It's a bad, bad time to be a Trek fan. The big downturn happened when someone high up was talking about the future of Star Trek looking very bright, and not possibly seeing how it could fail. This was right before Star Trek: Nemesis came out. Then Nemesis tanked. I went to see it opening weekend and I thought it was horrid. Afterwards we get interviews with Berman where he's uncertain about the future of the Star Trek Movies, and where he doesn't understand how Nemesis could have POSSIBLY done badly. Then came grumblings about the lack of enthusiasm over the TV series Enterprise, followed by Activision bailing on the game license, publicly blaming Viacom for sabotaging the games.
Could it be that somewhere along the way, you guys forgot about...QUALITY? Star Trek games have generally been a bad bunch. While I personally liked Starfleet Command I and II, and Elite Force I and II, the rest of the games have been a mixed bag of mediocrity; you never know what you'll end up with. With the games you aren't even able to fall back on the “odd or even” rule that the movies follow. So, I cruise by the store to look at the new stuff they have in stock, and lo and behold...a Star Trek game I haven't played yet. I've also been looking for a good space shooter to scratch that itch (has there been NOTHING since Freelancer?) and so I figure I might as well give it a whirl.
On-Screen!
The plot for Shattered Universe involves Capt. Sulu rushing to the aid of Commander Chekov who is trapped in some anomalous vortex in Janus Prime. Then Chekov's ship explodes, Sulu's ship Excelsior loses its last dilithium crystal and gets sucked through the anomaly to Janus Ultima. Sulu's ship transforms, has strange new fighters in the fighter bay, and now Sulu's got a nasty scar on the side of his head. You know what this means...they've gone into an alternate reality...one that crew visited before in one of the original series most beloved episodes, “Mirror, Mirror".
Of course, now that they're in crazy mixed-up world means Chekov is now evil again, and so is the Federation. Chekov believes your crew is in an act of "naked rebellion" against the Federation, and opens fire on Excelsior. Excelsior launches fighters, and away you go.
Engage!
The controls are pretty simple. You have primary and secondary weapons; they both have separate charge rates. Your secondary will fire photon torpedoes, as well as phaser bolts (concentrated phaser fire). The primary weapons are your phaser banks. You have a forward and reverse thrust, as well as the ability to barrel roll. You will never pilot the Excelsior as you fly through the 19 missions to get you home, no, you will simply pilot your fighter and whatever upgraded versions of it you find.
Pretty short for a "Gameplay" section, eh? That's because someone in dev beamed most of the game into the "Gripes" section.
Graphics
Everything looks like was done at 1/3 to 1/10-assed. Explosions looks like someone figured out how to make the color red-orange, and dropped a 2D circle on the screen. Ships don't look like they were modeled after "ships", they look like someone got toy models of the ships from the original series, put them in 3D. In fact, everything that has a 3D model looks like a toy, especially the characters! I can't tell if Sulu has eybrows or not. More disturbingly, he's shiny. Every part of him. He ends up looking like someone cross-bred Yoda and C3PO.
Chekov doesn't look any better. He just looks like a diseased toy version; he's darker colored, but he still looks like a plastic action figure. What happened here, people? Every visual in the game is either yawn-worthy or out of place.
Sound
Sulu's delivery is great for the Captain's Log segments. Unfortunately, he has the same level of emotion in his Captain's Log as he has in every other speech, from mission briefings to telling you that the Excelsior has sustained critical hull damage. Chekov's not much better, although he is more...evil sounding. He at least has vocal pitch changes. Plus, he also says "wessel" in the game, and that's worth something. The music is as bland as the voices.
Dammit, Jim!
Pull up a chair, this is going to be almost as long as the section I wrote for . My first complaint is with the game's plot. What...Sulu and Chekov can't have their OWN adventures? They have to have leftovers of Kirk's? That either smacks of laziness or license-hamstrung developers. Either way, it means "This way to the Bargain Bin" for your title.
First, you get flung into Kirk's mirror world. Then later on, Sulu tries to get repairs to Excelsior and bolt. Reinforcements show up, and when Sulu doesn't surrender, the enemy captain tells him, "I will regret serving on the instrument of your death," a derivation of a line Spock used in The Ultimate Computer". That line made me laugh, so it stuck in my mind. Then, on the next mission, you come into contact with...The Ultimate Computer, M5, mothballed with the 4 ships it attacks in that very same episode. (This episode is unintentionally hilarious for the part when William Marshall becomes Black William Shatner, and Kirk saves the day by out-thinking the Ulimate Computer! How's THAT for an ego trip!)
Hooray for Sulu! He gets to solve all the stuff Kirk already did. What a hero! He's Winner!
When Star Trek fans said they wanted to see a return to the alternate universe, it was to explore the loose ends that were present in that episode, not to relive a bunch of episodes from the TV series, only with crazy new hairstyles, disfigurements, and uniforms. Give Sulu and Chekov some room to have their OWN adventures while in the chair. While you're at it, try making them good.
Then there's the missions. Oh, the stupid, stupid missions.
They are so mind-numbingly repetitive that it is unfathomable how anyone could have shipped this. Every mission I played unfolded like this:
Step 1: Do something. You and the Excelsior will be harassed by fighters.
Step 2: Destroy all the fighters.
Step 3: Oh my, a capital ship appears out of nowhere! Deal with the ship. Don't let Excelsior blow up, because it totally caught us off guard.
What..the...F**K?!
Mission 6 had me go out and scout, and while I was scouting, pick up some raw materials. If a big rock that had enough gravity to suck my ship in was present at the Nav Point, that meant fighters would now appear, and I would have to kill them. (more than 30 total for the mission!) After dealing will all the fighters, I return home with minerals, to shoot down 6 more fighters, and then *2* capital ships appear. (as part of some exciting "Orion Pirates happen to show up" plot twist.) To make it even more fun, the Excelsior just happened to have something take down phaser control, and mess with its shields. Guess what? Excelsior blows up. I pop the game out, throw the game back in the mailing pouch and send it back. Shortest rental EVER. Didn't even last 24 hours.
This might be closer to tolerable if the missions tried to make a lick of sense. If Sulu actually tried to do the things he does in this game, he'd be bussed down to the Starfleet Mailroom. Take Mission 3, for example: Sulu tricks an enemy Starbase into repairing him. The ship's almost repaired, 2 minutes away, in fact, when the Starbase sends out fighters, because the jig is up. So Sulu, of course, instead of risking damage at the hands of a Starbase, fighters, and the potential for other capital ships to arrive quickly foregoes the final 2 minutes of repair and bolts, right? Nope. Sulu waits it out.
Now...Here's where it gets stupid. The drydock..the one that totally knows you're the enemy...GOES AHEAD AND REPAIRS THE SHIP ANYWAY. Honestly, man! How stupid do you think we are? None of this makes even as much sense as Extreme Ironing.
It gets better though. Right after they fully repair you...they decide to attack you! Why bother fixing a ship that you know it is your goal to destroy?! Haha! We've got them now! After we've repaired all damage to their ship, we're going to destroy them...oh, they'll never see it coming! These guys are more ineffectually evil than any Austin Powers villain could ever hope to be.
Another mission has Sulu sending you out to pick up a dilithium crystal that he risks the entire crew for. They knowingly head into a trap to get the crystal, and it's your job to pick it up (and destroy 2 capital ships, plus infinite waves of fighters). So you pick it up, and then Sulu tells you that you've done good...and then risks you telling you to go out and kill all the remaining fighters (and the Enterprise...which, of course, shows up to fill your USRDA of Capital Ships in a Mission Part 3). I should be heading back to the ship, and dropping the crystal off first. Better yet, we should be installing it, and warping the hell out of the system, because the fighters can't warp. But no. I gotta do it, and I have to do it in 3 minutes. Because Sulu has to deliver pizza to the Delta Quadrant. Who the hell can tell anymore?
These missions might not be so damn aggravating if the enemies didn't "turn sentient" and if the Excelsior's crew had the ability to hit the void of space with a phaser. The enemies know I, by myself, will have to destroy these capital ships. They also know that the fighters are shooting up Excelsior while I'm shooting cap ships...so the cap ships will turn to get more weapons in their arc POINTED AT ME, a FIGHTER.
This was REAL awesome in Mission 4, when you take on *4* capital ships at once. You go to shoot one, and then all 4 of them consider you as their Primary Action Item. I had attempts on that mission where I would get within firing range, and get hit by 4 phaser blasts from the capital ships and die on the spot. Then I'm forced to watch them all warp in-system again as part of the lame-ass cutscene you can't skip.
The developers obviously had to make fighters come at you in incessant waves because the AI for them is as dumb as it gets. In the aforementioned drydock subterfuge episode, fighters will make their attack runs on the Excelsior, and shoot up the drydock instead. I've seen fighters fly straight into the drydock, and continually ram it until they die. The same goes for asteroids. Other times, they'll go on attack runs on a target far ahead of Excelsior and attack that pesky void of space.
I think that sums up all my MAJOR gripes with the game. I'm not even going to bother going into the details of combat (like your magical unlimited Photon Torpedo launcher) because at this point it would be like kicking the tires on a used car that had no engine.
Overall
Everyone involved in the decisions that made this game the way it is should be embarrassed. It's a disgrace to the gaming industry that this got made. It's an insult to Star Trek, and it's an affront to consumers. Not only does this go down as the worst Star Trek game I've ever played, unless I'm repressing some bad memories, this also goes down as worst space shooter I've ever played. This wins all kinds of Awards for Gaming Anti-Excellence in a variety of categories. If anyone who worked on this game thought that this was a good game in its final form, you need to strongly consider finding a job somewhere that doesn't require you to do any sort of qualitative judgement. Preferably one far, far away from anything related to anything I hold as a form of entertainment.
Is it any wonder that nobody wants to buy any more Star Trek games, when you make them a halfheartedly as you did this one? If this was to be the last Trek game out for the foreseeable future, you guys at TDK Mediactive and Starsphere Interactive sure picked a colossal loser to go out on. At least nobody will question the judgement to mothball this series now. Way to go. At $40 this is this worst possible value for your money currently out there. Don't come anywhere close to spending money on this game.
