Star Trek: Starfleet Command
As the captain of one of Starfleet's ships of the line, your assignments range
from routine patrol duty to full-on combat with Klingons, Romulans, Hydrans,
Lyrans or Gorn. You may eventually even attain control of a small fleet,
issuing orders to each ship in turn to accomplish your mission. Standard 23rd
century armaments like phasers and photon torpedoes are at your disposal, as are
other offensive measures as sensor decoys and suicide shuttles. But remember,
since Starfleet's the good guys, the enemy will always have more wicked
weapons than you. Stay on your toes, Captain.
(Interplay, 1999)
How can a Pixel Fiction piece be a Retro Revival? When it's based on a
pencil-paper-and-dice turn-based tactical game that's older than even Pac-Man. We're talking, of course, about
FASA's Star Fleet Battles, which served as the inspiration for this
really snazzy bit of Trek gaming. Who doesn't remember the 20-sided dice, the
hex-grid maps, and the starship markers and miniatures with the hexagonal bases?
I'd go so far as to say that Star Fleet Battles kept the Trek franchise alive in
the minds of fans the same way that Kenner's
action figures kept the faithful adhered to the Star Wars saga, even after the third movie passed with no signs of a
seuqel or prequel to come.
This flashy update of Star Fleet Battles speeds things up, but adheres to
many of the same rules of weapons, defenses, energy usage and resource
management. The helpful tutorial, narrated by George Takei himself, conveys a
lot of information. For those who are wondering, the game is set in the
movie era, at the height of Federation-Klingon-Romulan hostilities. Faithful to
the original series, the Romulans are here using Klingon ship designs with
different paint jobs - playing a Klingon vs. Romulan scenario can get very
confusing when you're looking for an ally. The game itself is engrossing,
hard-to-walk-away-from fun - just the right blend of action, tactics and
resource management that so many Star Trek games have been trying to find from
the very beginning.
A word about Starfleet Command's graphics - they're gorgeous! Not too
fancy, but then they don't need to be. The ship models are accurate and
interesting, the space backgrounds and object textures are fantastic, and the
whole thing moves with a very fluid motion at higher speeds. I haven't played
the newer Starfleet Command II yet, but hopefully they didn't screw with
the graphics engine - it was just fine. The console display graphics, based on
the style invented by Mike Okuda for Star Trek IV's Enterprise-A,
are perfectly rendered, very crisp, and actually tell you stuff you need to know
about the status of your fleet.
And another word about this game - it features original music by Ron
Jones, Star Trek: The Next Generation's
musical heavyweight for the show's first four seasons. ('Twas he who invented
the musical sound of the Borg, by the way.) The music is fantastic - in
short, it's a sound that the current Star Trek spinoffs themselves are sorely
lacking since Jones lost his gig after repeatedly disagreeing on the series'
musical direction with Rick Berman. I'm glad Interplay had the sense to track
him down and wrap up some unfinished business by scoring some Star Trek
games.
Overall, very nice - but also very complex. I find myself
impressed and befuddled at the same time while playing this one. And though I
have yet to try it myself, I hear the online multiplayer game is worth the price
of admission in and of itself...
A whole dollar - trade it in for more quarters, you'll be playing this
game a lot.
