Star Trek: Bridge Commander

The Good
Bridge Commander finally gives star trek fans the chance to command a starship.

Graphically it could be said that it does not get better in a Star Trek single player game than in Bridge Commander. Everything has a near movie like quality to it. Ships look great with weapons/shield effects coming right out of the tv show and movies. The planets look like they have real atmospheres and stars (with real solar flares) add lots of atmosphere to the game. The buttons look just like an authentic LCARS computer system from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Sound and music are equally good in Bridge Commander. It is not often that one finds a Star Trek game where the graphics actually measure up to the sound and music. The music exceeds expectations for a Star Trek game, changing with every situation. The music makes for an exhilarating experience, especially in heated combat. It makes you savor the moment when you are winning against an enemy with a perfect music track that is even nothing short of spectacular. Graphics and sound make Bridge Commander a rewarding experience.

In addition, the gameplay in Bridge Commander is amazing. Star Trek fans have a game that plays perfectly, sounds perfect and looks perfect. This is a real treat.

The game engine is flawless, accurately simulating ship-to-ship combat in the Star Trek universe. Space is 3D, and combat takes place on three dimensions. You can target individual systems, and the enemy will do likewise. Ships break up in this game, losing nacelles or entire sections of the primary and secondary hull. To see your ship limp home after being nearly blasted to pieces is nothing short of theatrical.

Captain Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data make an appearance in this game. Data is very much in character while Picard sits beside you ready to give advice. He even smiles and looks at you when you want to hear from him.

The quick battle feature is a fantastic feature to have in a game like Bridge Commander as it allowed gamers to play the game well beyond the story-based missions. This feature gave Bridge Commander near-infinite longevity.

This game is possibly the most modifiable Star Trek game. There are lots of fan-made modifications available on the internet. These serve to greatly expand the longevity and scope of the game.

The Bad
Bridge Commander follows a linear, mission-oriented game structure limiting the use of its superior graphics and gameplay to a story-based experience.

Although the game engine makes it entirely feasible to make a real space exploration game with a fully explorable galactic game map and full starship features (warp speed, impulse speed, warp core, auxiliary power, battery, photon and quantum torpedoes, phasers, tractor beam, escape pods, shuttles, sensors, probes, etc), this is completely neglected.

There is no freedom to explore the galaxy, even though the game engine depicts fully navigable star systems with tremendous accuracy and depth. One cannot travel to Earth, Qu'nos, Cardassia or Romulus. In a game like Bridge Commander, these are easily included given the available 3D models. One cannot set warp speed, depriving gamers of the experience of pushing the warp engines beyond their limits like in the tv show or movies.

The Dominion from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are the noticeable absentee in Bridge Commander. The Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and even the Ferengi are in the game, but not the Dominion. The Dominion were one of the best Star Trek villains, to not include them in the game limited its scope and depth. With the poor reception of the game Dominion Wars, one would have thought that the Dominion would have been included in Bridge Commander, even if only found in the quick battle feature.

There is one thing I would have done with regard to the in-game graphics. The phasers are very thick and can get very bright when hitting their target. This can make it harder for some users to play the game for extended periods. In defense of the game programmers, many games over the last ten years have had this problem.

The Bottom Line
Bridge Commander is a worthwhile game. It has many features and the gameplay is superb. Battles are very well done and come right out of the tv shows and movies. This game undoubtedly gives you that "you are there" feeling. There is not much in the way of strategy in this game like you would find in Starfleet Command, but you will get a very authentic Star Trek gaming experience. The battles are just amazing to play and see. This game is highly recommended to all gamers.

The Good
STORY: After a star goes Nova - killing your Captain and wiping out a few planets in a system you are assigned to take his command as Captain and investigate the cause behind this incident. This story was written by D.C Fontana

MENU LAYOUT This is all done in the standard Trek style of orange and dull purple interfaces - it works - a bit cluttered from the added in animations - but it works.

GRAPHICS The opening render is quite ok - untill I had a closer look...firstly Captain Wright looks a lot like the Picard model - with more hair and secondly in the very nice opening credits bit of your ship being repaired one of the engines are floating in mid air. Overall the 3 rendered movies in the game are very well done but lack the polish on them to make them great. No groundbreaking - but serviceable. The ships models are loaded with detail and look very very nice, the textures on the ships are done very well as well and all add to the Trek Movie experence. The bridge is ok, it's not as interesting as detailed as the ships - and I've noticed that there appears to be a few faces missing from parts of the bridge resultining in bits flickering all the time. The people in the crew are not that interesting to look at - you have 2 aliens and 3 humans at your disposal while varied - they are just not that interesting to look at. Also the face animations are done with texture map swapping - so this leads to very bad lip synch as there are only abou 5 different forms of mouth movement. The other characters in the game seem to be all right at first - but as you progress you get the sneaking feeling that the Klingon with the scar across his eye is really just a modified texture of another captain you see. The same applies to the Cardassians - they all appear the same with small differences like greying hair and eye colour. The explosions are a bit dull - they are not bright and colourful but small and bland. One of the more interesting features of this game is the realtime damage - this means that you can bore out holes anywhere on the ship - not just like in the dreadful Klingon Acadamey where it was all preset - but with enough time and paitence you can effectively remove the bridge from a Bird of Prey - and the other half floats off. When a ship is destroyed large chunks are blown out and off so the end is a floating hulk. The phaser effects are ok - there's even an animation of the phasers pre-firing - arcs of energy go around the phaser banks. And the torpedoes look well enough too. The planets and stars are pretty low resolution - a sun looks really cool - untill you get upclose where the wow effect sort of looses it. The nebulae are well done as well. A nice touch is that any light glow - from engines or window lights have their own glow to them - and the ship also has light rippling off them as well. Also the lighting effects are really good in this game - everycurve is lit up. And there is also the Warp Stretch. Overall the graphics are not that bad - they work - but could have been better.

SOUND The voice acting on this game is very good - this game is very story driven and you meet a host of characters from a nervous Fergengi to an insane Cardassian. Patrick Stewart (Picard) and Brent Spiner (Data) lend their voices for a surpriseingly large amount of the game time, and their role works in this story. Multiple affirmative commands and so on have been recorded so you get a bit more that "yes captain" each time an order is confirmed. The weapon sounds aare good - I cannot comment on if they are true to the TV series as I have never seen a Trek episode - but they are effective. The sound quality seems a little low - even on EAX setting. The music is very well done - a good Trek feel to it - the music also changes depending on the situation - but with a little jarring - not smooth and perfect though. Overall the sound really adds to the atmosphere and a great job has been done on this game in terms of sound.

GAMEPLAY A mixed bag. This is an interesting approach - normally a player does all the work -but in this game you command others to do all the work for you -this works very well. You use the mouse to center on an officer - a small display tells you who they are and what they are doing then you click on them to do percise orders. The strategy in this game lies in subsystems on the ships - a subsystem is something like an engine or shield generator. By destroying one of these systems you hinder the opponents ship - they do the same to you. Another strategy feature is power management - by allocating more power to your systems your ship can preform better. If your warp core is hit then you can only allocate so much power to the systems. The battles between enemy ships are long, these are 40,000,000 ton starships - not zippy starfighters so a battle is like a fight against two slow moving giants. This means it's a fight to see who can deal the most damage to the opponent's ship A.S.A.P. This all works very well as you are balancing shield power - weapon power and repairs all in the midst of battle. The game focus mainly on battle so 75% of the game involves you attacking another starship. The other parts of the game involve ferrying supplies or sneaking about - there are also a few missions where you are leading a large scale assualt on enemy bases. Overall the gameplay is varied and has a good enough plot to keep you interested -there's enough combat related happenings to keep you on your toes - or screaming in fustration.

The Bad
The fact that this is mainly a mouse game - though keyboard commands are there means that there's a lot of clicking - and in the heat of a battle it is very possible to misclick a button and have your tatical stop everything - or another misclick might deselect a crewmember. The buttons are a bit on the small and fiddly size. Also the game does not allow you to create much of a personality for yourself. Your second in command does all the talking. Also the game is very linear - there are a few moments where you can choose to do things - but apart from that it's mostly follow their commands or fail the mission. Failing missions are another annoying aspect I noticed in one mission that a shuttle accidently killed it's self by going into a planet - for some odd reason I was relieved of Command and the game ended. Apart from the strange gameplay niggles the game still stands ok.

The Bottom Line
What really let this game down is that it's meant for Star Trek fans alone. While a non Star Trek fan like myself can enjoy it - we would not take it in with as much enthusiasim as the fans would. And I can say most fans would go nuts for Chrome Dome Picard to help them in their first mission. A good game - far better than most of the other Trek games - but still needs a little bit of ironing to become a great.

The Good
Almost everything - besides, it's not every day you get to sit in the captains chair of Star Trek ships.

I'll go into minor detail: Excellent atmosphere which really re-lives the famous Star Trek feeling from the series and some of the movies, great plot, great voice-acting, good controls, good strategic combat, and overall a well accomplished game.

The Bad
Being a gamer that values freedom, I really think they could have out even more into this Star Trek title - I mean, we got the bridge of a starship; and everything in the game is almost just right to make the new Elite, or 3D StarFlight - imagine if we could go to other systems to trade and explore freely in this Star Trek universe...

But this is not the case; the player is only led trough a certain chain of missions, without any real chance of freedom - sure, there is a skirmish-mode available, but it really don't give much more freedom either - you just get to blow up different ships from various species.

There's also the thing that this is not a game for most action gamers; there's long conversations, and often long periods of waiting in this game, and quite often you find yourself going ahead of the game itself. For me, this is not a problem, as I like such things, but for others, it might be quite annoying at places.

The Bottom Line
Overall though, Star Trek: BC is a good game with lots of sadly unexplored potential; it is not everyones cup of tea, but if you like Star Trek, or better yet, if you like sci-fi (like myself), this is a game I recommend - just don't expect too much; it IS a good game, but it could have been much better (but then again, its a commercial space-game).

So, I give it one thumb up - for a good game with good plot and fairly well accomplished.