Star Trek: Tactical Assault

February 14,2007 - Star Trek has been a franchise that hasn’t seen much success in the games industry. Things looked bright when Bethesda’s took hold of the reigns and announced Star Trek: Tactical Assault for the PSP. However, it seems the developers forgot they were making a Star Trek game, as it seems to be pretty light on the Trek and heavy the generic space stuff. Did the developers make up for the lack of Trek with compelling gameplay, or is Star Trek: Tactical Assault just another generic space shooter?

While the ships, the Klingons, and Romulans may give you the idea that this will be full of Star Trek goodness, it’s largely non-existent. Story points seem to come off as bullet points in an outline rather than just a fluid narrative. If it weren’t for the fact that most of the dialogue during missions tries to give the next part of the mission, you could make it through the game without finding a whiff of a story. The characters that man your ships are just so generic that you don’t care a lick about them as all. It seems to have some sort of connection to the original Star Trek series, but it’s pretty hard to tell unless you’re a Trekkie.

The “Tactical Assault” portion of the game is somewhat noticeable, but the gameplay seems to be half-assed enough where anything that could’ve made the gameplay interesting and compelling goes right out the window. I may be wrong, but I don’t recall the USS Enterprise having to spin around in circles during combat like the ship had entered Ice Capades. It may have been possible to have the control mechanic make the game more strategic, but it all boils down to you and your enemies spinning around in circles and blasting their photons once a minute. How tactical is that?

Multiple paths through missions just mean multiple ways to fail the mission, as there only seems to be one good way to get through a mission without screwing yourself over. Frankly, the missions seem to be vague themselves, which just makes the frustration factor way too high. One mission requires you to talk to these two ships in a specific order or else the mad Klingon calls his friend for help and makes the mission all but impossible from there on out. How are you supposed to know that there’s only one order to chat through if you’re not clued in on it beforehand? It’s just another example that your success is based more on luck and perseverance than actual skill.

To help you make your way through the steep difficulty curve, each mission rewards players with upgrade points based on how well the mission is completed. You'll be able to upgrade certain aspects of the ship to help make its way through the game. It helps, but still tends to not be enough unless you play through missions multiple times to get better grades. Ships are also unlocked as you complete missions, which adds to the available ships that can be used in multiplayer mode. Multiplayer is similar to the single-player mode, pitting up to four players against each other in a game of Star Trek Ice Capades. It makes for a more strategic affair, but it’s not really compelling enough to warrant several purchases by friends with the lack of game sharing.

The game itself is rather competent in its appearance. It has some of the Star Trek flair, but just comes off as being more of a generic space shooter game with the Star Trek license attached. The ships do show damage nicely, with fire and smoke quite abundant when you’re in danger of destruction. The environments are definitely a good representative of the vast, empty place that we call outer space. Asteroids are nice to see, but tend to be more of a hazard and an annoyance than they need to be. Load times are rather nice, displaying quotes from the multiple series and movies—probably the biggest use of the Star Trek license in the whole game.

The audio is also a fairly competent attempt at adding to the Star Trek atmosphere that the game offers. The music gives off that Star Trek vibe, but more often than not it is just forgettable and overdone. It’s easier to just save the battery juice for more important stuff. The game does feature an apparent lack of voice acting. Even though nobody from the original crew is a part of the game, some voice acting for the generic crew could’ve helped the game feel more like Star Trek. However, the sound effects for the ship’s engines and weapons do sound quite nice, but they fail to really makeup for the rest of the audio that the game offers. Luckily, these things can be turned on and off in the menus, so the ships can be heard without the cheesy music.

If it weren’t for the Star Trek name being plastered on the cover the game, it may not be so easy to tell that Star Trek: Tactical Assault is indeed a licensed game. The irony that the gameplay isn’t so tactical is quite apparent after you realize you haven’t been fighting your enemies so much as you’ve been spinning around in circles at them. The game’s more frustrating than fun after you find that game doesn’t care to give you an idea of what you need to do to succeed. What was a promising game turns into a disappointment quickly that’s not really worth the purchase—unless you’re a Trekkie.

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