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Star Trek Bridge Commander
by Jolex Del Pilar

Sunday, October 15 2000

Developer Totally Games attempts to simulate the glory and intensity of being a Starfleet captain.

Title: Star Trek Bridge Commander

Platform: PC Windows

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Totally Games

# of Players: 1

Genre: Action

Origin: United States

Expected Release: Q2 2001

Grapevine: ...your crew is assembled in much the same way they were assembled on Jean-Luc Picard's Enterprise, first officer to your right, counselor to your right, weapons officer behind you, etc.

In recent years, it seems that games based on a Star Trek license seemed to be affected by a foul curse, the curse of mediocrity. Only recently has there been any indication of a reverse in this trend. 14th Degree's Star Fleet Command showed us that Star Trek games could be respectable with its tactical representation of Starship battles. The Unreal powered Voyager: Elite Force gave us the best representation of an away mission we've ever seen. However, as an admitted "trekkie", it's common knowledge that we all want to know what it feels like to be in that command chair. What better way to represent that feeling than with a fully fledged PC game.

PC gaming, due to hardware improvements, and other advances, have been able to achieve more and more within the last couple of years. Doing a game as ambitious as Bridge Commander a few years ago might have brought disbelieving stares from programmers, as Pentium 166 machines would have struggled to move a complex starship model (I.E-Interplay's Star Trek: A Final Unity). However, it's the year 2000 and our P3 850s and Voodoo 5500 AGP cards are more than up to the task, and Totally games is set to deliver. Maybe Trek games got a bad rap because of the developers behind them. Well, Bridge Commander won't be able to use that excuse as Totally Games is the same workshop that brought us X-Wing and Tie Fighter, legends in their own right as space sims.

Bridge Commander takes place in the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine timeline of the Star Trek Universe. Expect to see Romulan Warbirds and Sovereign class starships duking it out. And duke it out you will as the game will emphasize action over simulation. Bridge Commander is not a simulation, and is intended to target those who wanted to be in the middle of the chaos that ensues a battle between two behemoth starships in space. A lot of the action is played from the bridge view, the captain's chair to be exact. From there, your crew is assembled in much the same way they were assembled on Jean-Luc Picard's Enterprise, first officer to your right, counselor to your right, weapons officer behind you, etc. Each of these bridge officers plays an important role whether it be regulating engineering, or navigating the ship through space. It has not been touched upon, but if one of your officers gets knocked out during combat, you can probably safely assume that it'll adversely affect the operation of your starship.

Bridge Commander's story opens with your starship, the Galaxy class USS Icarus, on a routine deep space scientific mission. It can't be all shooting and dodging, there's always the grunt work. You play the first officer, bored on the bridge as this less than exciting mission runs its course. Then unexpectedly, and quite shockingly, the star that inhabits the system your starship is in, goes nova. Caught by surprise the crew of this ship barely has time to maneuver away from the blast, let alone, raise shields. The blast is so powerful (c'mon, it's an exploding sun !) that it cripples your starship and kills many of your crew. Tragically, your captain is one of the dead. That is where the player steps in. With no captain, a crippled ship, and colonist in need of help as a result of the supernova, there is not a more cliché plot than the one in Bridge Commander. Fortunately, it makes for exciting gameplay.

As captain of an ultra powerful starship, you'll have all its resources under your control. From extraordinary fire power, to sleek and extremely fast warp engines, it is yours to use or misuse as you see fit. But before you go across the neutral zone, guns blazing, remember, there is a mission to complete as the games linear storyline will remind you. Not quite setup like a LucasArts action/adventure game, the feel will be vaguely the same with an episodic structure that you will be guided through. You may ask, "Who exactly do I play in the game ?". That's the beauty of it, you don't play anyone but yourself. Your avatar has no persona, no voice, not even a single texture or polygon. You play the game through first person and guide your character the way you see fit.

Speaking of first person, the game's interface plans to make use of that perspective a lot. Every station you look at will bring down a pull down menu of commands that you can issue to that station, like "Fire Phasers on Full !" for the weapons station. Just be sure to make those commands in real time with a Romulan Warbird beating down on your hull with some super juice-up disruptors. The battles in the game will resemble to a tee, the slow, but graceful ballets that you saw on the show. Slowly, starships maneuvering to bring the full brunt of their gun ports to bear, most likely on your ships vulnerable engineering section. As you take damage, be ready to see your first officer go down, and be ready to issue commands to your weapons officer in the heat of battle. It is these situations that separate a starship captain from a freighter reject. Can you handle the heat as your hull starts to breach ? Allocation of power, helm commands, you'll need to be quick as you access the drop down menus.

The game's graphics are astounding as you'll see from the screenshots Totally Games sent us. Making full use of today's fastest 3D hardware, the game sports a high-polygon count engine that makes use of some of the best texture work this editor has seen in quite a while. Lighting effects galore, and filtering to help get rid of those ugly pixels, this game's graphics are sure to impress. Armand Cabrera, the game's lead artist has done a fantastic job portraying the ships on the computer and keeping them true to the series. This game is dressed to impress, most definitely.

If you're a trekkie or even a casual Star Trek fan, you have to be a at least a little excited about this game. A chance to relive the famous battle scene in Star Trek ll: The Wrath of Khan, or battle a Romulan Battle Cruiser with the Enterprise. The chance to live in the shoes of Kirk or Picard for one day are to great to ignore. With developer Totally Games behind the wheel, the future looks promising and we're expecting them to warp in an interstellar performance befitting the much respected Star Trek franchise. Look for his one in the Summer, 2001.

--- Jolex Del Pilar, VGLN Warlord

Screenshots