
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/thearmchairem-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com">	Platform PC Developer Reflexive Publisher Activision Genre RTS ESRB T (Teen) Released Q2 2001

- Great Star Trek action - Almost like watching an episode the way characters talk - Good voice acting - Some real nice additions to the real-time strategy genre

- No higher resolutions - Not all that difficult of a game

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Star Trek: Away Team

Score: 8.5 out of 10.0

Ever wanted to explore strange new places and boldly go – aww, screw it. Ever wanted to kick the crap out of an entire garrison because you didn't like the look of one guy's face? Away Team is a strategy game from the good folks at Activision and Reflexive, in which you lead and control the actions of a group of Starfleet officers from the USS Incursion. The story takes place in Federation space after the Dominion War with the creation of a new SWAT-like group. This new team dubbed the "Away Team" (The A-Team lives! – Omni) operates from the newest starship, the USS Incursion, and becomes involved in important issues quickly. The maiden voyage starts by uncovering a plot by an outside force to subvert high-ranking Starfleet officers. Diplomacy is for guys named Picard; these guys use phasers, grenades, mines, explosives, rifles and all sorts of other weapons to get the point across. The missions involve enemies from all your favorite species: Romulan, Human, Klingon, and of course Borg.

The action is in the third person; you control the team from a birds' eye view. The missions usually start by selecting an away team for the mission (there are missions where you team is chosen for you) – you can select people from five disciplines: Command, Engineers, Science Officers, Medicine, and Security. Each officer has their own strengths and weaknesses – they have been trained on certain pieces of equipment or can use certain weapons but no person can use everything. For example, there are three doctors: one is a good fighter but doesn't carry many hypo-sprays, another hoards hypos but is not very useful in a firefight, and the third is a balance between the two. The problems in choosing a team are magnified when you start choosing technicians or security personnel because some cannot override security systems but bring diversion equipment and so on. Once you choose a team, the mission begins with a collection of objectives to complete – the primary ones are required for success and the secondary ones are more like icing on the cake. Completing the secondary missions at times are near impossible if you act in certain mindsets. Use a sledgehammer style of attack and you're definitely going to have a hard time with the "avoid enemy detection" objective. The missions allow for a variety of solution paths – the deceptive people will have just as much success as those who prefer to bust some skulls.

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The game is average-looking but the sound is nicely blended into the action, which is what the music should be – an addition to the game not a detraction. The visuals aren't spectacular but they aren't terrible either – just average, but then again I expected action not an optical masterpiece. The voice acting is good, although I would have preferred that they have all the aliens speak their languages accompanied by subtitles. (I’m just being nit-picky.)

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Surprisingly, this is the first game in a long time that doesn't have a resolution setting. Ever since I rebuilt my computer, the first thing I look for when I start a game is the options menu so I can crank up the res.

Any additions to the real-time strategy genre you ask? Some good additions: the invention of "pause time" would practically be enough for me. Pause time allows you to stop the action and issue advance orders – so if you want to issue a series of orders to your team it can now be done without the use of profanities by the gamer. No fog of war (thank the Maker!), so you can see the entire map and make your attack plan ahead of time. The addition of perception ranges is a nice touch – you can tell the sound and visual ranges of guards so that you can sneak people into their range or right by them (when sentries scan a region you can tell if they are looking at you or in your direction). There is only one aspect that detracts from the game: the difficulty level is laughable. I finished the first twelve missions on my first sitting with only the Borg Cube mission slowing me down to think about what I was doing. This should be taken into context because I wholy intend to go back to the earlier missions and get all of the objectives which should prove innumerably more difficult. Away Team is very enjoyable and is highly recommended to lovers of strategy games and Trek fans.

Reviewed by Tazman

"ALL RIGHT! I BOUGHT HIS BRAIN!" - Tick