Starfleet Command III

Now we’ve been here before. You want to fly a starship right? You want to crush your enemies underneath your boot right? I’m still waiting on the Deanna Troi/Seven of Nine dating simulator… I’ve flown the Enterprise before… Anyways, Starfleet Command III is a little misleading of a name, the game operates on two levels – the direct command of a starship, or as the sector admiral controlling a variety of starships (you take direct control of a ship once it enters battle). The main game mode involves working towards establishing a presence in the highly contested neutral zone; you can control Starfleet of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, or the Romulan Star-Empire (don’t worry the Borg are playable in multiplayer).

The training missions are one of the highlights thanks to the overview delivered by Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard. A definitely important first step considering that without those missions, my primary mode of attack would be the "Kamikaze Bow Stuff" maneuver which doesn’t so much rely on technique as "surprise" and "terror" (or bad piloting if we’re getting technical).

To make the controls more simplified, all of the controls are accessible from the main screen (as opposed to previous versions where you went hunting for the right command on a series of different screens) and are broken down into 3 groups: Communications/Scan (if you can’t figure out which commands you can use from the name, maybe you shouldn’t be captaining anything more difficult than a chair), Systems (kind of like the junk-drawer of commands… everything from powering 

Now to the complications; to make the experience of captaining more realistic, your ship’s efficiency and effectiveness is dependant upon the people on board. As you could surmise, the more experienced an officer that you have in a position, the better that the job will get done. Well as you complete missions in the game, you can upgrade your ship and pick up better officers for duty; however, your own officers will gain seasoning as they survive and win battles so a balance between the two systems will be important to would be Napoleons or Captain Ahabs out there.

The game provides two modes of play: scripted single-player campaigns (for the three playable races), or a "Capture the Quadrant" campaign where you can play as the Borg as well as the other three races. Both of these campaigns use the same basic interface, you start off with a 3-D map of sectors and if one of your ships has an enemy encounter, the game switches to the battle mode where you take direct control of the ship.

The battle visuals and sound are both top-notch; the game looks and sounds exactly like it was disseminated from an episode of Star Trek which is exactly what you’re looking for in this type of simulation. Even more impressive is the better integration of in-game speech in this title; as the battle is raging, you get updates from different parts of the ship with damage reports – especially when the shields fail and the hull starts breaching. It’s cool.

Now to the cons. This game is really touchy about it’s version of Direct X; the game comes with a version of Direct X 8.1, but I later upgraded to 9.1 which had the end result of me not being to play the game until I went back to 9.0 and picked up a patch from the Activision website. That’s really freaking annoying for someone who is reviewing games of different ages and having to switch back to an earlier version.

All in all, Starfleet Command III is an excellent game that will appeal to the hardcore sim-freaks, but only those who have large amounts of time to spend gaming.

- Tazman

"I am Bender, please insert booze."

        - Bender (Futurama)