Star Trek: Bridge Commander

Star Trek: Bridge Commander takes place shortly after the Dominion Wars of DS9.  After the grudging surrender of the Dominion, the many forces and factions who conspired in the war against the Federation were severely sanctioned.  While basically allowing the Cardassians, Breen, and Gorn off with a slap on the wrist, the Federation higher-ups were fully aware that the Cardassians were not to be trusted and would thus keep a close eye on them.  This game takes place in a time of much sought after peace in the Alpha Quadrant, but in the wake of such great conflict inevitably comes the desire to punish or restrict the losing regimes.

The game introduces a race called the Kessok who are apparently allied with the Cardassians.  It will be up to you to figure out to what end this newly founded relationship will result in.  As you progress through the game you will learn bite-sized bits of information until eventually, the big picture comes into focus.  The storyline truly is Star Trek-caliber, coming together impeccably in the conclusion.

The 3D model rendering of each starship is very richly detailed, looking nearly photo-realistic as it were.  The combat visuals in the controllable 3^rd person view and effects of the phasers and torpedoes placed against the backdrop of realistically detailed galaxies and nebulas are awe-inspiring and look as if they were ripped straight out of a TNG episode. 

Target specific damage is present and it is possible to tear entire pieces off ships with a few well-placed quantum torpedoes.  The menu system is laid out in a very intuitive fashion, replicating almost perfectly what you would expect to see in the Star Trek Universe.  Character models are textured with very believable faces and at higher resolutions look very well done.

While for the most part the visuals are stirring and impressive, at times you will notice a few technical blemishes that will prevent you from completely buying into the Bridge Commander universe.  Atmospheric textures look quite faded and bland up close, your tactical officer’s hands will sometimes go right through the control display board, and facial animations consist of little more then a few simple animations.  Some graphical glitches arise on lower resolutions, the text on the LCARS control panel were at times unintelligible or completely missing at 640-480 mode resulting in the inability to know which buttons do what.  The game was tested at 1280-1024dpi on a GeForce chipset and an ATI Radeon chipset but graphical problems only seemed to be present on the Radeon. 

Music is composed mainly of sweeping orchestrated scores that have a heavy feel of the music found in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Every buzz and beep within the game sounds genuinely authentic relative to the TNG show.  Before each episode, you will witness a private log entry from each of your crewmembers that help you to become better acquainted with each unique personality under your command.  The game also has voice recognition support, which I did not have the opportunity to take advantage of, but the dynamics of the system would prove to be perfectly suited for this mode of play since you never hear the captain giving verbal commands and replies of the crew are based upon the orders you give.

Voice acting is very well delivered and their respective real life counterparts do the roles of Data and Jean Luc Picard.  At times however, voice actors lines will walk all over the script of other peoples lines depending on the actions you take which are triggered by certain events.

Gameplay consists mainly of issuing orders to the various crewmembers.  This is done by moving your first-person POV to turn and face the crewmember you wish to issue a command to and then clicking on that person.  After clicking on the person you want to give an order to you will be presented with a LCARS menu system of that particular person.  If you want to engage a ship in combat you’ll have to order a command to your Commanding Officer to switch into a code-red alert which will then power up your shields and weapons, at which point (depending on the situation) you’ll be required to order your Helm Officer to intercept the opposing target to get within combat range.  After that, it will be up to your Tactical Officer to engage the enemy and either destroy or disable the enemy ship.  Combat consists mainly of issuing a few simple commands and then sitting back and watch the battle ensue.  Although if the tedium of the battle sequences starts to wear on you, you can override your tactical officers controls and manually engage the enemy yourself.  STBC is not only about combat however, there are a few instances where stealth tactics are preferred over straight on confrontational methods.  Forgetting to set the intercept course or changing into a red alert often times results in failure of a objective, its very easy to overlook small things like this at first but once you get comfortable with the control layout these things will become second nature to you.

As a starship captain you will be required to follow Federation protocol in almost everything that you do, if you fail to reply to a distress signal your first in command will relieve you of duty and its games over.  It will be necessary to dock at starbase 12 on multiple occasions to refit your starship with any upgrades or repair any damages that previous battles may have caused.

While you can pretty much go through the entire game with every crewmember set to autopilot, you can also override their control panel and manually execute each order.  In addition, every command can be mapped to various hotkeys as well, which comes in useful for those times when time is crucial. Real-time battles require a certain sense of planning due to the fact that you can target specific sub-systems of each ship, adding a real sense of strategy to the game.  If your engaged in combat with a Klingon Bird of Prey for example you might want to target it’s cloaking device so as to prevent the ship from executing any surprise attacks.

The game follows a somewhat linear progression in that the story will unfold in a preset fashion.  Although at times, you will be confronted with ultimatums that can change the outcome of the situation.  STBC presents the story through ‘episodes’, each episode will require you to perform different tasks but are more often then not combat oriented.  At any time you can ask any member of your crew to ‘report’ which will prompt them to give you their ideas or opinions on a particular situation.  You may also want to check with your commanding officer every now and again since she has the objective information and can always explain it to you.

At times mission objectives can be ambiguous, forcing you to replay scenes multiple times.  This can get quite annoying since you do not have the option to save whenever you want, rather, the game relies on save-points to track your progress.  Your progress will automatically be saved after every episode.

Instead of your standard issue difficulty setting like Easy, Normal or Hard – Star Trek: Bridge Commander replaces those default settings with First Officer, Captain, and Admiral.  So if you wanna wuss out and play the game on easy mode you can retain your dignity; it sounds much better to say “I beat the game on Captain Mode”, then it does to say “I beat the game on easy mode’.

Aside from the story mode, you also have the option to create battle simulations in which you can set up a quick fight against a host of selectable starships and starbases.  By default, you will have a very large assortment of spacecrafts to choose from and you can even command non-federation ships.  Also there is a multiplayer option that allows you to fight an opponent over the internet, although the network code is a tad buggy.

Part way through the game you will have the ability to pilot the Sovereign; a prototype Galaxy class starship.  Becoming familiar with the new layout that the Sovereign requires is done through an innovative method that fits flawlessly into the story which has you to participate in a mock-combat simulation (offensive weaponry is set to 1/1000 of their normal power) with a Federation and Klingon ship that just happens to be in the area.

Giving you the option to, say, chase after an attacking Cardassian ship or obeying your orders and protecting a federation outpost act as an interesting diversion and give you the impression that you have full control over the situation.  This is something that the folks at Activision really did a good job in, after all you are in command of a starship. 

Star Trek: Bridge Commander is easily the most enjoyable game of the series.  With so many missed attempts at bringing the excitement and wonder of the show to an interactive electronic form it seams only statistically probable that eventually an entertaining game bearing the namesake of the franchise would kick ass, and STBC is without a doubt that game.

Install: Easy
The game seems to be somewhat of a memory-hog, locking the game up after prolonged use and sometimes forcing you to reboot the system.  Aside from this rare occurrence and the aforementioned graphical glitches, I found nothing in the way of technical problems in the game. 

Gameplay: 8
Gameplay is wonderfully executed, no sub-menus or layered controls here, everything is layed out on main panels and any task you want to perform is within arms length.  Controlling your ship and giving orders is as fun as you would expect it really would be. 

Graphics: 7
Some graphical glitches do arise on lower resolutions but other then that the game looks flawless.  The 3D renderings of each starship nearly perfectly recreates their on-screen counterparts and the battles are engaging and beautifully done.

Sound: 9
Everything from your crewmembers replies to the electrical beeps of your control console sound genuine to its source material.  Voice actor’s scripts can sometimes overlap but this is rare.  Music is composed of inspiring orchestrated scores that will harken back to the days of watching TNG.

Difficulty: 6
While the game is somewhat short-lived due to its linear nature the multiplayer and mock battle simulations may justify a prolonged life span on your harddrive.  Expect around 8 full hours of game time to get through the campaign mode.

Concept: 7 
This is not the first game to be based on the Star Trek universe but it is irrefutably the best, practically reinventing the franchise in the digital world.  The story is also nothing to sneeze at, the developers obviously spent many pain staking hours concocting this one up, and believe me it’s a doozie.

Multiplayer: Internet play 6

You are forced to view the multiplayer battle sequences from the third person perspective but since they game allows you to pilot a host of ships, including non-federation, this can be easily overlooked.  The network code is sometimes flaky, crashing without warning, but it is a nice addition nonetheless.

Overall: 8.8
It would have been nice to be able to get up from the captains chair every now and then to walk around the bridge while your commanding your crew, or have the option to meet up with temporarily allied forces in places other then your super-glued captains chair vantage point.  That would have given the game a more immersive, realistic feel, but as it stands the current fixed view does get the job done.  With all the facets of the Star Trek universe that the developers were able to successfully integrate into an enjoyable game its easy to overlook the few instances where the potential was not fully realized.