Star Trek: New Worlds Review

During the game, the player controls colonists that take care of various needs within the colony, as well as senior staff officers that can be assigned to a particular object or vehicle. These characters can receive certain bonuses depending on their specialty. For instance, the Ops Specialist makes the unit he is assigned to more efficient in praxis. The Doctor can increase the efficiency of the Sickbay, but he can be also be called upon to perform special tasks during the mission. The Science Specialist's function is similar, only his duties are related to the Science Station. If you have a Chief Engineer on the field, he will shorten the time it takes to repair a shield, vehicle. or any other object. The game has a wide choice of such characters that can make the mission easier for the player.

The interface in Star Trek: New Wordls was seen many times before in similar RTS games. It basically contains a map (popularly referred to as Tricorder), and a menu on the right side of the screen, which is used for building objects and units. There are a few major flaws however. There is no "Queue" option for uninterrupted serial production of units, and there are no formation options. What's even worse is that there are no waypoints, which makes the unit control a bit difficult. Selecting units and issuing orders is often very complicated at times. Moreover, the units are very slow and have pretty lame path-finding. It's apparently easier to build a nuclear particle accelerator, than code a waypoint system for an RTS game. The menu I mentioned on the right side of the screen shows vehicles/objects and you have to search the menu in order to find the desired unit (which sucks to be honest).

Advancing through the game is somewhat dull and routine. Most of the technologies can be developed in the first two missions. If you want to build a more advanced unit, you must upgrade a structure to the next level. Everything the game has to offer atmosphere-wise, can be seen in the first few missions. After that, it just gets reptitive. At this point you'll realize that the offers an average gameplay experience. Still, I have to admit that it presented a few interesting solutions in terms of unit experience. The audio track is good, and the voiceovers are excellent.

Call it blasphemy if you want, but the Star Trek engine vaguely resembles that gorgeous 3D RTS, Earth 2150. Lighting effects, terrain detail, and weather conditions look very nice, but the units and vehicles definitely need more work. The quality of the visuals mostly depends on the zoom degree - if you zoom in too much, you wont be able to tell which unit is which. If you zoom out all the way, you won't be able to control them. Such contradictions can be found in other aspects of the game as well.

Star Trek: New Worlds is clearly an an unfinished game. We have yet to see whether the patch will remedy some of these problems. Well, quite frankly, there are too many obvious flaws and bugs, so it's going to have to be one helluva patch...