing missions, your character acquires prestige points that can be used in the above manner, but don't think of prestige so much as currency as reputation or influence. A Federation officer wishing a new ship may earn it in the eyes of his superiors while a Romulan may use assassination to remove a fellow officer also in line for promotion.

As mentioned earlier, the campaign missions are a liberal dollop of randomly generated affairs with custom-built missions sprinkled throughout. These latter missions become more prevalent as you enter into your race's special forces, if you choose to do so. With the amazing flexibility of SFC's combat system, the missions are at times quite varied in their requirements.

On top of the standard weaponry, such as phasers, photon and plasma torpedoes, and hellbore cannons, there are attack shuttle craft, tractor beams (which have a nice graphical touch), boarding parties (nothing like transporting that squad of marines across downed shields to attack a specific component of an enemy ship), and missiles and mines.

The combat, while real-time (which can be adjusted with the bracket keys), takes on an incredible tactical flair with so many options at-hand. There have been times when I was hot on an enemy's tail, his aft shields down, my weapons recycling for another salvo, my victory imminent, only to have the opponent conduct a HET (high energy turn), lock me in place with a tractor beam, and then fire a spread of photons across my forward bow (can we say Khan?).

Click to continue

The Combat Game

I wrote earlier that the heart of SFC was its campaign mode. I was wrong. The heart of this game is the intense combat, space-based naval engagements between struggling behemoths. There's something in observing the enemy's forward shields collapse as your ship's phasers stab into its hull like poniards, and then watching as the vanquished foe explodes like a slowly-blooming flower, the gaseous plumes that trail the ejecting debris forming the pedals as a rippling, sapphire-blue shockwave frames the moment.

Ranging in resolutions from 640x480 to 1280x1024, the D3D graphics are nothing short of spectacular; the ships are finely-detailed models straight out of the Trek pantheon and the backgrounds are resplendent panoplies of star-strewn heavens. Gamers who enjoy tactical strategy, Trekkies, and, in particular, those who are both should rejoice. . .

Starfleet Command is hands-down the best Trek game I have ever played. Just make sure you download the patch that updates the game to v1.01 and you too will be heading for that second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning.

Ratings:

• Core Rating: 85
• Gameplay: 90
• Graphics: 90
• Sound: 80
• AI/Intelligence: 80
• User Interface: 85
• Fun Factor: 95
• Learning Curve: 2 to learn basics, 5+ to master

Overall Rating: 90

For overall excellence and replay value, we award Star Fleet Command our "Top-Pick!"

Download the demo by clicking HERE.

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