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Starfleet Command Gold





Starfleet Command Gold Review
By Mr. Tea - 6:50 PM on Thursday, August 05, 2000

The Game


The double-revolver spaceship is losing bullets quickly!
Now, I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t going to talk about the Gold Edition but I think I’m going to break that promise for a brief moment and tell you what is different in the newer, more metallic version. First of all, there are 30 new missions included, all broken down into three Federation missions, three Klingon, ten Hydran, seven Gorn, three Romulan and of course your ceremonial partridge and a pear tree. This on top of the fifty missions that are already included in the normal game, well hell… you’ve got yourself a bargain.

Now, when you begin your campaign towards glory, there are six different races to choose from. Fans of Star Trek will find these names familiar, while I just found them scary and freakish, but in that good kind of way, you know. Your race options include The United Federation of Planets (which I’m told can be abbreviated to The Federation), The Klingon Empire, The Romulan Empire, The Lyran Star Empire, The Hydran Kingdoms, and finally The Gorn Confederation. Once you select your allegiance, you start off as a young, innocent man commanding his very first ship with lofty goals of becoming Admiral someday. Actually, you’ll have to get through the damn tutorials first, then you can begin your mission towards Admiral. They actually weren't all bad, because you do get to learn most of your strategies, tactics and maneuvers in these practice runs. So, really, they aren’t too bad, just very tedious.


So... this is Space. It's ...nice.
Through your Map, you can decide which areas you want to travel through and to or which ones you want to avoid all together. After you choose an area, you’ll be given mission after mission to complete. This is where things become repetitive and tedious (yes, again), and since the entire game takes place in the missions, you can assume the whole game is repetitive and tedious. The missions are varied a little bit, but it’s very little variety if any at all. Basically, you’ll be blowin’ stuff up, disabling other ships and rescuing ships. Just simply your regular Space RTS, without the resource gathering and management (thankfully).

After you complete each mission, you are rewarded with prestige points that allow you to purchase repairs for your ship, gaining new ships or new officers and crew. These come in handy and are really what kept me going and playing this game because I liked the idea that the ship and her crew was customizable, plus your fleet can grow from one ship to a total of three.


A lone ship being ganged up on by The Philadelphia Police Space
Corp.
Now for the repetitive nature of this game. Most missions lead you towards a battle where you’ll be duking it out with other ships. While it is fun at first, it slowly grows to be very annoying over time. I found myself being killed many times on each mission, so I’d have to go back and play it again. But, this time, I’d have to try something different and see if the result varied from death this go around. Also, every damn key on the keyboard was assigned a function, so the reference card had to be right next to my monitor at all times. The amount of battle options is great, but it’s a tad on the over-kill side in this game. So, basically, every battle got to be extremely meticulous, since combat really depends on slight variations in movement and speed. Many times I just found myself circling around an enemy, waiting for someone to change their path. Usually, I’d have to be the one to make the bold move, and sometimes I’d be successful and sometimes I wouldn’t. Over and over again I’d play missions, only to lose out because I got bored of playing in the circle or didn’t remember what key was assigned to a certain weapon or ship operation.

On the plus side, a cool feature in the game is the option to join a special task force or elite group of the race you are a part of. The decision to join is completely up to you, so if you don’t want to mess around with those elitist bastards and hunt the more difficult prey, then don’t. But, if you’re up to more of a challenge and want to cash in on more prestige points, then by all means join the special groups and enjoy the game on a different level. Rather than you normal mission that is assigned to you depending on where you are in the galaxy, you’ll be randomly given a mission that requires your "special" skills to complete. I thought this added a lot of flavor to this game.


Next page: Graphics, Sound, Conclusion





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