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 - A Waste of MoneyI bought this game thinking it was a capital ship type combat game. Instead it is a shuttle combat game. The missions are extremely tedious and HARD even on easy. I got really frustrated with the difficulty of the game and the repetion. The only decent feature is the graphics, which is why it gets two stars overall. I do not recommend buying this game, even if you are a Star Trek Fan. Rating:  - Hones your hand-eye coordination and aiming skillsUnfortunately, that's about it. It would've been a much more interesting game if they had let you pilot capital ships along with the fighters, kind of like in "Secret Weapons Over Normandy". I for one love fighter combat, but even this game gets old, especially when there seems to be no end in sight to the enemy fighter waves, and your command ship cannot defend itself at all (which is why a human behind the guns of the Excelsior would greatly improve your chances of completing a mission). Also, skilled AI pilots would've made the game much more challenging. It seems the designers subscribe to the Empire's theory in Star Wars: Quantity over quality. Sure, it's great to have lots of enemies to shoot at, since there's less chance of you missing, but they all fly the same way, and pretty poorly for that matter (especially since you can usually outwit enemy squadrons by hiding behind planetary bodies--they make no effort to fly around them and simply burn up in the atmosphere). The only reason why they would win in a dogfight is because it's so blasted hard to effectively aim your weapons at their ships. Not even the Kobayashi Maru difficulty setting improves AI piloting skills; it only makes your craft much more vulnerable to damage and prohibits your shields from recharging. One of my biggest gripes about the game is the fact that whenever a ship explodes or warps in or out during combat the game suddenly switches to cinematic mode, and you have no way of knowing where your ship is and could easily fly into another ship or even a planet. It would've been nice at least for your ship to be invulnerable during these scenes. Finally, the character animation looks simply ridiculous. Have these guys ever heard of motion capture? This animation is something that would look good on the super NES system 10 years ago. All in all, a good game for mindless shooting, but unfortunately another disappointing ST game. I bought this game and Dominion Wars for name value and cover art, and both severely disappointed me. Rating:  - A Surprisingly Good GameAt first I was a little apprehensive of this game. As far as I was aware fighter-style combat is not something that there is a lot of in Star Trek. However, after giving this game a fair hearing I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the graphics which are very crisp and clean for a Playstation game, and there is very little sign of the pixelisation normally encountered. The ships look great, especially the capital class ships, which look fantastic and authentically styled (especially the Original Series Constitution ships, they are damn perfect!). The story line, though featuring a few poor character animations is compelling, edgy and very true to the canon of Star Trek, especially the nods to the orginal series of which there are many. Both of the celebrity voice actors (Geogre Takai and Walter Keonig) reprise their roles as Sulu and Chekov well, and really add atmoshere to the plot. As for the game itself, the learning curve is admittedly steep (I was rather shocked when I had to take on 4 Federation Battlecruisers virtually single handedly in my fighter!) but thanks to a well designed combat system it is up to the player to discover the tactics necessary to defeat your adversaries, including the phaser blind spots on capital ship and the correct weapons to use. All the major races' craft are featured, and all in all it is a fine game, well designed and balanced. The only bad point as far as I'm concerned is the repetition of a couple of the mission types, but as I enjoyed it so much I am happy enough to brush over what seems to be a bit of padding in the mission structure. As there are relatively few space flight combat games on the PS2 I think that this a good example of the genre. At least its easier than Blast Radius on the PSX! Rating:  - Don't be fooled!I admit it... the package got me. On the front cover is a ship that looks like the Enterprise, locked in the heat of battle against other ships. I believed that I would be piloting the Flagship of the Federation against evil versions of the good guys. Wrong. Firstly, you're in the Excelsior, not the Enterprise. Sulu is running the ship and seems to need the player's help more often than not. You DO NOT get to pilot the starship! Instead, you are manning an awkward, clumsy fighter craft with horribly designed controls. Good luck. I have a pet-peeve with flying games... most of them have solved this problem, but others like this Star Trek game, haven't... I like having the ship go up when I press the up button and down when I press down. I cannot stand the inverted method of flying. Most game designers have understood that there are people like me out there and have created different configurations to fix this. Not Star Trek. I could rant about this game forever... bad graphics, bad music, pointless scenarios, blah, blah, blah. Instead, I will wrap up this review by saying how disappointed I am. This could have been a fantastic game if one person had a little bit of an imagination. This is a flying game, plain and simple... it's just got a Star Trek theme. Don't be fooled like me. Rent first! Rating: - An ok gameThis game is pretty good. I like how it features the voices of George Takei and Walter Koenig, and takes place in the mirror universe of Enterprise, Original Series and Deep Space 9 fame. It is a lot of fun shooting at Federation [or Terran Empire] ships in this case, and watching the damage increase before they explode. Same goes for Klingon, Tholian, and other ships. The only problem is that it's very difficult, I had to enter all the cheats from gamewinners.com in order to make progress. The game isn't too expensive, it's much like an enhanced version of Star Trek: Invasion for PSX. I would recommend it.
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