To Boldy Go...And Beat Down Your Neighbor.

These are the voyages of the USS BeatDown. Her captain, the indomitable Alkaiser. The mere mention of his name makes entire empires shudder, for he is the apotheosis of cool, the destroyer of worlds. Together, their mission is to boldly go and beat down where nobody has laid the smack down before. (Fanfare music.) Psychologists once said that men got a kick out of watching Star Trek because they liked fantasizing about having the power of being in command of a big powerful starship. All kinds of destructive capabilities at their fingertips. I don’t think so. I think guys dig Star Trek because they know that, as long as they’re not on the away team wearing a red uniform, they’ll get some. I mean, on ST:TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation), even the robots were getting hooked up! Well, that’s probably about the only thing missing from the Federation combat experience in Starfleet Command. Drawing almost entirely from the pen and paper game, Starfleet Battles, Starfleet Command delivers an interactive combat experience that is engaging and a MUST for any Trek fan.

The missions are pseudo-randomly generated to give the game a bit of the feel the TV show had. In fact, when replaying missions, often times the race you’re attacking or defending will change. All 6 races in the game have their own separate plot lines. Some of the races from the SFB (Starfleet Battles) pen and paper game are missing, like the Andromedans and the Kzinti. But SFB players should have a wide enough range of playing styles at their disposal with the races that are present; The Feds, The Klingons, The Romulans, The Hydrans, The Lyrans, and The Gorn. You can either follow the basic plot pattern that the game has set out for you, or venture off into other parts of the universe, and throw caution to the wind. Either way, you’ll run into the run-of-the-mill plot twists the Star Trek throws out, family infighting, science missions, and of course, the people from a parallel universe are attacking the Romulans, and for some strange reason, they don’t believe that it isn't you. Go figure. I mean, if you can't trust the Federation about your evil twin from parallel universe, really, you aren't going trust anyone, are you?

If you haven’t played SFB before, you are going to have some serious learning to do. Don’t let that stand in the way of a great game experience, though. Two of my friends had hardly heard of SFB before this game came out, and by the end of the day they could take on Zeorai, a grizzled SFB veteran, and hold their own one-on-one. The game is not your standard space combat game. Starfleet Command is a bit more strategic. Your weapons have to recycle, they’ve got specific ranges, and if you’re playing properly, you’re going to want to wait for openings in the shields to launch your attacks. In addition, you’ll draw from your power reserves to allocate tractor beams to repel drones, and generate countermeasures so those pesky photon torpedoes don’t rip through your hull. There’s a whole lot to learn, and the pace of the game is just right for you to be actually able to apply most of these tactics in battle. After about an hour to an hour and a half of learning the ropes, you’ll have enough of the game down to be a pro.

If you’re using a 3D card, just check out the resulting explosion after you waste an enemy…or get wasted, either one will work. The smoke trails that result when you damage internals are nice, even the initial hull damage explosions and sparks look nifty. There’s a lot of attention paid to the details in this game, and rightly so…it’s not like there’s all that much to render most of the time in space. The guys at Interplay paid enough attention to the graphics to make this game as visually appealing as the game is entertaining.

Well, this nearly goes without saying, seeing as how this is an Interplay title, but there are some serious robustness and code issues with this game. There’s a beta patch out for the game already. (You know you’re screwed once the company starts releasing patches for the patches.) It doesn’t fix much that we could observe. Want a cool oversight? Check this one out. Pick up a Federation NCLD+. Take all the missiles off of it. Check that out! -9 BPV! I was playing with The Culprit, and he had a fully loaded, top-of-the-line dreadnought of extra ordinary magnitude for –2500 BPV. Not a bad deal, eh? Why don’t you get to keep ships you captured? That would seem fair...It was also pretty disappointing not to be able to use the pirate ships. The game also crashes a lot on us in the middle of multiplayer and single player games, and there are some really strange load time lags. It’s just a blasted shame to see a great game marred by code errors. C’mon guys, everyone would MUCH rather play a complete game a couple months later. Give the public what they want.

If it weren’t for the bugs, this game would be in my top 5 of the year, maybe even the top 3. But any game that crashes more than 10 times on multiple systems in the course of an evening’s play is automatically disqualified from such an honor. Other than the bugginess, the game is very fun to play. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, but in the end it’s pretty much all that SFB and Trek in general are cracked up to be.