Techtite's PC Game Reviews!

Star Trek : Away Team

 Order Link No Longer Available

A Techtite Review

A Diablo clone, that is set in the Star Trek universe? Obviously, such a game concept seems like an irrefutable sure-sell. Such is the case with Star Trek : Away Team, the first Trek game to be released in 2001. Judging from how I couldn't stop playing it, this year could be as good as last year for many Trekkies (I do hope you already played Elite Force and Armada...right?). It has its fair share of flaws, though I still think it warrants a thumbs-up, especially given how much it has to offer.

The game begins with a nice full-screen video intro, explaining one question you may have from the start: how will this game excuse you being able to beam down to any planet, regardless of how a Star-Trek Starship is usually not allowed there, in the series? Simple: you're aboard a prototype spy starship called the Incursion. This ship can take the form of any ship using special holographic projectors. Sure, the stealth attempt doesn't always work, and yet it's enough of a story tactic to explain away your ease in getting near Romulan home worlds, the Klingon Capitol, and so on.

There's many different places to go in this game, and this is explained in an intriguing story. A virus of sorts has taken over certain members of Starfleet, rendering them as mere puppets to the will of a group calling themselves the Wardens. You must travel first to Starfleet ships, and then to Starfleet Academy on Earth itself, to see how far this virus has spread. As you'd expect, you find the threat has spread to Romulan and Klingon worlds as well, expanding the variety of Away Mission environments. Yes, before you ask, there are Away Missions that include the Borg, including one aboard a Borg Cube. It seems the virus has even affected their ranks as well!

The Incursion consists of a never-changing crew of 17 people, all with unique abilities. At the start of each mission, you get to choose which of these crewmembers will be part of your away mission. Most missions only allow 4 or 5 Away Team members, and on occasion, requirements are given for which types of crewmates must be part of the mission (A medical rescue operation, for example, requires either the chief medical doctor, or a member of her staff). However, there is always some leeway as to who you get to choose, and it can often be fun, to replay the same away team mission, with a different team. The game automatically saves a game at the start of each mission, so it's very easy to re-play every mission over and over, with various team variations.

The varieties of team members are intriguing, and consist of understandable strengths as well as weaknesses. The Chief Medical Doctor, for example, is the best at healing your team when injured, though she is a pacifist by nature, and only uses medical-savvy, short-range weapons, if any at all. One crewman has a cloaking device skill, allowing him to sneak undetected in some missions, for a set amount of time. However, he can only carry a small phaser, since that is the best weapon of choice for such stealth. Security officers are best at sniper rifles, and can override security-related systems on missions. The science team can tap into nearby computers and activate/deactivate nearby equipment. Even similar teammates have noticeable differences, in a game engine that keeps track of each character's strength, stealth ability, and stamina. The chosen team will find out that cooperation is a must, especially when in heavy battles, when a combination of phaser fire can defeat an enemy with much greater ease than just one officer with just one phaser.

Adversaries on missions are similarly diverse. Borg, for example, are best defeated by either stronger weaponry, or destroying nearby power nodes; they adapt to your phasers almost immediately. Starfleet officers, by contrast, are often considered as friends who should not be harmed just because they have been infected with the Warden virus, so you can stun them only...and the stun doesn't last long, so keep moving! Infected Vulcans are no-nonsense types who alert tougher security immediately, so stealth is the best tactic against them. Klingons are sort of wild cards, which can be either stunned or shot down; the former choice is probably best, though it's much harder. All these alien types are within a plethora of unique environment types, including starships, the Klingon home world of Kronos, A Romulan base, A secret area of Vulcan, and on and on. I found such diversity continuous until the very last mission, which is a big plus in an isometric perspective type of game, which are usually very repetitive in their environment types. Not so with Away Team.

There are some flaws, as there usually is. Some characters are too small to see who is whom easily, which can complicate matters in heavy battle, when you need to locate your medical officer, pronto. There's also a problem with the game's lack of repitition, as strange as that is to admit. No sooner do you get used to an environment, then the environment changes, and you're off to a different mission type entirely. Sure, you can play in these environments over and over again, via the games way-cool, multiplayer option. However, it would have been nice to see at least one additional level for each area, especially Starfleet Academy, which is a guilty pleasure to explore on a stealth mission! Speaking of stealth, only one crewman has a cloaking device, and his doesn't last long at all. This is particularly annoying in stealth-savvy missions, where alerting your enemy means an automatic "game over, try again" type of screen. Last of all, the first-mission tutorial is way too basic, and even the game manual doesn't explain in enough detail what some of the tools you can use are. What is a stasis field generator, and how can I use it on a mission? I'm not a big fan of trial-and-error in games; I prefer it if the game tells me what each item can do.

I also didn't like how every Away Mission is a battle-intense one. I would have preferred an Away Mission which allowed you to "Explore Strange, New Worlds," or to "Seek out new civilizations." This game sticks strictly to its real-time strategy design, with one simple, general objective : to get from beam-in starting point A to mission control B by any means necessary. I would have preferred a few levels with more thought involved, especially in a strategy game. However, some missions don't require much thought at all, especially with the right choice of team members.

Regardless, even such gripes do not take away the pleasure of playing the game itself. There's a lot of fun for Trek fans here, from "setting phasers on stun," to using tricorders to learn more about nearby flora on a planet (one crewman can even use the flora to make various healing herbs, antitoxins, and so on). The game is also not redundant, which is a rarity in action games these days. To any fan of both Diablo and Star Trek, this is a definite game to check out. To anyone else, they may want to check it out anyway, if they're waiting with anticipation for a gripping, well-designed Diablo clone. 

	Final Rating : Small Crater. Definitely not a bad game, and as a Star Trek type of Diablo clone, it's a welcome addition to any Trek-inspired game collection.
For more on this site's ratings system, click here.

  Click on picture to Order this game (PC version)

You may also want to consider ordering: Star Trek: Away Team Official Strategy Guide