Pros: Looks good, enjoyable multiplayer. Cons: Rushed and ill-thought out story mode, buggy with no patch in sigh
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The fact is, I did enjoy playing this game. However, a lot of that is because I just like Star Trek - something that CBS and whatever gaming company they're using this week have been banking on for years so they don't have to put any effort into the product.
First off, and most importantly - how hard was it to just have a look at a few movies or episodes before you start making a computer game? There is such a wealth of material for a game like this in the Star Trek franchise. Writing their own story that lasts all of maybe 10 hours, reveals ideas that never get followed up on and rushes through a 40 year history like they had no interest in it at all clearly shows that this is the wrong company to be giving development to.
Don't get me wrong, an original storyline is fine too, but if you're going to do it, do it properly! Instead of something that can be reasonably suggested as a better idea than just doing classic battles from the show and movies, we have a barely 10 hour story mode which pays little more than lip-service to The Original Series era and completely ignores 2 of the shows, reducing their captains and ships to little more than cameos (Sisko appears in one mission, the Defiant and Voyager are both unplayable). The story mode isn't explained at all - the press release may have explained but the game sure didn't. A mysterious Vulcan ship keeps turning up and doing bad things, and eventually you just get told the Vulcan involved has become the Borg Queen! Say what?
You get 15 missions in total, and they're divided into eras. You start of as Archer, move onto an incredibly tired sounding Kirk and end the game as Picard in the Enterprise D & E, with cameos from Sisko and Janeway.
Now, right off the bat, 15 missions just isn't enough, and not playing as either Sisko or Janeway is downright insulting. You're in the Enterprise D for 1 mission, saving the Defiant from the Romulans. That mission is Sisko's one and only appearance - you fight at Deep Space Nine towards the end, but it's post-Nemesis. What was the point? Just so you could advertise that it involved "all 5 captains"?
Mis-advertising abounds in this game - during the menu screen the game engine plays out the iconic moment in Star Trek II when Khan's Reliant scars the Enterprise's engineering section. This moment does not appear in the game (although it did appear at E3 to show off the game, you'd think they wouldn't tease us with it on the menu screen as well - careless).
Controls are pretty dire - ships are almost entirely dependent on you flicking between them, and if you do that then sometimes a bug occurs where if you click off the ship, it grinds to a halt until you realise that one of your fleet is a couple of light years behind you.
Ahh the bugs.... some of them I didn't mind too much - I got achievements for completing an era without losing a single ship for all 3 eras in the game, despite that never once happening. What isn't so fun is when the voice samples play over each other, or when the in-engine cutscenes can't manage to produce a battle for you to see, instead showing you a bunch of Romulan and Borg ships just kind of bumping off each other.
The multiplayer component adds some much needed replay value to the game - unfortunately, the system is set up pretty badly. If you can actually find someone playing at the same time as you, you go into a lobby screen that gives you the type of game (Deathmatch or Co-Op Wave), the location and the era. No details on useful things, like the time limit or how many respawns you're allowed. Then, once you complete a match, it closes the room! Why not allow the players to return to the game lobby so that they can have a rematch easily should they choose?
What else can I say about it really.. it's awful. If I had spent full price on this game I would be very angry about it. As it is, I paid £15 and that seems about reasonable considering the amount of effort that was put into it.
Lets end on some positives - the ships look awesome, there are moments when you do feel like you're part of the Star Trek universe and the battles are pretty epic, even if there are a heap of problems. Buy it cheap for the multiplayer, never pay new.