Star Trek: Encounters

"Star Trek meets Asteroids... Trekkers everywhere rejoice."

Overview

It used to be a general rule-of-thumb that any game released under the Star Trek franchise would be, well, pretty damn bad. The best titles of the franchise were mediocre, but quickly became popular to fans simply because they were better than previous Star Trek incarnations had been--namely, Star Trek Armada, Starfleet Command, Starfleet Academy, etc.

Now, after 40 years of mediocrity, that trend is starting to change. This year, in time for the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, three new games are being released: Star Trek Legacy, for the XBox 360 and PC, Star Trek Tactical Assault for the PSP and Nintendo DS, and finally Star Trek Encounters for the PS2.

Gameplay

Star Trek encounters is a very simple game that plays much like one would expect of a next-gen version of the old arcade favourite, Asteroids. You control your ship, which is always centered in the middle of the screen, and rotate from side to side to shoot at enemies that approach from every possible direction. You can also move your ship up or down on the Z axis, but doing so is rarely necessary and does not to much to help or hinder playing the game. You view all of the action from a typical top-down perspective.

To attack, you can use phasers or photon torpedos. You have a narrow targeting field that you swivel around the screen to lock on to various targets. This can be particularly frustrating as you will often find yourself struggling to keep both the ship and the targeting field oriented while you lock on (R2) and fire (R1).

The most interesting aspect of gameplay is the variety. You over thirty different starships to choose from, taken from each of the 5 Star Trek Television series and movies. The basic weapons do not vary--you have phasers/disruptors and torpedos. However, there are a number of special, "Trekky" weapons you can use. You can lay mines throughout the field, you can beam away teams to enemy vessels, and even use a tractor beam to move enemy ships or mines to wherever you want.

You are also able to allocate power to different systems: engines, weapons, shields and sensors.

Gameplay is divided into 2 areas: episode mode (story) and arcade-mode. Arcade-mode is pretty simple. You can fight unlimited waves of progressively stronger enemy craft, you can fight an opponent of your own choice, or you can play against a friend with a splitscreen multiplayer mode.

The biggest problem with gameplay is the loading time. Each mission can take whole minutes to load. This can get very very old, very very fast. Fortunately, when you "die" or restart the mission, you do not have to sit through 2-and-a-half minutes of loading-screen boredom.

Graphics

The graphical quality of Star Trek Encounters is, while not the best, pretty good. Planets look real, the ships are well-detailed, and everything moves like you would expect. You can really tell the difference between a 80 meter bird of prey and an 800 meter Galaxy-class starship. The ship models themselves are beautiful--fully detailed with windows, escape pods and wonderful lighting effects.

The Starfields are particularly detailed, having at least 3 different layers of movement that do an excellent job of providing the illusion of speed.

Cloaking, however, is very, very ugly.

The most impressive aspect of the game, graphics-wise, are the explosions. They're stunning. The problem with the explosions is the color. They are green. When oxygen burns, it burns red. Given the... tenacity of certain trekkers, it seems foolish for Bethesda to have overlooked this detail.

Audio

The sound in the game is pretty average. All of the weapons and technology sound exactly like what you'd hear on TV. However, none of the original star trek music is in the game. Instead, we are treated to simple instrumental tracks, that while different, still manage to capture the general feel of Star Trek.

The only voice in the game is that of William Shatner. He narrates a few sentences at the start of each mission. Everything else you need to know is handled with text, which can get pretty dull really fast.

Story

The game has an "episode mode" that you must clear to unlock new ships and areas. You start in the Enterprise era, then go to the Original Star Trek series era, then to the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. The final 2 missions take place in "Star Trek Sovereign"--where you are able to command the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E from the recent movies. There is no real story to speak of.

Final Comments

Encounters is a decent game, however it has many problems. The controls are awkward-at-best, the camera angle is awkward, the loading times are absurd and above all else the gameplay is far too simple.

For a non-trekker, the game consists of blowing thing up. The things that you blow up look different, and the thing you use to blow those things up looks different, but other than that there's no variety.

A trekker will revel in the nostalgic feel of seeing and operating the various Starships. But that's about it.

The sad part is, this game could have very easily been much better. If the camera were a more tradition trail-cam, and the targeting system were replaced with a more simple "auto-lock and follow" mechanic, the game would not only have been much more fun to play, it would have looked better too.

This game is slightly above average in quality, but because of it's flaws and limited appeal, does not (in my opinion) warrant a score any higher than 6/10.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 10/23/06