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Star Trek Bridge Commander

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 21
Date: March 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I downloaded the demo of the game two days ago. I went through the little bit of the game that is provided and played with the instant action mode, man it's fun blowing up a Galaxy class ship!

Space mode: The Ship graphics are great and the damage graphics are very well done. The smoke trails are a little hokie that puff out of the ship when it is damaged. The stars that float around between you and the ship take away from the immersion aspect. I do like the fact that the destroyed ships float around in pieces; I just wish they weren't translucent! It would be nice to be able to tractor a piece of a destroyed ship and use it as a defense or offense against enemy ships or just throw it into a star and watch it burn.

Bridge mode: The characters are terribly rendered. Picard looks like a marionette! The fact that the crew doesn't blink is unnerving too. The ship is exploding around them and they don't even grimace. Standing and moving about the ship would be a nice feature too.

Overall I was disappointed in this product. I have purchased all of the previous Star Trek games and I must say that Starfleet Command is much better. The ship graphics are as good or better in Starfleet Command too.

The Best Star Trek Game Yet!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: September 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Armada 2 looks really great. The Galaxy class seperation saucer and the new warp drives are going to make moving an entire fleet easier. Also you can occupy planets. The Borg now have a fusion cube that looks unstoppable! And the new species 8472 bio ships will give the Borg hecka problems. I'm also keeping an eye on the new Intrepid class for the Federation. I can't wait till November! You gotta get this game. Reserve now or you might not get one!!!

Based on the Full Version

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: March 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Excellent game so far (I haven't hit the end of it yet, it's actually rather long)..the plot is developing nicely, with some interesting twists (and I still haven't managed to even venture a good guess as to some of the things that are going on, it's good at being mysterious.) The graphics engine is good enough to get the job done, the bridge/characters are it's weakest component, it does really well at rendering the ships during combat. You get some of those cinematic moments where you fire a shot from your rear tubs right into a hole in the hull of a cardaissian ship and watch it blow the ship apart. Speaking of which, the damage modeling is AMAZING, you can literally cut parts of a ship away (which is a rather effective method of destroying a large number of subsystems at once.)

Although everything is not 100% canon to the show, it is necessary to make the game balanced and fun. All in all, it's a fun game (which is what really counts, no?) and I highly recommend it to anyone who has always wanted to command a starship.

Can be a bit tedious

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: January 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've played SFC1, Dominion War and Armada. If I were to rank these games in order of which I enjoyed the most I would say: 1. DW, 2. SFC3, 3. SFC1, 4. Armada

SFC3 is, as the other reviewers pointed out, a great simplification of SFC1. I don't have much patience for all the detail in SFC1 any more so I find the simplification in SFC3 welcome. This and the excellent tutorials will make it very easy to get into the game. I especially like the fact that FINALLY I can command the Next Gen ships, and that during the mission your crew has a voice. This increases the sense that you are commanding a ship.

However while I enjoyed playing SFC3 initially I can definitely see this game getting tedious pretty fast- and a lot of it is due to its over simplification. The battles are much much more drawn out than the other games I've played- and they are not drawn out in interesting ways. It's like watching 2 exhausted fighters weakly slapping each other in the face hoping that one of their slaps will eventually knock their opponent unconscious. A campaign that would have lasted 10 minutes in SFC1 lasted over half an hour while I circled 3 enemy freighters trying to align my phaser arcs with openings in their shields. Eventually it was my shuttle crafts that destroyed all 3 of the freighters- sad!

Still, after not having played SFC1 for 3 years I did enjoy SFC3 despite its tedium.

I will probably try and play this with my Microsoft voicepad controller to see if using voice commands make it more fun. Maybe I can set the self destruct command as: "From hell's heart I stab at thee!"

Better then SFC and SFC2 combined!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 26
Date: February 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game. Now, I'v got starfleet command 1 and starfleet command 2 and I have to say that this is far better then both combined. One of the things that got me realy mad was that in starfleet command 1 and 2 you had to purchase a new ship because it had better weaponry or better shields. Well now in starfleet command 3 you don't have to worry about that. All you have to do now is buy a ship and upgrade the ships armorments, shields, and various other systems.

Another thing I like about this game is that you get to create a customized ship. You can make a ship in any configuration as you wish.

The campaign modes are also reasionably challengeing with different types of missions that have to be preformed.

Various mods can be downloaded to this game. You can download these mods on various cites, it shouldn't be to hard to find any. My personal favorite is the Generation(s) at war Mod. This mod includes ships from STARFLEET COMMAND 1 AND 2!!!!!!!!. Not only that but ships that weren't even in any SFC game or star trek series. Like the Excalibar class Challenger class, freedom class and at least 150 more ships.

With all the different new features in this game I would say that it surpasses most star trek games. If you are a true star trek fan this is a game you must buy.

Could be Better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those games that could really be great, if but for a few serious disappointments. While I would never call myself a Star Trek fanatic, I did enjoy this game... for a while, at least. It is generally a decent game, but has a steep learning curve and can be extremely frustrating at times.

The first and most obvious problem with the game is bugs. LOADS of bugs, and many of them very serious (i.e. game breaking). Fortunately, the SFC 2 community has been working to address these problems, and is still active and helpful. If you get the game, definitely get the latest patch. It will save you a great deal of pain.

About that learning curve- only a Trekkie who wants to push every one of those funny colored lights on the TV show would ever appreciate an interface like this. There are enough buttons to make starting the game discouraging for beginners, though the tutorials do a relatively good job of explaining things. In single play you can also pause to issue orders, but for multiplay you really have to know the hotkeys. There are more hotkeys in this game than any other I've played- literally the entire keyboard is used.

One of the worst problems with this game is difficulty. I'm not sure how the designers come up with missions for you, but I suspect it's purely random. It's entirely possible you'll accept a mission that is utterly impossible, given the firepower you have at any particular point. Until you have three battleships, it's recommendable you save in a new slot after every mission. My first mission in SFC 2 was a blast- literally- when they stuck my poor little frigate up against a space monster that didn't stop firing plasma torpedoes. The good news is you can't ever get completely wiped out, since they always give you a frigate to play with. The bad news is if you keep getting wasted, you'll never get anywhere and the required missions will quickly become impossible to complete.

Though the game has a 3-D look, it's not really a 3-D experience. You maneuver along a single plane with no Z-axis to speak of. Pretty much all the maneuvering you do is throttle up and down, and steer left and right. You can't reverse or roll your starships. What is kind of funny is that there's no collisions despite the fact that you're all on the same level. You can fly right through enemy ships, and you really should because it's impossible to miss at that range. I can see why the designers didn't allow you to maneuver with depth, as this would make lining up your weapons even more impossible than it already is, but this makes the game play in a very 'fake' manner. It also makes it impossible to hide from enemies, even if you have cloak.

The starships in the game behave more or less like they're 'supposed to,' which does NOT mean that everything goes like it does in the movies. Photon torpedoes seem to have terminal homing problems and almost never hit in 'normal' mode. You can load up your ships with missiles, mines, shuttles, and fighters for more reliable damage, but things largely degenerate to phaser/disruptor slugging matches. Those, by the way, take so long to charge that even an easy battle can last ten minutes.

The game's graphics are good, even for now. Weapons look like they do in the movies, and the ships have good detail. There are enough unique types of vessels to make the game fun to watch, though there aren't actually as many unique designs as advertised. The vessels you see here are largely the older Trek ones- not including Next Generation, DS9, etc. There are also many ships that don't appear anywhere, but Taldren made up. They did a good job modeling them, however, so they don't look goofy.

The game's sound really needs work. The soundtrack is good and the weapons sound like they should, but you'll immediately notice how scarce the voiceovers are. Essentially, you get alert reports, some damage reports, and Sulu's voice in the tutorial. That's pretty much it- the rest is text flashed on the screen in ridiculously small print, and sometimes faster than you can read. Most of the plot is conveyed in this manner, so keep a finger handy on that pause button for these times.

The missions, in addition to being occasionally bugged, are sometimes ambiguous. You are given orders at the start, and it's all or nothing to the finish (no saving in the middle). Some are characterized by long stretches of flying through empty space, which is exceedingly dull. You command up to three starships, but only one directly. You can issue general commands to the others, but they sometimes behave quite stupidly. They also follow you no matter what, which can be good or bad. Sometimes you really want one of your ships to withdraw from battle, but the only way to do this is take command of it yourself and fly off. Unfortunately, the others will also tag along. Then again, this is exactly what you want when you run into an impossible encounter.

My last gripe is the naming conventions. They use a rather counterintuitive system of letters, pluses, and dashes to designate ships. Even worse, each race has different designations for equivalent ships. It's very important to know what the designations are, since you really don't want to charge your frigates at a line of dreadnoughts. The only good way to do this is to spend an eternity in the tech library, which is somewhat less than fun. If Trek ships looked more distinctive, it could be easier to tell the various types apart. I think they do in newer episodes of the series, but these are the old ones and they all look similar.

Though in general I think SFC 2 is a good game, it could have been a whole lot better. I'm curious to see where this franchise is going, and might even get the sequel. However, due to the problems with this one, I think I'll wait for it to get cheaper.

This is the best Star Trek game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: April 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Fun puzzles, great voice acting, great lip-synching, and most emportantly -- REALLY GOOD WRITING. This game captures the spirit and feel of its source material better than any other STAR TREK game has before or since -- the reason: it has a sense of humor and a sense of camradery. The people behind it clearly knew Trek inside out, and this product was clearly a labor of love.

Must buy for all Trek/Strat fans!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Armarda II is a must buy for all trek/stratergy game fans. Its like age of empires in space. With a few nice extras. The special weapons are good and the AI capability for your ships is a real help. with 3 races to command in campaigns (pitty they dropped the romulans) it creates hours of fun, its 3 difficulty setting make it good fun for all skill levels. And if you get bored with playing aginst the computer the game expands with the capability for internet gaming over the game spy network, which can put you up against as many as 8 other players leads to unlimited possibilites the campaigns are like training for multiplayer mode. In instant action or multiplayer mode the number of races you can command increases to 6 with the addition of romulan, cardassian and species 8472.

Overall this game is a great buy and will give you endless hours of fun!

Truly the Best Star Trek Game I Have Ever Played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: March 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I know it's probably going to become quite a tired phrase among us reviewers, but this truly is the best Star Trek game I have ever played. I'm sure we've all dreamed about sitting in the captain's chair snapping out orders to the rest of our crew, watching them desperately trying to perform their duties while the entire bridge is shaking from enemy disrupter fire, and this game completely delivers on that experience. Combine this game with one of the game voice recognition software packages out there and you have one awesome experience. Besides the combat, the plot of the game is pretty good too, and having Captain Picard and Data not just make cameos in this game but actually serve temporarily as part of your starship's crew or come in the Enterprise-E flying to your side during combat is truly memorable. What are you waiting for? How can you call yourself a true Star Trek fan if you don't desperately want this game or are playing it already?

Fun for 15 Minutes

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 18
Date: August 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Star Trek Bridge Commander has all the elements of a new screensaver - it's great to look at, fun to learn its features, but, after the novelty wears off, is quickly shuffled to the software graveyard on your pc.

Bridge Commander places you in the captain's chair - something Star Trek gamers have wanted for a while in a computer game - and introduces a clever, intuitive interface for giving orders: you use the mouse to look around the bridge at different officers. Want a damage report? Look to your engineer and ask him for it. The game's in-play training, administered by Patrick Stewart, will have you up and running in minutes.

The graphics are gorgeous. Warp nacelles on ships glow blue and red, running lights illuminate ships hulls in shadowy nebula, and huge starships twinkle with thousands of lights. At times it looks right out of a movie - a Romulan warbird decloaks, fires off a volley of photon torpedos, and you watch them pulse towards your ship as you return fire. Damage effects, however, are mediocre; the bridge now and then vents the mystery gas from broken pipes that frequent typical Voyager episodes, but never really gets banged up - no stations or crew members go up in smoke. The real time damage feature on the outside of the ship takes odd looking nibbles out of the hull, but you never get a nacelle blown off or a Star Trek IIish looking battle scar. The game features a quick combat feature which lets you pit any combos of ships in battle, and this is fun for some quick carnage.

The gameplay, however, quickly becomes boring. There really are no decisions to be made, despite you being the captain - encounters are by the books; hail them, scan them, destroy them. You sit back while your officers execute the commands. If you choose to deviate, your first officer overides you. Getting beaten up by four warbirds and want to warp out? You'll be overidden and forced to fight to the death. Want to investigate another system? Your nav officer only gives you options to go on the current mission.

Previous games like Starfleet Academy did an excellent job of giving crew members personalities, having them interact off duty, and giving you leadership choices to make to keep your crew happy. Bridge Commander needs a heavy dose of this - your crew's chatter is limited mostly to "Aye, aye sirs", and you are never called upon to make any decision other than giving the head nod to their obvious suggestions. Playing the game is more like watching tv - and endless episode of hail, scan, destroy.

Download the demo, enjoy the graphics, but pass on Bridge Commander if you're looking for anything more than eye candy.

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