Star Trek: The Next Generation - "A Final Unity"

The Good
As with most games of this kind, the story has to shine for it to succeed and shine it does. Without giving anything away, let's just suffice it to say that the story is any trekkie's dream. The graphics are beautiful, if a little cartoony. You'll recognize the gameplay is as simple and fun as the Indiana Jones series and the previous Star Trek adventure games by Interplay.(to clear up any misconceptions, the Indiana Jones games were made by Lucasarts.) The locations you go to are beautiful and you will encounter many races and characters. Also, you get to choose the power setting on your phaser, from 1 (light stun) to 14 (heavy disruption). The voiceovers are done by the original actors and the music is excellent.

The Bad
First, the combat was very poor. Using confusing controls to move and fire, etc. You will just allocate combat to Worf every time. Same with Engineering. It's to difficult to waste time doing on your own and Worf and Geordi are much better doing tactical and engineering respectively than any person could. Navigation is another big hassle. You are given this ENORMOUS cube within cube within cube with which to navigate the galaxy.(the game would be unplayable without the fact that usually you have an "automatic click on the name of place to go there shortcut. Using the phaser is a big disappointment. On the off-chance you bring it with you on your away-mission, all you do with it is the "melt the grate to get through vent" kind of thing. The largest problem which seems to affect nearly every game like this (the pick-up stuff to solve this kind) is the paradox of the impossible puzzle. You know, the kind where you use cheese and pencil lead to make a bomb to destroy the door. Two of these kinds of puzzles stand out in my mind now and if you get this game, be prepared to get online to get help with it. Another problem is that you cannot get killed except in the Enterprise. You can get blasted by the alien phaser turrets a zillion times and get back up 5 min. later. The game is too linear. you may be given "choices" in the game, but these just end up giving you same result as the other one. E.G. alien probe escaped from ship where away-team is, do we follow it or stay on the ship?? If you follow it, you will get this ridiculous "cutscene" where you chase 2 sec. and then it disappears. Then you go back where you came from. The game is riddled with bugs. Aside from the crashes and lock ups, this has the distinction of when you walk towards certain areas of the game will cause your character(s) to shrink(??) into nothingness and disappear.(???) Last, but not least, the game is slow. Your characters will stroll across enormous environments and don't think you won't back track through areas again and again.

The Bottom Line
If you like Star Trek games or you like star trek, you should check this out. Otherwise, it's just another average adventure game.