Make it so-so.
User Rating: 6.8 | Star Trek: Armada PC
If games like Starcraft, Age of Kings, and Total Annihilation have set the bar for real-time strategy games, someone needs to inform Activision that the purpose isn't to dance the limbo. The attractive Star Trek license and the multiplayer gameplay rescue it somewhat, but the single-player game is about as exciting as watching one of those Next Generation episodes where the crew spends an hour wrestling with ethical dilemmas and intellectual puzzles, such as why Captain Jean Luc Picard has a French name but an English accent. Gameplay is straightforward real-time strategy stuff. You get four campaigns, each with five missions, and then a bonus scenario at the end. You play as the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Borg. Each race gets five main vessels, and you research a variety of special weapons for most of the ships. The Romulan Shadow Class ship can use a Phase Cloak, for example, as one of its specials. The infamous Borg Cube has a Holding Beam as its special. Besides the campaign, you can also play in skirmish mode against the computer or online with up to eight in a game. Resources add a small new twist to the game. Dilithium is the familiar cousin of C&C's tiberium and Starcraft's crystals, but the other resources are a bit more interesting: crew and officers. Each ship needs a minimum number of each to function effectively, and as a ship takes damage it loses some of each. As the ship loses crew and officers, it becomes less effective, finally spinning out of control if it isn't destroyed outright. The game allows you to transport crew from one ship to another, including from friendly to hostile ships. You can actually take over ships this way. The Borg can also assimilate your crew. If you find an unmanned ship, just beam some crew over there and you're good to go. The story is good Star Trek fare and does a nice job of propelling the player through the missions. Cutscenes are a mix of engine-rendered scenes and some cut-rate CGI. The story's interesting though. Graphically, the game is strong. A nice option is to be able to switch from the top-down view to a more cinematic view. That's probably the most compelling feature of the single-player game – being able to get in the middle of a big fight and switch to a movie-like view. You'll see nice touches like a shield flare when an enemy is hit, and spectacular explosions as ships break apart in a shower of metal and flame. Armada is played on a 2D plane in space. In an effort to combat what I'll term the boringness of space, Activision has populated the cosmos with many obstacles, usually in form of asteroids and nebulae. The nebulae come in five colors, with each color having a unique effect on ships passing through it. Red nebulae are dangerous while blue ones offer safe haven – shields and weapons don't work inside of them. Some of the level designs are a bit weird, like M.C. Escher had personally laid down the asteroid belts and gaseous nebulae. The result is that your suspension of disbelief is stretched way beyond the breaking point, which is something considering this is a Star Trek game. The game is also buggy and has problems with some video cards and sound cards. It crashed every time I alt-tabbed to the desktop. Bad Activision! Beyond that, the RTS gameplay is a bit on the dull side and has several flaws. Beyond the glitches, the most notable flaw is the poor AI. The computer tends to do a poor job of both instigating an attack and rebuilding its destroyed structures. The AI does a lousy job in both using special weapons and in reacting to humans using them as well. The scripted campaign missions tend to bypass this problem somewhat, but players will find the skirmish mode too easy. Another difficulty I encountered related to the fact that the game's units are entirely made up of spacecraft. The result is they tend to look alike. It's a bit hard to tell some of them apart at a glance, which is crucial to successful RTS gameplay. Managing crew levels was another headache. If your crew members are dwindling, you don't know it unless you click on each ship and squint to read a small display. Finally, Armada suffers from another common RTS problem -- the "spellcasting" issue. We've seen it in Warcraft and Starcraft, among others. Supercool abilities like Klingon Death Chant and the Federation's Corbomite Reflector really add to the battle -– it's just that it's frustrating to attempt to use these quickly, while the computer AI can use them with ease. RTS games have evolved beyond the point where attractive graphics and the excitement of real-time action are enough to carry the day. We rightly expect more now. Armada may find a receptive audience with casual game fans who love Star Trek. It's easy and straightforward and propelled by an interesting story told with graphical flair. The battles look great, although after you've seen them a few times the visual splendor wears off. For hardcore gamers there's a multitude of better RTS choices out there, although if you want to play a Star Trek RTS, you can have fun with multiplayer options. Armada is not a bad game. The design is interesting and at times it is an exciting game. It just doesn't hold up well when compared to the best RTS games the genre has produced. As much as I love RTS gaming, the genre's a bit played out. It's hard for me to be enthusiastic for anything that isn't as good as the best games I've played in the past. I want my RTS games to be as good as Starcraft and Age of Kings, and Armada unfortunately isn't.
