Star Trek: Tactical Assault is a real-time action/strategy game for the Nintendo DS (NDS) by Bethesda Softworks. In Star Trek: Tactical Assault you take command of a starship around the time of events in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and take it into battle with a galaxy full of bad guys.

This is the first in a series of new Trek games that Bethesda plans to release, and the first new Star Trek game from anyone in a couple of years.

The Basics. In campaign mode you start with the weakest class ship: the frigate. As you successfully complete missions you will get command of bigger, stronger (although not always better) ships. There are a total of five playable civilizations whose ships you can take command of, although only two have campaigns – The Federation and the Klingons.

Star Trek: Tactical Assault features a unique system for upgrading your capabilities as you gain experience. Instead of improving your ship, you improve your crew using crew upgrade points, which you can earn by completing missions. Better crew skills mean faster ships, more powerful weapons or quicker repairs – you get to choose.

The graphics on the Nintendo DS are about what you would expect: a bit above average as the DS goes but not as good as the graphics for the Sony PSP version of the game. The music, on the other hand, isn’t your typical annoying Kirby theme music, but instead uses real digital recordings of the orchestral themes from the movies. This is a welcome change, especially for those who find high-pitched, electronic music annoying, like me.

At its core, Star Trek: Tactical Assault is a space combat game that’s more arcade than flight simulator. Features like shield management make the game both more challenging and more interesting. Your shield is segmented into six pieces, each starting green and going down through yellow to red and then gone before your hull takes damage. As you progress in the game, training your crew in shield-related skills will allow you to resist damage before your shields collapse.

Your weapons’ ability to harm the enemy also improves as you get better ships and increase crew training. Although there are minor differences between civilizations, weapons in Star Trek: Tactical Assault fall into two categories: beam and projectile. Beams never miss, but do less damage at greater range. Projectiles deliver a guaranteed punch, but tend to miss at long range.

A feature I found quite annoying is when you spend your crew upgrade points you can’t get them back. This means you can’t reallocate points to other skills that might be more critical later in the game. Over time, wouldn’t you expect Star Fleet to rotate out crews, especially as ships become bigger and more complex? The game should reflect that.

Gameplay. When you begin, you’ll be assigned to a Federation frigate, the weakest and fastest of all of the ships. After a couple of missions you’ll be promoted to a destroyer, which adds a photon launcher, but not much else. Next is the light cruiser, which distributes its firepower evenly around the ship: two phasers and one torpedo launcher in the front, same in the back. The light cruiser also adds a double shield up front (the second shield layer doesn’t go to yellow and red like the others, and so dies very quickly.) Speed is again reduced, though luckily not by much.

After the light cruiser comes the heavy cruiser, a vessel that’s based on the Enterprise design. Shields are improved dramatically on the heavy cruiser; but, the weapon configuration is very similar to the frigate and so not as flexible as the light cruiser. It’s also slower, which made me think a light cruiser with a competent commander could probably kick the heavy cruiser’s butt (which, come to think of it, it did in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.) So much for the flagship of The Federation.

The final ship is the dreadnaught, the hardest-hitting ship in the game. This ship is a lot like the light cruiser in terms of weapons placement, but boasts a grand total of eight weapons and three layers of shields. Unfortunately, you have to take the good with the bad. This ship is the slowest in the fleet, which makes it easy for faster ships to take potshots at it with little chance of the Dreadnaught returning fire.

When you play Star Trek: Tactical Assault, you’ll notice that there is an indicator above your ship known as the “emergency power bar.” This power allows you to repair your ship, overcharge weapons and run exotic subsystems, like a cloaking device.

Now, when I say repair your ship, I don’t mean the hull, I mean your shields. Because there is no way to repair hull damage once an enemy penetrates your shields (at least until the mission is over), shield management is a very important part of winning the game. The way you “repair” a shield is to transfer power from that emergency reserve. But, watch out! Shields are power-hungry systems and will suck your reserves dry in no time, at least until you can upgrade your crews’ energy management skills.

You can also divert power from the reserve to your weapons, overcharging them. An overcharged weapon does a lot more damage, but each shot must be overcharged individually, which will use up the reserve quickly.

Reserves do replenish over time. But the recharge rate is so slow, you’ll find yourself letting your ship just hover in space between mission segments just to recharge them. Strangely, there’s no time limit or penalty on missions, so a smart captain will use this technique to fully recharge all systems before entering the next skirmish.

The campaign itself is really just a series of loosely connected scenarios that let you duke it out with the bad guys. The story is pretty good, but the combat itself can be extremely challenging to the point where you may find yourself replaying the same scenario a dozen times or more to “get it right.” Reading the same lines a dozen times can really suck the fun out of any story.

In addition to campaign mode, you can also select skirmish, where you test your combat prowess with the ships of other civilizations you’ve unlocked in the campaign. You also get to pick your crew skills and the skills of your opponent. In the mood for some carnage? Max out your skills and make your opponent weak, or do the opposite if you’d rather have a major challenge. Another nifty feature in skirmish is course settings, which let you design the space you’ll be battling in, including obstacles.

Star Trek: Tactical Assault also offers a wireless multiplayer mode, which works essentially like skirmish mode, only your opponent is another player on a wireless link.

Geek-o-Meter: While Star Trek: Tactical Assault has many strong points, it also has weak points. The controls can be a little confusing and gameplay can be very difficult at times. But for a DS game, the graphics are good and I liked the plot of the story in campaign mode, so I’m giving it an 8 on the Geek-o-Meter.

The Specs

Title Type

• Space Combat Simulator

Franchise

• Star Trek

Platform

• Nintendo DS (also available for the Sony PSP)

Price

• $34.99 U.S.

For More Information

• startrek.bethsoft.com

– Ian Gore is 12 years old and a hard-core gamer. This is his first published review, but hopefully, not his last.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 1:23 pm and is filed under HOME, ENTERTAINMENT, GAMES - NDS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.