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I loved it!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: February 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Well, I read the user reviews and went ahead and got the game anyway, and I'm glad that I did!

This game is a fun shooter with a great Star Trek story around it. It starts out with an accident that sends your ship, with Capt. Sulu at the helm, into the mirror universe (introduced in the episode where Spock had a goatee.) The rest of the game is basically about your efforts to get back to the "normal" universe. Right off the bat, the one good thing about this setting is that you get to go up against all the federation ships, since the federation is your enemy in the mirror universe! You ultimately have to make friends with the Klingons and the Romulans who'll in turn help you to get back to the "normal" universe. The story includes a lot of references to the original series, so I really enjoyed it.

As for the graphics, all the ships in the game look exactly like I remember them from the show and the scale is dead-on accurate. The backgrounds are nicely done, not just dull black space, but a lot of nebula's, planets, and stars to add to the whole feel of the game. As for sound, the music is OK, but what I really liked was playing the game on my surround-sound system. It's great to hear photon torpedoes coming at you from behind!

Where the game falters a bit is in the physics, which are very rudimentary (you pretty much just bounce of other ships) but for me it didn't distract much from the game. The controls are also standard space-combat fare.

HUGE DISSAPOINTMENT!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'd been looking forward to a good space action shooter and i'm a big star trek fan but this game is rediculous. I like the theme with the Excelsior crew in the mirror universe but the game is far more difficult than it should be. You just get frustrated when you've been playing for 3 hrs straight and are only on the third frikkin' level. Also the scenery is way too visually loud. Every level so far has some kind of colorful nebula or something that makes it more difficult to see the small fighters in the distance, space is mostly BLACK and dark anyway! My advice, wait 6 months and buy it used from other suckers like me who are fed up with it. If i'd paid 20 bucks i wouldn't have been as disapointed.

A Waste of Money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I 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.

Why is it so hard to do?!?!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 31, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Why is it so hard to produce a good, quality, well thought-out Star Trek game? Not since Birth of a Federation has there been a really good ST game.

The game showed much promise, especially since we would finally get to see some of Captain Sulu in action (without a bloated Kirk interfering). I really enjoyed the animations of Sulu and Chekov. They are really well done.

With that said, the rest of the game is pretty bland. As mentioned by one of the other reviewers, space is primarily black! What is up with all the colorful nebulas? It greatly detracts from game play and makes it really hard to fight the enemy ships. Yes, the game designers got to show their artistic side... great... but that is not why I play the game!

And as for the fighters, I would think that 24th century fighters would have better targeting systems than that of WWII aircraft. Yes, you can lock on to a target and keep track of it, but no, your weapon systems are not smart enough to do the same. Dont think so, folks!

I would have really enjoyed a chance to get at the helm and weapons of the Excelsior. Such a grand ship would have had a field day on those pesky fighters...

I'm afraid this one is just a rental. Sorry. Please keep trying guys! I want a really good ST game. PLEASE!!!!!

Star Trek Fan and Gamer

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Finally I thought they would make a Star Trek game good. But nooooooo, they have to make it one of the hardest games I've played in a while. First of all let me say that the one star is for the graphics. They did a great job bringing the ships to life but thats where the fun stops. Do the people that make these games ever try to play test them. Come on!!! All the computer ships do is fire straight at you until you hit them or until they pass you. There is no skill on their part. And how about 10 enemies vs 1 little ship...BOOM! I do have to say that fighting the big ships is fun, at least once you figure out their blind spot. Why can't they make a Star Trek flight sim fun instead of fighting for 30 minutes just to die at the very end or have the Ecselsior blow up and have to start all over. Save your money or rent it and make your own conclusions.

Shattered Universe shattered my nerves

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It's rare I find a game which makes me run screaming from the room. Shattered Universe is one of those. My quick thoughts:

The good: decent voice acting from the actors who made Sulu and Chevokv famous; set in the Star Trek universe.
The bad: Game play is repetitive and boring after just a few missions.
The ugly: The game is just too damm hard on some missions. The aiming controls don't work well, and when you are trying to save the dead in the water Excelsior from 2 capital ships and 10 or so bombers, it's not worth wasting your time.

BOTTOM LINE: Beam this piece of garbage into space Scotty!!

Hones your hand-eye coordination and aiming skills

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Unfortunately, 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.

Decent, But Needs Something ...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

SPOILERS

I nearly peed my pants when I saw this game sitting on the shelf in the store. I couldn't believe it: A Star Trek flyer!

I've been a fan of the Colony Wars games pretty much since they came out, and I was surprised at how similar the engine was in this game. The effects of environment added a fun twist to the handling of the vessels (stormy nebulas and star clusters).

The ships are all beautifully rendered, as well as the various space phenomena encountered throughout the game. Who wants to play against BLACK throughout an entire game? The most exciting aspect of the game was finally being able to take on those capitals I watched on the TV show. It was like living out a childhood fantasy! The selection of ships is diverse and upgradeable, and the Romulan Shrike even has a cloaking ability!

It was very fun to be able to go back and take on nemeses from the original series: the M-5 computer, the Doomsday Machine, even that big germ from "The Immunity Syndrome"!

Flak and capital accuracy keep you on your toes: slow down or cease evasive maneuvers, and you're space dust!

This is a fun game to play, but minor details tend to bring the overall experience down.

The weapons lock system is confusing and erratic: when an enemy vessel is destroyed, next lock seems to be randomly based. Cycling between targets was a pain: "NEAREST RETICLE! NEAREST MY RETICLE! AAARGH!"

Stop! Stop! Why can't I hold in one place? AGH!

While I enjoyed the challenge, the game was impossibly hard in parts. Early in the game, I had to set it to easy just to get past the fourth mission.

Control setup was difficult. I could have easily remedied what problems I had with the setup, were it not for the limited selection of controller presets.

During in-game cinematics, it certainly would have been courteous to add some kind of protection for the player's vessel. For example, when a capital ship is breaching, the POV switches from cockpit/3rd to the exploding ship. However, the player is still in control of the fighter. The vulnerable ship will continue to move, and the player has no idea where it's going! What is to prevent one from flying straight into the firing range of a group of enemy capitals? Removing the ship from combat temporarily or "cinematic invincibility" or even doing away with the unnecessarily long camera switch would make gameplay a little more fair.

I loved how the designers put Sulu and Chekov into the starring roles this time around. But even these two had a hard time brightening up the script (How many times does Sulu say, "With a little luck, ... "?). Cinematic quality was greatly underwhelming, if not disappointing. If other games have near life-like motions inside game play, why do the interludes look like something that came from the middle ages of PS1?

Overall, it was a fun game to play! But the cinematic quality and other small details diminish what could have been a great game.

Less than I had expected

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: June 15, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game look promising but it had some fatal flaws. There were no training level. The control is too complicated to figure out. The action sequences get very repetitive after awhile. This game resemble the first target shooting game of Interplay's Starfleet Academy - Starfleet Command. Unless you are a die hard gamer, this game is not for the average game player.

Has Classic Trek Been Forgotten?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 21, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I should have waited for reviews from people who've actually PLAYED the game to show up before I spent money on it. I was hoping for something like Interplay's "Starfleet Command" series, which was only okay to begin with. This is nothing more than your average "fly a fighter ship around, blow up other fighters and something really big" game (Think: any of the last 3 or 4 Star Wars games). However, the game is unnecessarily difficult--navigation and aiming are the pits.
Now for my rant--
Classic "Trek" has been given a bum deal ever since the movie franchise and "Next Generation" were successful. Not to take anything away from Picard & company, but the TV series that started it all has been forgotten. I'm not talking about the first 6 movies--I'm talking about the original 3-season wonder. THE TV SERIES IS CLASSIC "STAR TREK!!" Why not a game set during the time of yellow & blue velour suits, rounded warp nacelles, and Klingons without lobsters on their faces? Even the "Enterprise" series foreshadows things to come in the movies and spinoff series while bypassing the original. George Takei should have been given an "Excelsior" series instead. Now THAT would have been a hit.
This latest Star Trek game is just another gut punch to THE Star Trek TV series. Classic "Star Trek" deserves better.

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