"An excellent strategy game for Trekkies, or for anyone interested in well- choreographed sci-fi battle games. Multiplayer makes it even more fun!"

---from the review

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Star Trek: Armada

Click screen shot above, to purchase this game

A Techtite Review

If there's one thing a Trekker wants, it's to be able to play a game that salutes one of the best moments in Star Trek history: the infamous battle between the Borg and the Federation. While this game is not a re-creation of that specific battle in Trek "history," it does let you plan strategies in battles between the Borg, Klingons, Romulans, and/or the Federation. It even allows for multiplayer, where each player is one of these four races. How cool is that?

The single player missions are performed in sequence, and tell a story of the Borg's return to Federation space, and each alien race's reaction to this threat. First you play with Federation technology, then Klingon, then Romulan, and finally the Borg(!). After completing each of these missions, an additional, final set of missions opens up, completing the story (see "Note" below). These last few missions are of the three alien races together --Feds, Klingons, and Romulans-- as they fight the Borg in unison. This was a great idea, that leads to a truly fitting, satisfying finale.

Playing the game itself is easy to get a handle on, particularly for fans of games like X-Com. Although 3D accelerated (the FX and animation are top notch; more on that next), the game plays not unlike a 2D strategy game, with a status bar at the bottom of the screen, to control all major game options. Click on any ship and its potential orders are listed. Nearly all ships/stations can beam officers to other ships (or even invade and command an enemy ship!), be sent for repairs, and so on. Others have special weapons, like the Enterprise's "Corbomite Deflector" (a salute to Kirk's classic gambit, only these shields actually do reflect enemy fire!). Additional weaponry might be "dimmed," and is only available if researched in lab stations (again, not unlike X-Com). I'm not much of an avid strategy gamer, so I liked the ease of use of this game's strategy structure.

Graphics in the game are visually stunning. It's important to note that each of the spaceship pix in this review were captured from the actual game, and each is of a moment of the game that is fully 3D-accelerated; not a mere FMV video clip. If you are a Trekkie with a high-end 3D accelerator, this might be the game you want to use to show off your system's muscle. Order the construction of a new vessel, and see it put together piece by piece (presuming you have the time; after all, a battle is brewing!). Select as many as 8 ships, click on an enemy to attack, press "z" for cinematic view, and watch the 3D phasers fly! Awesome graphics are definitely Armada's strong point.

Note : Be sure you play ALL of the single player missions: 1/5th of them don't appear until all campaigns are completed! After the Borg missions are over, the "Omega Particle" appears in the center of the mission selection screen; click it, and you get a whole new set of missions...and the end of the game's storyline! Even a few professional web sites missed this, and claimed the game was "open ended". Oops!

Gripes for this game are pretty minor, though enough to keep it from a "Deep Impact" rating. For one thing, you can only control 8 ships at once, which isn't much of an "Armada" per se. The four types of fleets to control (Borg, Romulans, Klingons, Feds) are also a bit too similar: each has a starbase, a small ship construct station, a large ship construct station, and so on, with less variety than you'd expect. As for the controls, they rely on the mouse a bit too much; on a few occasions, the game didn't know if I wanted to click on a ship to attack it, or just to call up its "status screen." However, these gripes are, as I said, pretty minor, and didn't keep me from enjoying the game itself.

In the end, anyone who loves Trek --in any of its forms-- will want to give this game a try. It certainly seems to have been made by fans of the show, and also has a better grasp of what Trekkers want: to control the Enterprise in heavy battle...in addition to the Borg, the Romulans, and the Klingons. Armada lets you do all the above. K'pla!

---Techtite