Article Type: Review
Article Date: April 15, 2002
Product Info
Product Name: Star Trek: Bridge Commander
Category: Space Combat Simulation
Developer: Totally Games
Publisher: ActiVision
Release Date: Released
Min. Spec: P3 300, 64 MB RAM, 3D Card
Files & Links: Click Here
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A Break From Reality
COMBATSIM looks at all aspects of combat software well beyond flight simulations. While “future oriented” titles are not usually of much interest to COMBATSIM readers specifically, there is a broad audience for this genre. One excellent thing about them is the fact that no one can complain about historical accuracy, proper flight characteristics or “real” anything.
Getting Going
The program is a fast, ten-minute install containing about 600 MB or so. Requirements are fairly modest with only a 16 MB video card with 3-D acceleration running on a P II 300-450 MHz or Athlon equivalent with 64 MB RAM on the system. A 4X CD-ROM speed is all that is needed and Direct X 8.0a is included. All Windows versions are covered with 95/98/2000/ME/XP. I’d want a 32 MB 3-D accelerated video display with a 600-700 MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM to be safe. Even that is fairly average these days.
There are four resolutions from 640 X 480 to 1280 X 960. In each high and low color depth may be adjusted. A master graphics quality toggle has low, medium and high settings. Ship model detail can also be set in those three resolutions along with texture and damage. Various glows, dust, motion blurs and specular effects are toggled on or off. If your system can’t handle a setting you can hit the enter key to go back so the whole game is not trashed and frozen. This is welcome since I’ve adjusted settings on other hardware in older sims I’ve had that gave me a black screen with program freeze and forced a reboot.
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Configutarion screen  |
Sound may be adjusted in three areas. The special effects volume felt good on high. Voices are pumped up with another slider and the background music, even on a higher setting, got lost to me as I focused on blasting an enemy. The original actors do vocals from Star Trek: The Next Generation for Cmdr. Data Capt. Picard and such. Their animated characters appear in the game, of course. It is a nice touch. Effects are good enough along with coordinated screen shake to feel your ship’s pain when she is hit.
The lead-in and intro of the ships is superb showing minute details. Since there is no terrain to constantly unroll beneath you like flying over Earth in WWII, the graphic card has a lot less work to do overall. The quality is superb though. Vessel detail, space bodies, weapons fire, and pyrotechnics are beautiful. All of the controls can be reprogrammed to suit the player and that should be done once you try a few Quick Battles, which are simulations set up from the bridge. This is the thing you want to get into to get your feet wet. If you are not comfortable left-handed you’ll need to do this soon since the Q-W-E-A-S-D keys control the ship direction.
The most unfortunate point that I sensed right away was the utter demand for joystick control support and there is none. Setting up a combat with a couple of Ferengi Marauder vessel in the Galaxy Class starship soon drove home the point. Ship movement control is all keyboard, and for flight simmers this is ridiculous. It is tough to hold down keys to pitch, yaw and roll your vessel attempting to get a bead on an enemy and fire weapons with more keys. It is on par with a 1988 flight sim before peripheral controllers. This would all work so well with a joystick.
At least you get a good, 94-page manual with the inside back cover serving as a keyboard map. It gives a thorough rundown on ship and station specs along with histories on your crew’s abilities beyond controls and gameplay.
Action
My first single combat with the Ferengi resulted in my destruction so I went more into my element captaining a small Klingon Bird of Prey against a small Federation Akira Class ship. This was more fighter-like in that the Klingon ship had to get generally nose-on to fire its pulse phasers and limited number of photon torpedoes maneuvering crisply. Ah yes, no leading targets like flight sims though. The pulse weapons just compensate and do all that automatically and torpedoes home-in but do miss.
The key commands for maneuver were tough to get used to and one needs to release them and input others once the heading is generally what you want. If you “pull up” the nose by holding down the key and continue you’ll loop the ship so a touch of downforce is needed. It’s still very clumsy compared to joystick input. The maneuvering is nothing like fighter vs. fighter in the 20th century, in any case, with really slow response and movements. At least they seem slow with few reference points in space.
In Quick Battles you get semi-transparent inset screens that give you information on your ship and the enemy. They carry over to campaigns too. You can minimize these inset screens and increase the “main screen” viewing area. (Bah! Who cares about shield health? I’ll know they’re down when we blow up!) It is possible to direct the action viewed on the ship’s screen as though you were in the “cockpit” of the captain’s chair or from six o’clock chase outside the ship.
Like most flight sims, you have an arrow indicator pointing in the direction you should maneuver to get a visual sighting of the enemy. There is a similar tactical inset showing the enemy in 2-D relation to you, again, like many flight sims. Like aircraft combat simulations the single missions don’t count in your campaign score.
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| Quick Battle- Warbird hits Ambassador Class |
Readouts of your speed and the target's speed and distance are easy to grasp. True to the TV series, it is possible to target certain systems of the enemy vessel and continue to concentrate fire there. Clicking on the system bar readout does that quite well. Your fire is directed exactly to that spot and it is not just a shotgun blast of futuristic weapons at the vessel in general.
You can command any of fourteen combat vessels and fight against any combination of them. The federation has the Akira Class battle cruiser, Ambassador, Galaxy, and Sovereign Class heavy cruisers along with a light cruiser in the Nebula Class. There is one Ferengi Marauder battleship. Two light and heavy Kessok ships are available. The Cardassians are there with a Galor Class attack cruiser and a heavy Keldon Class battle cruiser plus a light Hybrid vessel. The Klingons have the small and quick Bird of Prey plus the larger Vor’cha cruiser. And the very cool, very large Romulan Warbird is there. Only the Klingon and Romulan ships have cloaking devices, which can used to good advantage in all combat scenarios.
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| You'll team up with Picard and Enterprise |
Seamless Episodes
The whole storyline is as well written as a TV episode and it keeps you wanting to go farther to see what happens next. Once you begin these standard campaign missions the control flaws mentioned above are insignificant as the game becomes more strategic in nature with you on the bridge commanding your crew. In these missions, control is left to virtual crewmen and all you do is command. There are plenty of hints and info on what to do next from your first officer alongside you. Your main crewmen sitting in front of you control the helm and weapons. You can get manual weapon control but at first it is safer to allow the crewman to do it all. There are many submenus to target any enemy ship’s specific systems and not simply destroy. You can jump outside your ship to view the action at any time too. Nice touch, like flight sims.
The missions are a bit tedious. While there is action it is well integrated into a storyline that may have you doing mundane things like transporting supplies and aiding vessels in distress. Enemy ships that you must deal with as you see fit may have caused that distress call.
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| Cmdr. Data on your Sovereign's deck |
Many “on screen” messages prompt you as to what is going on and your First Officer always knows what you should do next. It is a lot of talking though and the missions draw out like a TV episode. But Bridge Commander is true to the atmosphere of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is to say heavy emphasis on dialogue and somewhat less emphasis on weapons. It’s not just a shoot’ em up. You must think more than in a naval sim.
In fact if just one minor mission goal is not achieved you get dressed down by the Admiral and are sent back to washing space ships on Uranus. This can make for frustrating times. At any rate, you must run the mission again in order to progress. The good thing is that the program automatically saves at intervals that allow the player to resume at a point before he screwed up.
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| Your Galaxy Class ship- mission goal not achieved! |
The missions actually link together in a seamless transition to the next episode. It’s more of a chronicle of events that you move through. Think of it more as a nuclear submarine simulation where you go out for extended periods without the need to return to base after every incident. You have near unlimited power and stores for long periods of operations. The episodic nature is different and the next phase/mission/episode flows evenly with the storyline. Difficulty intensifies as you progress, of course. If you do well you get a Sovereign Class ship like the Enterprise, which really kicks some butt.
There are eight episodes each with a few sub-missions within them. I’ve reached the fifth so far and look forward to do better after finishing and beginning again.
Panning the mouse about the deck and clicking on each person for suggestions and to give orders from temporary menus accesses your crew. They guide you somewhat as to what they should be doing. Helm, weapons, science and engineering personnel, along with your first officer, can all be called upon. Systems can boost power to 120 percent when you need it.
You must act quickly at times to protect ships and stations. If you fail, your first officer rats you out to the admiral like a Gestapo agent and you’re in the doghouse ending the mission and your reign as captain. You must restart at the last save to regain your honor. After a short while you’ll want to reach over and simulatedly strangle her virtual neck.
There are women crewmembers as mentioned and other quite competent females encountered in the sim so any sexist players may be perturbed that it is not an all-macho experience. Your boss, Admiral Liu, is a woman too and she’ll rip you a new one if you screw up. It’s not just chorus girls on leave in London any more guys!
What About Mods?
There is no user-friendly file structure for modders to go crazy with like Star Trek Armada I & II. About all that seemingly can be easily done is texturing changes to the already excellent objects in the game. Adding weapons and such at first look seems to be hard-coded in the execute file. On the CD itself are some files that look interesting and could probably be modified given some experimentation. You might be able to switch ships without too much trouble and all the sounds are in .WAV format, which are easy to modify if so desired. It would be nice to give your Sovereign cloaking ability!
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| Your phasers rake a huge Cardassian Keldon Class |
Throughout the campaign or quick battles there is an unnerving, minor flaw. While the good sound effects of the results if hits of enemy weapons fire is heard and the screen correctly shakes, you can often hear the strikes from your weapons on the enemy vessels. Wait a minute. This is space and explosions can be heard twenty kilometers away in a hermetically sealed ship? You can’t hear .50 caliber or 20 millimeter hits on an aircraft 350 yards away in ancient earth aerial combat, so why here? It’s one thing to view a TV or cinema feature and experience that as a spectator but it doesn’t feel right on the bridge of a space simulation. Then again, you’re getting hit often enough to only hear your ship’s groans. OK, lets say sensors pick all that up and be done with it.
Bridge Commander does produce immersion. I found it somewhat similar to a naval sim but more need for subtle decision-making in that there are crew inputting information and dialogue to you opposed to a flight sim where it is you alone in the cockpit with your fate in your own hands. You can achieve this in quick battles, though. So when you get sick of the chatter and talking heads on the view screen you can brawl with enemy ships mano-a-mano. It’s sort of like going to the holodeck and escaping the rigors of a large command. The three levels of difficulty in single and campaign modes will produce plenty of challenge for the lifespan of your purchase. Since you can get more involved in directing the pertinent bridge stations as you wish, experience gathered will contribute to the longevity of the game. The quick battles allow for nine enemy ships and ten friendly ships producing wild battles royal to keep things very interesting.
Graphically Bridge Commander makes no compromises and you will not be disappointed. No fake looking terrain or water. Everything in space was perfect. It ran smooth as silk.
Bridge Commander isn’t like adding a combat flight sim for the Pacific after you’ve flown a couple centered in Europe. It’s different but entertaining producing a break from the old. The average COMBATSIM reader would probably say, “This is all right, but Falcon 4.0 is more ME.” I’d say wait those types should wait for the title to reduce in price a tad before buying. It is a great change of pace. A patch for joystick support would be welcome and assist in making the title more “crossover” too.
Everyone, everywhere knows the Star Trek sagas and Bridge Commander allows one to feel at home with it all due to this long exposure. The last Star Wars movie I saw seemed childish and way too fantasy oriented where Star Trek is a logically written look at a possible future without being way out there all the time.
Just beware of cloaked Romulan warbirds on your tail!
Mobo: ASUS A7V133 200/266MhZ FSB / 256MB PC-133 RAM
CPU: Athlon T-Bird 1.3GHz CPU
Sound: SoundBlaster PCI 128 w/Yamaha YST-M7 speakers
Video: nVidia GeForce 2 Ultra 64 MB
OS: Windows ME w/ Direct X 8.1
Display: 17” Envision monitor .27mm dp
Media: Samsung 52X CD drive
HDrive: Maxtor 27 GB 7,200 RPM
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