Final Thoughts

[Pix]

#4862

I’d played through this a couple of times in the past but it had been ages so I didn’t remember it in too much detail. Going back again, I’ve got mixed feelings and didn’t enjoy the game quite as much as I expected to. I like the ship combat – it’s a bit simplistic but not overused so it doesn’t get old. The enemy AI leaves a bit to be desired providing a useful exploit I stumbled into on the last mission. I really don’t like the score feeding into the ship performance. If you are going to improve the ship performance through the adventuring sections it should be by solving puzzles, not arbitrarily examining everything. The fact that there isn’t a visible score counter makes this feature worse still – you need feedback on when you score if you are going with that system. I’d much prefer they were just kept independent of each other. I knew I needed a decent score in each mission so it’s like having a threat hanging over me the whole game stopping me from just settling into playing the adventure segments normally.

The puzzles in the game are a mixed bag. A number of them simply felt like trial and error to me. The episodic nature lets it get away with this by keeping things small but it’s not ideal. There are a few dead ends in there and the adventuring is closer to the Sierra approach than Lucasarts but not quite as well designed in my eyes.

Complaints aside, I still love the game just for the atmosphere. Having the original cast is amazing for a game of this era, the Star Trek-ness of the whole thing is fantastic for a fan of the series. I did think the episodes were possibly a little too short – there wasn’t really much opportunity to get a decent plot going before they finished. Overall, it’s a very good, but not great game for me. The sequel dealt with most of my issues from what I recall. That ditched the combat altogether and tied some of the episodes together into a larger overall plot.

[Tijn]

#4863

That’s a nice write up, Rich!

I’ve never played this before myself, but I just beat the first mission. It seems pretty simple, so I wonder if it gets any more challenging later on.

The atmosphere is really great though. It’s amazing how it combines Wing Commander-like space combat with point & click adventuring. I really feel like I’m in a Star Trek episode, which I suppose is the whole point, so that really works!

[Tijn]

#4866

I’ve now completed 4 missions, which I think means I’ve seen over half the game now.

I feel the first couple of missions were quite good, albeit a bit short. But the last two I did felt a bit random tbh. Especially this last one, I was mostly clueless on what I was doing most of the time. It seemed I made progress by simply walking around a bit?

The game itself isn’t bad at all and I love the atmosphere. I do hope the next missions are a bit better though. It’s more fun when you feel you know what you’re doing imho

[Pix]

#4867

The quality of puzzle design does vary a lot. I wonder if the missions were done independently by different people?

The seventh and last mission was really brief in the original floppy game but extended for CD – that might have been my favourite of the lot.

[Tijn]

#4868

Also so far my score has always either been 62% or 97%. No middle ground haha

[Shattered]

#4872

I played this game as a child but don’t remember very much. I do however remember an impossible ship fight I couldn’t win at the end no matter how many times I tried. I guess now that I know your scores tie in with ship performance, it makes sense that I was never intended to beat it. How was I supposed to know?

I do remember too the red shirt guys always dying haha. My red shirt just got hit by a rock and died so I reloaded. I don’t think I would have reloaded when I was younger (which explains why I couldn’t beat the game).

Hoping I’ll get time to continue playing missions. Are you guys having as much fun with it as the other adventure games this year?

[KeePay]

#4967

I almost finished this game in the allotted month. I probably would have if I hadn’t been sobusy with other stuff. This game definitely has some charm. It feels very much like Star Trek, especially with the inclusion of all of the original cast members’ voices (though some seemed to be phoning it in a bit). I get why they made the game epsiodic but it didn’t really appeal to me very much, the adventure sections are over before you know it. There is also a wild difference in difficulty in the puzzles: Sometimes you are almost litteraly told what to do, but sometimes you have to just have a lucky guess (like with the antidote in mission 3) or be some kind of downright genius (the door combination in mission 6).

As mentioned before I was also not big on the scoring system because:
A. You don’t know why you should care during the game.
B. There’s no way of knowing until the mission is over.
C. It includes a lot of tedious typing everything into the computer before the mission and using the tricorder on everything during the mission.

The ship combat was also a nuisance. I haven’t done the supposedly impossible last mission yet, but the ones leading up to it are pretty doable if you just keep oscillating your speed. I usually end up salmming the brakes, lining up the enemy ship. Fire phasers and torpedoes and ram right through them (because there is no collision detection). Though crude this approach has won me every battle. You could say it doesn’t compare very nicely compared to games like Wing Commander. The first thing I did was look up if there was a way to skip the battles. Apparently there was a patch, but it doesn’t work properly on the latest version of the game.

All in all I thought the game was OK, it didn’t leave me as satisfied as with more recognized classics, but it’s a nice little snack for a Star Trek fan. I just wish there were less, but longer episodes, or just one long continuous story. Apparently the sequel is better so I may check that one out as well.