Quite an oddity. An adaptation of an unpopular movie three years too late that goes well beyond the average cash-in game, but ends up as what might charitably be described as 'an ambitious mess'. I played it briefly as a kid and it stuck in my mind long afterwards as this expansive, exciting, impossible-to-fully-grasp thing. Finally returned to it now and there is ... definitely ... a lot going on.
It sounds great on paper - a light strategy/space sim frame over a non-linear progression of immsim-y FPS levels starring the entire TNG cast and giving you the ability to alter the events of the movie by doing better or worse on individual missions. Mountains of Trek goodness in cute little details (Data being able to walk underwater, Troi being called upon to once again go undercover as a Romulan) goofy easter eggs (Picard bumping his head if you stand up in a Jeffries tube after bragging about his familiarity with the ship, a la Scotty in The Final Frontier) and fun non-standard mission outcomes and Game Overs (like blowing yourself out into space and needing to be emergency-transported back onto the Enterprise if you're dumb enough to open an airlock that you're standing in. (This can be literally the first thing you do.)). All the makings of a Trekkie's dream!
Sadly, the problems are manifold and quickly evident. For starters, the game looks ancient for '97. The FPS mode is somewhere behind DOOM in fidelity and the controls are impossibly clumsy, especially given allllllll the stuff you're asked to do, from platforming to stealth to item puzzles to pitched phaser battles. There isn't even mouselook! There is a lot of detail in the design (just look at the whole goddamn HALF of the screen taken up by the HUD) but it's far behind the times in every way.
Levels are huge and there's tons going on (including SHENMUE-level optional digging through drawers for pointless inventory items) but the mission design/objectives are so convoluted and the interface so unintuitive that it's a miracle if you can beat the first level without a guide. Oh, and the less said about the space combat, the better. It's somehow worse than the Game Boy games.
It's a shame that this, to put it mildly, didn't really come together. There are worse sins than a dev's reach exceeding their grasp, but this is pretty rough. It seems akin to how everyone desrcibes the first SYSTEM SHOCK - interesting but beyond clunky, and requiring a massive amount of patience to get any enjoyment out of. But I could be off base there, I haven't actually played that one (yet). Unfortunate that this didn't have a follow-up to get it right!
It's bigtime abandonware now, and almost impossible to get running on modern Windows, so if you want to give it a try, The Collection Chamber made a launcher for it that works great. But consider yourself warned, only the truest of heads need apply.
It sounds great on paper - a light strategy/space sim frame over a non-linear progression of immsim-y FPS levels starring the entire TNG cast and giving you the ability to alter the events of the movie by doing better or worse on individual missions. Mountains of Trek goodness in cute little details (Data being able to walk underwater, Troi being called upon to once again go undercover as a Romulan) goofy easter eggs (Picard bumping his head if you stand up in a Jeffries tube after bragging about his familiarity with the ship, a la Scotty in The Final Frontier) and fun non-standard mission outcomes and Game Overs (like blowing yourself out into space and needing to be emergency-transported back onto the Enterprise if you're dumb enough to open an airlock that you're standing in. (This can be literally the first thing you do.)). All the makings of a Trekkie's dream!
Sadly, the problems are manifold and quickly evident. For starters, the game looks ancient for '97. The FPS mode is somewhere behind DOOM in fidelity and the controls are impossibly clumsy, especially given allllllll the stuff you're asked to do, from platforming to stealth to item puzzles to pitched phaser battles. There isn't even mouselook! There is a lot of detail in the design (just look at the whole goddamn HALF of the screen taken up by the HUD) but it's far behind the times in every way.
Levels are huge and there's tons going on (including SHENMUE-level optional digging through drawers for pointless inventory items) but the mission design/objectives are so convoluted and the interface so unintuitive that it's a miracle if you can beat the first level without a guide. Oh, and the less said about the space combat, the better. It's somehow worse than the Game Boy games.
It's a shame that this, to put it mildly, didn't really come together. There are worse sins than a dev's reach exceeding their grasp, but this is pretty rough. It seems akin to how everyone desrcibes the first SYSTEM SHOCK - interesting but beyond clunky, and requiring a massive amount of patience to get any enjoyment out of. But I could be off base there, I haven't actually played that one (yet). Unfortunate that this didn't have a follow-up to get it right!
It's bigtime abandonware now, and almost impossible to get running on modern Windows, so if you want to give it a try, The Collection Chamber made a launcher for it that works great. But consider yourself warned, only the truest of heads need apply.