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Starfleet Command: Volume 2
by Jolex Del Pilar
Saturday, February 10 2001
Interplay's Starship simulation game gets a minor upgrade, with more ships, better graphics, and a better campaign system.
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Title:
Starfleet Command: Volume 2
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Platform:
PC Windows,
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Publisher:
Interplay |
Developer:
14 Degrees East |
#
of Players: 1 - 2 |
Genre:
Action/Strategy
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Origin:
United States
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Expected
Release:
January 2001 |
Grapevine:
For the old Star Trek board game lovers, this game is gold. |
In 1998, Interplay released Starfleet Command, a game that could be thought of as one of the few respectable Star Trek games in a crowded field. It received decent reviews, but concern over it's overly complex control scheme and flawed Dynaverse™ system quickly turned away many potential buyers. With a few patches, the game was eventually fixed. Soon though, the fun factor had been exhausted with the first game. Interplay's messageboard was buzzing with demands and suggestions for the second game. Supposedly, lead designer Chris Taylor took a lot of these suggestions to heart and implemented them into the second game.
The installation of the game went smoothly and was fairly easy. One thing that was surprising though, and it's not just with this game, it's with a lot of newer PC games, the minimum install was around 550 megabytes, or more than half a gigabyte. With all the new PCs on the market, this might not be too big of a problem for you new PC owners. However, for the more prehistoric systems, there could be serious space considerations. Be forwarned.
Once you load up the game, veterans of the original game will notice the aesthetic modifications to the menu. There's the usual gameplay options such as Single player campaigns, single missions, and multiplayer. The single player campaign is probably what will occupy most of your time with the game, at least in the beginning. Unlike the first game, the campaigns are actually complete (in the original, 3 of the races had incomplete campaigns that had to be added with a patch). There's about 15 campaigns that you can choose from, all from different perspectives. The majority of them are varations of "some race", whether it be Klingon or other, facing off against The Interstellar Concordium. The Concordium is a Federation like race that is bent on restoring peace to the galaxy. Their methods are a bit "iron fisted" however, and rather than talking with their eloquent tongues, they instead opt to talk with their high powered energy weapons.
Once you get into campaign mode, you are presented with a hexogonal space map, with which you can navigate around by clicking on the adjoining hexes around your location. You start off at your respective homeworld (Earth if you're Federation, or Romulus if you're Romulan). You can move anywhere on the map, but you are limited to how far you can move before you must take a mission. If you don't take any missions, you won't earn enough "prestige", SF:2's answer to money, and therefore won't be able to afford better ships and weapons. In the beginning, take missions close to your home sector. The farther away from your home sector, the more difficult the missions and fiercer the resistance.
The bulk of your missions will be generic. Patrol Duty, Escort, or Defense. Sometimes though, you'll receive a special mission, such as the hunting for space monesters for instance. These missions are fun and not only earn you a ton of prestige, but also commendations from your superiors.
So what's new in Starfleet Command: Volume 2 besides the improved cmapaign system ? Well, first off, there's two new races; the aformentioned Interstellar Concordium, and The Mirak Star League. The Mirak Star League is an ancient race that has had long and vicious wars with its neighbors, the Klingons and Lyran, two of the original races from the first game. Their empire is small, but their ships are powerful. They're unique in the sense that they use almost no energy weapons, and rely completely on missiles. This type of attack is often devastating when successful, and their ships should be treated with extreme caution in a combat situation. Also new is the ability to setup your fleet formations much more efficiently. Before, the only options you had were to tell your ships to attack or defend, and other variations. Now you can setup you fleet by asking other ships to hang on your wing, or even take the lead. It's a very nice addition. Graphically, the game is a step beyond the original Starfleet Command.
The ships are exquisitely detailed. It seems the textures are a bit more higher-res, and the space backgrounds are absolutley covered with space phenomena such as distant nebulae, or even a swirling dust cloud. It's almost on par with top notch space flight games like Freelancer and Tacheyon: The Fringe. Also, now when you ships get damaged, you can actually see the effects on the hull of your ship. Get hit a few times without your shields, and you'll see scorchmarks on your hull. Very nice.
Sound wise, it's a little more sparse than was the case with the original game. In the original, at least the music played more than a few seconds at a time. Now, the "Star Trek" music is all but gone when a mission starts or ends. Even the ambient music is gone, it will be sorely missed. Why the designers decided to take this aspect of the game out ? I don't know. The other sound effects are excellent though. The sounds seems to be directly from the show and add a great deal of immersion when you're enguled in a heated starship battle.
The controls of this game are either a hit or miss. If you're a veteran of the first game, you'll more than likely be right at home with SFC2's control scheme, nothing has really changed. If you're a newbie to the series however, you might find that the micromanagement is overwhelming. Although the controls are helped by the fact that there is a keyboard shortcut for just about anything you're ship can do, and an onscreen "click" menu that can be used, it still is a task to keep your starship performing at peak capacity, especially while in combat. There is so many things to keep tabs on while you're piloting your starship. These can include; tractor beams, shield and weapon power, scanning, manuevers, and even self-destruct mode. One has to wonder why 14 Degrees East didn't opt to let the player have the option to let some task be left to the A.I such as tractor beams, when using them to deflect missiles. It really becomes a task turning on your tractor beam to defend against a missle, then turning it off to reclaim the power it was using so you can power other systems. This juggling act that is SF2's control scheme is still as daunting as it ever was, although it's not so big a problem that it makes the game unplayable, like Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator on a keyboard...(*shudder*).
On its own merits, SF2 is an excellent game with many excellent features for the rabid Star Trek fan who always wanted to jump into Captain Kirk's shoes and sit in the "big" chair. If you can get past the fact that there's none of the usual "Trek" music and the control scheme is better suited to a cyborg than a human, then you're going to be in for an excellent Star Trek experience.
--- Jolex Del Pilar, VGLN Warlord
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