Star Trek: Armada Review

The Star Trek serial, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary a long time ago, is defiantly an often-discussed subject. Only its immense popularity can be blamed for nine movies and countless episodes. Yet there is always someone who dislikes the idea of the story of an entire universe taking place on a relatively small command bridge (and two or three locations more). The starchy, lawful federation officers and their typical indecisiveness in conflicts do tend to get somewhat monotonous, but I think that that uneasy atmosphere perfectly shows how small we are in comparison to space.

Let's kick some ass!

Who are they!

This disproportion between its vastness and our admittedly increasing boundaries kindles imagination making everyone interpret the storyline in their own way. This is supported by the fact that the series goes back to the time when colored, blinking light bulbs and hitting tin buckets with a hammer were considered to be high-tech special effects (someone said that big computers with thousands of flashing light bulbs will never be manufactured in the future because no one could ever think of a plausible function for all those light bulbs. I concur).

For those of you who intended to stop reading the review after the introduction and rest their brains on a Nietzsche, I'll immediately give the overall conclusion: The quality of Star Trek movies may be disputable, but the quality of Activision's Star Trek games certainly isn't; they are all mediocre, and some are even worse.

Activision has been active, but not overzealous. It made adventures - both 2D-point&click and 1st person action games, strategies and simulations, but their quality was sufficient only for the extreme Star Trek fans, those who could have hours of fun with a sock made dummy slightly resembling one of the captains. Starfleet Command was a sign that things were going for the better, but it still required vivid imagination in players because of its visual appearance.

The latest Star Trek game named "Armada" is a real-time strategy, and may prove to be the commercially most successful Star Trek game up till now. Five campaigns, with twenty missions altogether, tell the story of the Borg invasion on the Federation and its allies. An unidentified space ship comes from the future while the Federation still recovers from the aftermaths of the last war, and its captain tells Jean-Luc Picard that the Borg will succeed assimilating Earth and defeating the Federation. The ship traveled through time and emerged at the point when Borg started attacking a distant outpost. After passing a comment that the "How To Become A Tedious Starship Captain" manual strictly forbids using time travel, Captain Picard (James T. Kirk was altogether a better captain, and it is inexplicable how the bold guy ever came to be the next generation of the youngest admiral in the fleet, and only one who could ever solve the Kobayashimaru test) decides to take no risks and heads towards the aforementioned outpost to stop the attack. On the other side, Admiral Worf has problems with one of his countrymen who tried provoking a civil war with some help from Romulans. The Borg is far from being discouraged by the initial failure, and manages to Trans Warp into the 001 Sector near Earth, and ensue mayhem. The first four campaigns place you in command of all four races. When played in order they give you a coherent story, but you can also choose to play any campaign regardless of if you finished the previous ones. The fifth campaign is unlocked once you've finished the other four. In it, the Federation uses time travel again to prevent the catastrophe between Romulans and Klingons.

This misuse of time continuum is a bit annoying, but then again, the storyline is certainly not the game's main trump; its precise graphics, on the other hand, are. Detailed models of all ships appearing in the movies have been rendered into the game, and they can look really magnificent with some help from a 3D accelerator card. The space is full of space ships, asteroid fields, planets and various nebulas, which can function as tactical positions beside their decorative function. The third dimension is utterly disregarded and spaceships move in one plain like sea-vessels. The camera is highly customizable and can zoom in on objects giving you really fascinating scenes at times.

As for the units, Activision could have done a better job. Four races, each with a specific arsenal, make up for the altogether insufficient number of units: each fraction has four standard ships, two capital ships, one secret weapon and two supporting vessels (resource gatherer and builder). The usual flaw of RTS that allowed the players to mass up only the strongest units and forget about other ones was avoided by giving each ship a very useful special weapon. These "specialties" will mark the key differences between the races: Klingons and Romulans will count on their ships' stealth abilities, while the Borg will always construct ships that can transport a big crew because its usual tactics consist out of teleporting the crew to an enemy ship and then taking it over. This will often make you apply different tactics, sometimes it will prove to be smarter to disable the enemies engines and shields and then finish him off slowly, but sometimes you will have to use full firepower and blast him away before he gets the chance to come too near.

Blow this motherfucker up!

Nice environments.

The Federation Nebula Class ship can use the Gemini effect to temporarily create two identical federation ships out of one, while the Klingon Fek'lhr Class ship produces a war cry that makes all Klingon ships incomparably more powerful in battle. The Romulans have the ability to use cloaking devices, and the Borg's notorious Cube can use its ray to disable an enemy ship and in time assimilate it into its collective mind. The buildings are also few in numbers - 3 defensive structures, 2 research facilities, 3 factories and the command station. Their appearance changes depending on the race, but their functions basically remain the same.

The interface is simple and easy to use, but it can get a bit uncomfortable because of constant menu switching. One of the notable commands is "Search And Destroy" which saves the time when you have to clean up the remaining forces of the already defeated enemy. There is a useful little display that shows you the most important off-screen events. Animations appear frequently using the game's engine and improve the games dynamics. They are occasionally mixed with static pictures that affect their appearance.

The sound is another one of the game's trumps. The sound effects are excellent; the unit sounds are specific and appropriate for each race and ship. They include some famous movie quotes.

The computer is a predictable opponent. It is very dangerous when it manages to outnumber you and as this is frequently the case, certain missions will take a lot of time. This is where the game gets seriously different from its model: The Star Trek serial is well known for one-on-one battles between capital ships. However, battles with ten to twenty ships on screen are typical for the genre, and not necessarily a bad thing.

The multiplayer mode supports Internet and LAN. There are 28 maps for 2-8 players. The players can join in teams before the game, or change diplomacy settings whilst in game. There is no scenario editor.

The global impression is that Activision did a good job. Our favorite characters finally appear in a playable game. The game still seems to be incomplete because of the small number of units and structures, and it has an air of plasticity about it (my expression used for describing the feeling of eating soup with a plastic spoon - its neither smooth nor realistic).

And last, but unfortunately not the least, comes the problem some players will not even notice, but the majority will. The game refuses to work with a great number of video adapters, either it throws you straight back to your desktop, or it loads the mission and crashes after you start playing. A patch appeared recently solving problems with some accelerator cards. That is why it would be a prudent choice to check the game's site @ www.st-armada.com before actually acquiring the game. Activision obviously knew about these problems before releasing the game because the game ships with a safe-mode that uses the least of drivers and relieves you of the joy of playing the game with full 3D effects. You can finish the game in this mode if you wish but that would be a waste of time because it really looks ugly that way. Weather this drawback came to be because of publishing deadlines or just because Activision wanted to preserve its less than flattering reputation, we may never know. What we can see for sure is another promising game being blown by incompetent programming. Future patches may correct these problems, but until then, you will just have to increase the traffic of the official ST-Armada site.