Star Trektm Hidden Evil

[Karlyn Hemmerling]

Thisgame is out of this world. Truly one of the best most underrated RTS titles ever created. Very easy to learn and pick up. It is one of the simplest RTS titles to play andthere is no real large breadth between noobs and pros as per many other strategy games. Basically you either know how to play, or you don't. In Armada, you will be called upon to build up your space cities, handle manpower and starship disbursement, and then focus on your fleets and mission objectives.

The game is very easy to mod, and I have in fact taken part of many modding teams for it. Out of all the Star Trek games I've played, this one has the best mods and add-on content. The files come all unpacked and only a minimum of work is really needed to make your own objects, or to tweak things around.

The setting of this title is also fairly unique, every other RTS I have ever played is set on planet surfaces. Here, all the action takes place in the vastness of space, so you will have to deal with nebulae, asteroid fields, black holes and more.

There are four main playable factions in the core game, Federation, Romulan, Klingon andthe Borg. There are also few partially complete secondary factions included as well such as the Dominion and Cardassians. The fluid nature of the core game allows these factions to function, despite lacking things such as construction ships or starbases.

The main story involves a Borg invasion and the quest of the other factions to stop it. Each campaign is sub divided into four missions. Once all of the main campaigns are complete, you will unlock a special, epilogue campaign, known as the Omega Campaign. The Omega Campaign features considerably more difficult missions, but is somewhat offset that the player is given the three factions to use. Each campaign branch also has some secondary plots which resolve some loose ends from the TNG television and movie series.

The graphics are very colorful, artistic and very nicely done, not a single thing looks bad. A fun thing to do is the camera can zoom in and out and also be rotated. Things end up looking great from all angles.

Another great graphics point is the provocative, almost hypnotic animations that show during construction of a starship or space station. You can spend hours just watching these things come together and are assembled.

I would like to comment on the unit acknowledgments/sounds. I know it is a bit silly to talk about such things, but consider the following. I have played many RTS games and the unit responses have interesting intonations. From WarCraft when the Alliance speaks in High Fantasy lit, to the monsters in the same game having interesting voices. Then StarCraft with the rag-tag type responses which plays into the fractured nature of the Terran race in that universe. To the snarling and gnashing sounds of the various Zerg monstrosities. These games also take it a step further and give annoyed/funny comments if you click on an individual unit enough times.

In Armada most of the unit replies are generic, yet all are evocative of the source material. The Klingons sound like Klingons,the Borg sound like the Borg. The real treasure in this comes when you click on a famous unit, such as the Enterprise or the Defiant. To have Picard call for Red Alert as you issue an attack command, or Worf to scream out it is a good day to die as you give him an order adds considerably much to the game's overall immersive and presentation.

Piracy encouraged! One of the many unique features of this game is how it handles manpower and object ownership. Just about any object aside from a few that are considered to be unmanned may be captured and utilized as part of your empire as you see fit. Whether you decide recycle it for the extra resources or leave it as is and integrate it into your empire, it is a fun feature.

The only complaint I have, is that the stock game does not contain nearly enough objects (only roughly 6 per side, a title like Armada impliesthere should be dozens in my opinion), and those it does are often very similar to each other, much like the older WarCraft games. Still it provides a strong base and the modding community negates this deficiency. However this does not diminish that it is always very satisfying conducting fleet actions, or even doing 1on1 fights and watching the ships move and fight.

There is a great proviso to this though, as every single starship is given a unique special ability. Whetherit's a sensor jamming field, an engine overload pulse, or any other, these all are smoothly integrated into the core game and none ever feel overpowered. It is a very nice touch, as it also ensures continued interest in trying and flying every ship available, just to see their special power in action. This attention to detail is not found in many of thisgame's contemporaries and is often overlooked.

If Blake Stone faded to obscurity because of DOOM, then Armada has much to talk shop about with. This was released very shortly before Blizzard Vivendi's Warcraft: III, thus it is perhaps another title that didn't get a fair shot out on the open market. I myself picked it up out of a bargain bin very cheaply barely two short years after it was released.

Real Time Strategy games at their core owe a lot to the centuries old classic tabletop game ofchess. Each one of the players playing pieces is being useful in a certain instance, and the many combinations allows many different tactics employed, in a dynamic constantly changing environment. New strategies are constantly being developed, thanks to the game's inherent flexibility.

Star Trek: New Worlds is a 2000 game by Interplay. The game's story line is set in 2289, and involves the fallout from a Romulan experiment gone awry. This has caused entire solar systems of new planets, abundant in resources and treasure to suddenly materialize in the neutral zone. Thus, it becomes a race between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans, to colonize and claim these worlds for their empires, before they lose their chance. The story tells us with limited amounts of starships, there is no garrisoning this area, or blockading it from the others, this game thus becomes colony based and the action takes place solely on planetary surfaces.

There is an irksome issue with how the campaign structure is handled. There is no difficulty setting; the campaign you are in seems to be the difficulty setting of the game. Klingons are on Easy, Federation on Medium and Romulans on Hard. This is irritating because in most other RTSs that feature multiple factions, the first missions in the new campaign are always toned down. This is always a welcome reprieve, for it gives you an opportunity to learn about each new race, regardless if you end-up liking them, the information is still relevant to you, and only face the hard stuff once you have satisfactory practice with said new faction. This game is already quite difficult to its own mechanics; it does not need to become harder as we go along.

If that does not become finicky enough, the game offers three campaigns for the playable sides, each having 14 missions. Many of the missions are mirrors and are duplicated however. As in one mission, you might play from the Klingon side, and said mission may be re-visited up again during the Federation campaign, only this time you play as the Federation. While it is interesting storytelling perspective to see the mission from another perspective, this is a gimmick best used but a few times at most throughout the course of any given game. In this title, it is used so often, it crosses the border into laziness. As if they could not come up with enough ideas for levels to fill out the game, so they just ended up re-using previous ones.

New Worlds has an excessive amount of problems and not enough successes. The principal one we should talk about is the controls and the game interface. Constructing new structures takes quite a deal of effort and patience. For example, you may decide you want to build a phaser cannon to help protect your base. You have to click 'build', and then click the right scroll button three times in the menu, since there are only three objects shown at any time in the menu, click on the cannon, and then find a suitable location to build it. Dismally, it most likely will not be able to be placed where you would want it, which causes severe problems with city planning. Further complicated by the fact, there are no shortcut keys, forcing you to go through this same rigmarole every single time.

An intuitive interface for building units and structures, and control that thereof, is one of the essentials of a good strategy game, but the controls in this game are supremely bad, sloppy even, rendering it almost fully unplayable. I really do not like how when I try to give just basic orders the camera jiggles into a random position. Not just that, I feel like every time I try to do anything, I have to reset the camera. So forget following units with the camera to monitor what is going on. The lack of units being unable to take formations and the inability to set waypoints makes unit control even more problematic. Why do my units travel in single file lines and have such difficulty with the terrain even though their supposedly flying in a3D environment?

The units in this game are all various forms of hover shuttles. Hover shuttle, as in it flies, but only a little bit above the surface of the planet, and definitely not going to be among the clouds, let alone leave the atmosphere. Their pathing ability is atrocious despite supposedly being airborne. It is also very off-putting that here we are on various planet surfaces and never do we see any actual personnel, or any other vehicle types. No infantry soldiers of any kind. No future cars or future trucks. This is really a big missed opportunity.

The various races are not distinguished much more then cosmetically, and even then, barely that. Sure, there is a scattered few different ideas going on with each race, such as the Romulans using cloaking devices on some of their units, or the Klingons featuring more firepower in some cases then the other factions, but for the most part their gameplay is largely identical.

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