Star Trek: Shattered Universe

"Star Trek? They call THIS Star Trek?"

In short - this game is horrible. Don't bother buying it, blow five bucks renting it if you really want to. I woulden't waste my time or money, except I already did by renting it. This was my mistake, which I am hoping to pass on, so as to save someone else five bucks.

By the numbers:

Gameplay: 1.
Okay. Let's compare this game to the very best of it's kind; Wing Commander: Prophecy.

In Prophecy, you're in control of one of six or so highly diverse, highly specialized fighters. You have a general 'space superiority' fighter, you have a light and heavy bomber, you have an interceptor, you have an engagement fighter, and a scout.

In Star Trek: Shattered Galaxy, you get various fighters... Only they're all generic, with no differences. They all fire two bolts of energy as one weapon, fire a phaser beam or two phaser beams as the second, and fire an utterly useless 'torpedo' as the third. All of them. Even the ships from other races act exactly like the fighters from your Empire. Yes, you get to fly the other races' fighters. No, there's nothing different about them.

In Wing Commander: Propecy, your ships carry a wide variety of armaments that have uses for their own niche - the heavy cannon on the bomber will swat a fighter in one hit if you can make the shot, but it's made to hammer capital ships, the laser cannons are made to engage fighters, etcetera.

In Star Trek: Shattered Galaxy, the phaser beams are the only weapons worth using, because scoring a hit with your burst-beams is nigh impossible.

In Wing Commander: Prophecy, you have fighters capable of obscene speeds, capable of making strafing runs to devestate capital ships. You can go anywhere from stalled to rocket-boost speed.

In Star Trek: Shattered Galaxy, you have three speeds. Forward, which is what you get if you're not holding a thrust button, speed forward which isen't much, and reverse. Believe it or not, reverse is the one you'll be using most - You'll just be holding down the forward speed button by default, to actually GET anywhere. You don't build up speed. You have three speed settings. And no, the laws of physics don't apply. You can go from full forward to full reverse instantly, which makes doding shots that someone was leading an absoloutle breeze.

In Wing Commander: Prophecy, going at high speeds generally protects you from capital ship fire. You're going faster than anything can possibly hit from a 'stationary' position.

In Star Trek: Shattered Galaxy, your speed is useless. Capital ships fire beams that will whack off a third to a half of your shields in one go (on Easy mode,) and they fire like phaser banks from TNG, not phaser emitters from TOS (which is what they should be.) In short, there's almost no way to protect yourself from these beasts, and you are frequently called upon to destroy entire capital ships by yourself. Your only hope is to hit the Reverse button at the right time and dodge the shot. Good luck.

In Wing Commander: Propecy, your wing men act like they have a normal brain. You HAVE wingmen, in Wing Commander: Prophecy. They follow your orders, they back you up.

In Star Trek: Shattered Galaxy, you are frequently alone, and in the rare missions where there are friendly fighters in the skies, you're still alone. They don't take orders from you, they don't back you up, they don't go after the mission targets, they kind of just mill around the (all-too-frequently crippled) ISS Excelsior and occasionally take a (missed) potshot at enemy fighters.
Which means it falls entirely on your shoulders to protect the Excelsior, to complete the mission, and basically to do everything.

About those mission targets: They're insane. The first few levels weren't so bad, all things considered. Enemy fighters were numerous, but generally occupied shooting Excelsior or your friendly fighters (decoys, as I call them,) and they were relatively few in number. Shooting up an Akula class cutter was challenging, but not all that hard, because finding the blind spot in it's defenses is easy. (Here's a hint. When shooting any Federation ship, take down her shields and get between her naccelles. The blind spot is always there.)

Then they started throwing FOUR Constitution-class starships at you - IN ONE GO. Granted, they were pre-refit, but they hit like they were modern ships, with the added 'bonus' of not even firing from the fixed points that the other ships did, which means the blind spot was nearly impossible to find. And there were four of them.

Remember what I said about capital ships and doing it all by yourself? Yep. That's still in effect.

Graphics: 4.
Okay, I'm split on this one.
On one hand, the ship graphics are excelent, and look proper. On the other, the phasers and torpedos are the WRONG COLOR, and the torpedos are the only weapons that look truely convincing to the TOS movies. Also, the CGIs are horrible. Absoloutly horrible. They have quality of the CGI sequences of the bridge that frankly, I would have expected from a late Playstation 1 game. They would've been better off going to Paramount and digging up the Excelsior and Enterprise bridge sets from the TOS movies, and doing these parts live-action.
The only redeeming quality about the CGIs is that the lip-synch is perfect.
The ships look good when they're being damaged, they look really good - but when they explode, there's nothing. Just a counter on your screen counting down to warp core breach, which was a nice touch (and is your cue to get out of Dodge,) but when they DO explode, it's just a white burst of light, and the computer deletes the model. (they don't even give us a good sound effect. Just a sound that builds up and dies out.) Where's the horrific EXPLOSION, where's my flaming debris?! I went to the trouble of blowing up an entire Starship, I want some flaming debris for my troubles...

Sound: 6.
Okay. Let's set the records straight here. They completly botched this. The weapons don't sound right, the explosion sounds are nonexistant, the ships don't even sound right when they move. This game earned a 1 in this section on it's own merits... However, as a Trekkie, the fact that they got George Takei and Walter Koenig (Sulu and Checkov, respectivly,) to voice-act their parts is worth an unknown number. This evens it out, sort of.

Storyline: 4.
Okay, I admit I hardly got anywhere in the story before the extreme difficulty of playing on Easy mode frustrated me into going back to play Zone of the Enders: the 2nd Runner... But from what I've seen, the (somewhat contrived) storyline lives up to Trek. Bonus points for including the M-5 computer from TOS.

Let's even this out...

Gameplay: 1 (and I would've given them a negative number in this catagory if I could have,)
Graphics: 4
Sound: 6
Storyline: 4
1 + 4 + 6 + 4 = 15/4= 3.75.

Which is still too high for this game, in my opinion, so I'm going to round it down to 3. Please note, ladies and gentlemen who are reading this, that this game recieved a 1 in the Gameplay catagory. I cannot stress this enough; this game is pure eye-candy and frenetic stick-waggling. If you want to hear George Takei and Walter Koenig talking, please go rent a copy of Star Trek II through V.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/04