I had waited with great anticipation for Armada, for the simple fact that there just wasn't any good Star Trek games. Plus there was the added benefit of being a real time strategy ( RTS ) title, my favourite genre. Last week I received my copy and the games began.
The basic story is: the war with the Dominion is over, and the four main races of Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Borg are eyeing each other. The single player campaign takes you through each race and lets you get a feel for everything. The bulk of missions are your basic build a base, harvest resources and destroy the enemy. To spice this up are the guide your troops through a map to specific points, or locate this object and keep it safe. The missions are linear and are generally very good: animations and dialogue keep the cut scenes interesting.
The ships in the game are detailed and what you'd expect to see in a Star Trek game, with Federation Enterprise class and Borg Cube class the norm. As in any RTS, there are a variety of units and technology upgrades that allow for the bigger and better. Three factors limit your construction: available dilithium that you mine, crew members available and officers available. This gives some balance to the game, but only so much. I found myself building the biggest ships en masse and going at the enemy.
Unique weapons are available to each class of ship, so you can get a healthy mix of variance. An example is the Romulan weapon that steals the opponents shield energy and gives it to your own. Or the Borg weapon that assimilates an enemy ship.
Since ships carry crew, your attack on the enemy first breaks down their shields, then ship functions and crew. Get the enemy crew low enough and you can beam troops aboard to take over the enemy ship, then send it to your base for repair.
Graphics are top notch and really immerse you into the game. Lots of voice going on as you go from ship to ship, and prompts to let you know when you're building is done or you're being attacked. My only problem with the game was with the sound: a bug between Windows 2000 and the Sound Blaster Live screwed up all voiceovers. Even with the 1.1 patch I had trouble. Oh well.
I found the game thoroughly entertaining, although a bit short since I finished the single player game in about twenty five hours. Go to www.st-armada.com and grab a demo, or read up on what's what.
by Scott VanderPloeg
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