Star Trek: Tactical Assault – Quick Impressions

Licensed Star Trek games have generally had their ups and downs… usually more down than up, with the Voyager series of games ironically being the series highpoint (though Bridge Commander wasn’t half bad in an extraoridarily boring way). Many would argue that the franchise marketability is at an all time low, and with the cancellation of the last Trek series to air on TV “Enterprise”, and Activision suing Trek production company Paramount for mishandling the property, they’d probably have  a pretty strong case. Bethesda it seems things thinks they can turn things around, they’ve got two Trek games hitting in September this year, Star Trek: Legacy, and Star Trek: Tactical Assault, the latter of which concerns us PSP owners.

       

Licensed Star Trek games have generally had their ups and downs… usually more down than up, with the Voyager series of games ironically being the series highpoint (though Bridge Commander wasn’t half bad in an extraordinarily boring way). Many would argue that the franchise marketability is at an all time low, and with the cancellation of the last Trek series to air on TV “Enterprise”, and Activision suing Trek production company Paramount for mishandling the property, they’d probably have  a pretty strong case. Bethesda it seems things thinks they can turn things around, they’ve got two Trek games hitting in September this year, Star Trek: Legacy, and Star Trek: Tactical Assault, the latter of which concerns us PSP owners.

       

On the third and final day of E3 I wandered into Bethesda’s booth to get some eagerly anticipated hands on time with Tactical Assault and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I’m sure you’ve all probably seen the screens that were released a few weeks ago (you can see them in this article) and you probably thought they didn’t look much better than those of the DS game. Rest assured that these screens no longer represent the visual quality of the game. The rep who gave me my booth tour was quick to point out those screens were from a much earlier build, and my own eyes told me he was telling the truth. The game now sports planets and ship models with much greater texture detail and neater looking planets and asteroids. The real kicker was the implementation of some neat specular highlighting on the ships metallic surfaces, so that as they moved through space the light slid and glinted off their edges in a manner that made them look pretty darn sexay.

       

The game will take place during the timeline of the original Trek series (i.e Kirk, Spock and Bones), just after the events of the second movie, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khaaaaaaan! You won’t however be stepping into the boots of Captain James T. Kirk, or any other known Trek captain, or even piloting the Enterprise for that matter. Tactical Assault affords players the opportunity to have their own crew and ship, and experience two branching storylines that allow you to play on the side of either the Federation or those Klingon bastards.

In the demo I played we started out at Stardock, after warping to a designated location I ordered my comms officer to scan the area, she found a Klingon bird of prey closing quickly. At this point I could either try hailing them and negotiating, raise shields and open fire, simply raise shields to enter a defensive stance, or just sit there showing trust (or maybe stupidty). Each decision would bring about a different response from the bird of prey, but because I wanted to test the combat engine I did the most un-Trek thing I could… “raise shields and fire all phaser banks and photon torpedoes!” In an instant the Klingons responded with a deadly salvo of their own, disruptor beams slamming into my port shields. The battle quickly became more tactical as I had to outmaneuver the bird of prey, targeting the weakest section of her shields and concentrating my fire here to bring her down. After a few minutes of constant pounding the ship erupted into flames, filling the blackness of space with klingon blood… k’plah!

  

But only for the moment, before I had a chance to gather my thoughts another Klingon ship warped into the sector and this time it wasted no on pleasantries, firing on me without even so much as bothering to hail or open a channel. At this point I had the choice of going it on my own or calling in Federation support, I did the latter, and within moments a friendly ship warped into the area, helping me best the klingons once again. Good times.

The final game will give you the ability to command ships from five different races, the Federation, Klingon, Gorn, Romulan and Orion fleets will all be at your disposal (non-Trekkies eyes will probably glaze over at this point). Multiplayer is unfortunately confined to one on one battles (where’s the love for infrastructure?) but promises to be fast and frantic. Look for this to hit in September, we’ll be watching it closely at Qj.