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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.

The greatest space combat sim ever made

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 08, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you like SFC, this is the game for you. There are 16 possible races to choose from - 8 empires and 8 pirate cartels. No other Starfleet Command product gives you the range of options of this game.

If you don't know SFC, its level of tactics is unequaled in the gaming industry. There is no space simulation game that is more detailed and fascinating.

It takes skill. This is not a shoot-em-up. While not easy to learn, patience and practice will mold you into a feared and deadly starship captain. The online play, supported by the free GameSpy Arcade, is the most rewarding, for you can pit your skills against other captain wannabes. Do not be discouraged. As I said, it takes seasoned skill to win. When you first begin, you have little hope against a veteran player. Your skills will improve in a few weeks, however. Your first victory against another human opponent will be sweet, sweet, sweet.

Buggy at first, with patches it has become very stable. It is a very rewarding game for those who are looking for a game with a little depth.

I still play this

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love this game and it has gone on every PC I've upgraded to. (It works fine on 2k & XP.)

However, if you are looking for a flight sim this will not be for you as the "feel" models more on old ships-of-the-line that fired then spent some time maneuvering for the next shot. (Things are not quite that simple since there are things such as transporter bombs & drones requiring a decision on whether to fire everything or not.)

For those coming from a Starfleet Battles boardgame background, there will be some things to get used to, (probably the most important being it's RTS) but otherwise it's very faithful.

Those coming from a purely Trekker background should be the type to make allowances: This game is based off an alternate-universe Star Trek without license from Paramount for the majority (all?) of the old-series ST movies, so there's lots of creative licensing with things such as races, background, and ship systems.

The support for this game is still very active and some surfing on the net will bring up everything from alternate weapon bitmaps to models of hundreds (thousands) of ships from various sources and TV/movies series. Playing lots of such custom monster behemoths with large, detailed bitmaps and drones and fighters can quickly demand a faster machine. For example, my current 3ghz Celeron will stutter a second of two when a Death Star goes up in flames. (It should be noted that playing the game as-is will not stutter any but a serious ancient machine.) Get the update! Bugs are not fun.

This game gets four stars because the same-ol' monsters and "unknown aliens" that show up in the single-player campaign get seriously old. Otherwise, this is an incredible game.

Don't ask for help from Activision

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: December 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Don't buy this game if you want to play multiplayer games on a LAN.

I enjoyed the original Armada and couldn't wait for this one. I had multiplayer issues in the original and hoped that the new version would fix those. Boy was I mistaken! I went to Activision for assistance and was told that my network configuration was too complex! I meet or exceed all the system requirements for this game and the network protocols I have installed are the basic ones you have if you have a broadband interenet connection (especially if you use AOL). I tried the fix that Activision suggested (removing all but the barest protocols, thus temporarily disabling AOL) and still couldn't connect a multiplayer game!

As with other reviews I found the ships to be too weak in this rendition. I did enjoy having more races to play with and I enjoyed the multiple views feature during battles. I also enjoyed the resource management changes. I am a Star Trek fan and purchase most Star Trek based games. However, I would probably not buy another Activision produced Star Trek product. Given the poor level of customer and tech support provided by Activision I'm not sure they deserve a chance at a third strike.

An important REVIEW by a trekkie

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: November 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Starfleet Command 3, this game has great graphics, but after an extended campaign it freezes and you have to rebut your PC. It also has an extra which enables you to custumize your own ship this is new.The game has great battles and fun and exciting levels that were well thought out. There our two ways to play the star empires own campaign, or conquest the galaxy this one you can have people join your fleet. Also there is a one on one battles on Dynaverse{internet}. cAptain Picard briefs you on the missions. Its a wonderfull game set in the Next Generation era, and no more stupid missiles either. It is a must buy.

WAIT!!! Don't buy from here

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: August 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Don't pay these "posers" the $100 for this $30 game. Copy and paste this URL and pay $6.95 (1 month of unlimited downloads) and get the game for free! http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/strategy_games/games_so_sy/star_trek_starfleet_command_3.html

Armada 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: October 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Armada 2 is a great game with tons of new weapons: photon torpedos, quantom torpedos and tons of new ships. You also colonize planets, and there are three new resources: metal, latinum, and spieces 8472 uses biomatter.

I think the game being 3-d is a disadvantage, because if you are used to Armada 1 you'll build all your turrets in a 2-d formation around your base and the computer then comes up underneath you.

The Borg are way too powerful because they can fuse 8 tactical cubes to create a tactical fusion cube which has 8 lasers, 8 quantum torpedoes, a ton of special energy, practically invincible shields and can asimalate 3 special weapons from other races. I think the best combo of special weapons is the shield disrupter, corbanite reflector, and weapons enhancer. Every ship in the Klingon fleet has a weapon. Personally I stay loyal to the federation which has lots of new ships including the Galaxy class star ship which can separate its saucer section and stardrive section, which I can not understand the point of doing. The nebula starship fires much faster than it did in Armada 1.

Awsome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I loved Star Trek Armada 2 it had everything that armada was missing the story line was perfect it kept u wanting to see more and keep playing for hours the graphics were awsome and the ability to upgrade ship systems brought the game up a level so new ships allows for a wide variety of different type of attack forces all though none of the new ships really had any special ability except for the transporter ship with the transporter attack other then that I loved it I suggest this for anyone look for action and constant managing a fleet for the unexpected

A dream come true for fans

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

For star trek fans this game is as good as they come. The fantasies of star trek fanatics who want to be in the captains chair to show Picard that they can do it better will have there dreams come true with this game. I admit that I bought it with a little scepticism after reading other reviews and after playing on the demo, but it has to be one of the most original games to come along in years. You play as the captain and you sit in the famous centre chair most of the time. You can always of course use a consol to zoom out and see the ship from the outside, but that's the extent of your local manoeuvrability.
But who needs manoeuvrability when you have warp drive at your disposal!
There are two main modes of play. The story mode which is like a series of star trek where you go through different episodes, and follow a story line which is half linear with decisions altering the outcome and this is the best mode. There is also a quick battle mode where you can play with teams in the chair in combat situations where you can take on Klingons, Romulans, Cardasians etc, (No Borg I'm afraid, but bet you 1000 bucks that will be an add on pack). The cool thing about it is that the teams are fully customisable, so you can have you and 2 Klingon Warbirds stick two Romulan Warbirds if you like. You could also have a couple of star bases to defend or even take on DS9 in the old Enterprise-D.
Also in this mode, there is no limit in the number of enemies or friendlies you can have, and I mean that, I did a test and had over 30 on each team, and talk about slow down.
I have to say, I have a Duran 800 with 256Mb RAM and I can only have full graphics with four a side.
Speaking of graphics, the single player game runs fine on the above specs, and so does the quick combat up to that point, and boy are the graphics good. So photo realistic and with a sun in the sector the hull shines it back and looks great. The damage effects sell the combat to me though. No exaggerations when I say location damage. It really does depend on where you hit the ship as to where the damage is seen. And I'm not talking about those black smear marks you see. You get a quantum hit your hull with no shields and you'll be seeing space through the gap.
The damage effects are worth buying the game for alone. Its fun to see how much damage you can do to the enterprise-E before it explodes.
Back to the bridge anyway.
Throughout the story mode you sit in the chair and command most of the important functions of the star-ship. The power distribution, the level of alert, the location, the warping, the speed, the tactics like manoeuvres, the position of attack to protect certain shields, the type of weapons used, the subsystem to target such as weapon array or engines, the communication station, the damage repair priority and the view screen position and zoom and more. Of course your officers are consulted to alter these for you, but you have the final word.

These are just some of your options when in command, but the story presents some interesting decisions that have to be made.
The story line is fantastic, it's really fluent, and even through you may think that the mission where you have to stop asteroids from hitting a space station is a little done before, you'll realise why your doing it when the story unfolds.
Patrick Stuart (spelling not sure on) plays the voice of Picard, and Brent Spinner does Data which makes it even more believable.
So up to now the game is seriously worth buying.
The only down side and this is the only thing I found were the bugs. Yes, it appears as though we are the Beta testers again, and you can see texture tearing on the bridge, which can ruin the atmosphere literally (chuckle).
A few other things such as people falling over when the ship is hit seem to never get up, but that's solved in the patch you can download.
Finally, the bridge effects, it's really cool when your fighting, because your bridge sets on fire and shakes and sparks fly around and the control panels flicker, your officers are screaming at you to do something about the damage, and your tactical officer is always telling you how the shields are getting lower.
To sum up... The game has brilliant replay ability with the quick battle mode, the story line is better then some of the real episodes and the effects and atmosphere are as close to the real thing so far. If you like Star Trek, you'll love this, if you don't maybe it's one to miss...

Finally a Star Trek game that doesn't wimp out.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 14
Date: June 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I was impressed with the demo. They fixed the biggest gripes I had about the first Elite Force. Namely, the incredibly lame death animations of some of the baddies. In the first EF they kind of folded up and disappeared--very unsatisfying (a nod to the anti-violence crowd?). It was nice to see critters getting properly fragged in the EF2 demo--and with a shotgun no less.

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