Resistance is futile! (Star Trek - Armada (PC))

Member Name: fluffypup

Product:	Star Trek - Armada (PC)
Date:	05/01/01 (353 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good game play; good multiplayer games with team options; Patrick Stewart & Michael Dorn provide the voices for the game; the excellent options of scouting & search and destroy options; and the Star Trek theme (without Kirk)

Disadvantages: Poor video graphics; emotionless dialogue from Stewart & Dorn; same colour spaceships; unstable feel when switching to menu during game play; and not a patch on the highly polished C&C Red Alert 2.

Star Trek Armada can only be described as a Star Trek themed Command & Conquer (C&C) look-alike in space. Anyone not familiar with Command & Conquer (the biggest selling real time war strategy ever!) it’s a mixture of fighting, attack and defence against a common enemy with construction of bases and vehicles with option of mining as a way of gaining finances. Armada isn’t any different except the action takes place in space rather than on land with a heavy dose of Star Trek spaceships and characters.

The basic story line is based on the Borg’s attempts to take over the Alpha Quadrant yet again. A Federation ship, the Premonition, travels back from the future to warn Caption Jean Luc Picard and the Federation to get ready to fight and beat the Borg. The Premonition’s advice is to recover from the war with the Dominion and pull all the resources with the Federation, Klingons and Romulans to stand any chance of defeating the Borg. Only problem is that all the races are in chaos after the war. It’s up to the likes of Picard and Worf to get the individual races in order and getting them fighting for the common good.

Armada has two modes of game play – single and multiplayer. The single player game takes you through the basic story line. Each race has 4 missions to complete in order, starting with the Federation and then progressing on to the Kilngons, Romulans and then the Borg! Resistance is futile or is it? The game has the usual levels of difficulty – easy, medium and hard. As a relative duffer at computer games “easy” is about right for my abilities and gives me enough breathing space between attacks and building up my defences and assembling my attack force. Playing on medium taxes a lot more of your resources as the attacks and raids are more frequent and the strength and depth of the attacking ships are a lot harder.

The multiplayer missions allow you to play either in an “inst
ant action” game (a bit like a skirmish in C&C) or access to play games over the Internet or over a Local Area Network. Multiplayer mode allows you to play between 2-8 people with a pre-chosen or random map, with various races, technology, start level of money etc. A really good feature is the ability to play as teams rather than to play as individuals. The instant action games are good. You can predetermine the level of technology and the mixture of races competing in the game. Each race has an equal balance of weapons and ships which makes game play even more exciting and challenging, rather than having one race having superior weapons and fire power etc. Another good feature is having a random map therefore exploration and the unexpected play a good part in making the game play better. The Star Trek Armada website has downloads which allow you to make your own maps. When you first log to play in a multiplayer game you have to download the latest ‘patch’ for the game. It isn’t automatic so you have to go to the download section on the website. I think it was around 2.3 Meg of patch. You encounter the usual problems with playing on-line – usually takes ages to get a game, swearing & abuse and the usual die-hards who only play in their little click or clans.

All Star Trek PC fans will love this game! All the voices from the main characters like Picard and Worf provide the voices and sayings like “Maybe today is a good day to die!”, “Make it so!” and “Resistance is futile!”. The only downside is that the actors who provide the dialogue say the lines with absolutely no heart or emotion. Maybe it’s a case of oh no do I really have to say these lines yet again and how much do I get paid!

Some of the incidental music from the television series is also used within the game. Although, it builds up the tension from time to time, it gets monotonous after a while with the same tune repea
ting over and over again.

The video graphic sequences are poor. The ships and characters in video sequences aren’t up to the usual high standard expected with Star Trek. Characters are ‘pixelised’ with only their mouths and eyes moving (very badly) when they have a dialogue scene, probably something akin with a dodgy Australian soap than Star Trek. I have also found that the colours of each enemy ships are all the same colour. Telling the difference between your own and enemy ships can get quite confusing. After a while you adapt (like a Borg) as to what’s what!

The stability of the game has a lot to be desired. If you decide during a game to save it the screen goes black and shakes when you access the menu as if it was going to crash! When you close the game down, I’ve discovered many open blank applications open in Windows. Is it dodgy programming? I must say that the game hasn’t crashed or froze during game play. You do need a 3D accelerator card and the usual 500 Meg of storage space. It played well on our 450MHz machine with Voodoo graphics card and 128Meg RAM.

What makes this game really good is the game play, although the Star Trek theme helps. I love the C&C series of games. I love the strategy in this game. Again, it’s not just a case of building up a whole armada of ships and blowing your enemy away. Careful planning, building of defences, mining of dilithium and what offensives spaceships to use are the key to winning and playing this game. Having the chance to play any one or all of the four races is also good. The two features that I love in this game, something C&C hasn’t got, is the ability to ‘scout’ and ‘search and destroy’. This allows you to build a few spaceships, cloak them and then automatically scout the whole area without wasting time point and clicking the way around obstacles. This speeds up game play and leaves you with more important conside
rations like how many mining ships to build etc. Minor pitfalls are that on some constructions you can’t build until you’ve got all of the cash available and can only stack build five items at a time. Although, these disadvantages are counteracted by a little voice telling you when something has been built. Each mission takes between 20 mins to 2 hours to play, which is a good time. The further you progress the level of difficulty increases. The earlier missions talk you through the game play and the various different options. All the spaceships from each of the races are in this game. If you are a lover of all things symmetrical, sad I know, you can even command your own Borg cube! The majority of the ships are graphically quite good – some are very small and hard to see whilst others look out of shape. It’s only a minor grumble and a cue for me to start wearing my glasses.

Overall, Star Trek Armada is a recommended real time strategy game with only minor pitfalls such as emotionless dialogue from the real actors, very poor graphics on the video sequences (which most people hate video sequences anyway!), annoying monotonous music (although it provides a good atmosphere at times) and same colour of friendly and enemy spaceships. It’s got a very good game play with 3 levels of difficulty to match your playing abilities. I love the options of automatic scouting and search & destroy which allows you to concentrate on the finer aspects of the game. The ships are true to life in relation to the movies and television series. The multiplayer options allow connection to the Internet, LANs and instant action (skirmish) modes of play between 2-8 players with a team option fitted as standard. If you love Star Trek and C&C try it out! It doesn’t come anywhere near C&C Red Alert 2 in game play, graphics, video sequences etc but if you would like a change then from the C&C theme Armada may be for you.

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