U.S.S. Ticonderoga

"Incoming!!!!"

U.S.S. Ticonderoga is a strategy based off the ship, Ticonderoga. It was made in 1996 by Mindscape. You play the captain of the ship, and go through missions, with 3 to choose from. However, this game is hard to control, and does not come with a game guide.

Gameplay: 8/10 The idea of U.S.S. Ticonderoga is simple-beat the missions. There are 3 campaigns, each with its own series of missions, based in the Persian Gulf, North Korea, or NATO. On the control map you see your ship as a white dot. Enemies come in red. To order your ship to do something, you select High Level Orders, and can give them an AI, or specifically tell them to attack another ship/plane/sub. If you give orders to attack an enemy, your ship will shoot out little missles that head towards that enemy. When traveling, you can change the speed of your ship. Sometimes you blow up buildings, or use diplomacy, or just have a good ol' kill everything. U.S.S. ticonderoga is 1/3 Skill, 1/3 Strategy, and 1/3 Diplomacy.

Graphics: 9/10
The graphics are excellent, and are probably the best of the time era. While in the ship, you may wander around, and see the inside. The ship's interior is gorgeous, and gives you the feel of actually being the ship. The interface is much like that of Myst. Now, when you battle, the video scenes that appear when an event happens are spectacular. The detail given to the scenes are amazing. You may also choose to play video scenes, and can watch all the different battle sequences in the game. When you fail terribly, or die, there are special scenes.

Sound: 7/10
The sound quality of this game, while good, isn't that great. The music is patriotic, and doesn't seem to get repetitive, and gives you a true feeling of being on the high seas. The voice acting is also a plus, with every line spoken. The effects of missiles fired, and shouts of “INCOMING” are great. However, the one thing that prevented this from being higher than a 7 was the scratchiness of the sound. The sound is not quite that crisp, but overall, it won't hurt your gaming experience.

Controls: 3/10
This is the hard and annoying part of the game. However, once you know the controls, it isn't so bad anymore. To walk around the ship, you simply click in the direction you want to go. Or you could choose the room you want to go to. The main part of the game comes in the control screen, where you see a circle (Bunker Hill, your ship), other white circles (ships you control), and circles of varying colors. To attack other ships, you must click on High Level Orders, in the toolbar at the top. However, since there is nothing to tell you to do that, it is hard to figure out what to do. Without HLO, your ship sits there, and gets blown to pieces. Even when you do figure out HLO, it is still confusing. The computer has to do everything for you; you cannot manually control the ship.

Replay 1/10: There are 3 campaigns, each with a series of missions. Sometimes you battle the whole time, others, you use diplomacy and tact. Once you have beaten the missions, there is no point in going back, as there are no other difficulty levels. Overall, the game is extremely hard and frustrating. (Not to mention slow)

Overall: 7/10 This game is a great game to see what the Ticonderoga class ships look like. It also gives you a feel of being captain of a ship on high seas. However, it might not be worth the frustration it gives you when you constantly get blown up by missiles.
However, I do recommend this game to anyone who is enamored with the sea.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/13/05