Most of the Star Trek games
so far have been fairly disappointing, so I
was not looking forward to this new Star Trek
game as much as some of the upcoming shooters
like KISS or FAKK2. But after playing this demo,
I can't wait for the game to arrive!
The one thing going into the demo I was hoping
for, would be that the game not only is enjoyable
and provides some good action, but also makes
you feel like you're watching another episode
of Voyager. I was not disappointed! There are
two levels in the demo, both were a few bsp's
each (which seems to be the trend these days
with HL, SOF and DKT all using this approach).
It starts out with a little cinematic sequence
as you are on board a Borg ship and have been
seperated from your crewmates. Your mission
is to find them (most have been captured) and
then teleport back to Voyager. It is a fairly
simple mission as the only enemies you face
are the Borg that are alot like Half-Life zombies.
They slowly walk towards you and hit you. Once
you have the special Borg-killer weapon it's
just a matter of keeping a fair distance away
and firing shots at each one. There are short
objectives needed to be completed, but nothing
too hard or complex. It's really just find the
button or shoot something to create a path.
I was quite impressed by the explosions when
you shoot explosive devices. They are much better
than in any game so far.
The second level is totally
different, as you find yourself back on Voyager.
This level is more like the start of the story,
where just after a short battle with another
ship, the Voyager teleports into some strange
place with many ghostly and deserted spaceships
floating around. The level start with you on
the bridge and you need to complete a set of
objectives. There are no enemies this time,
the only way to die is by not completing an
objective in time and getting killed by hazardous
materials or explosions. It was a good change
from the first level and show off that the game
will have both puzzle solving and action.
Level design was great. Some
of it reminded me of Daikatana, but it was cleaner
and more professional. With lots of detail and
good level design, although the base and spaceship
theme has been used many times before (Unreal
probably doing it best) I will happily play
through it all again if the rest of the game
looks as good as the demo. The one thing the
demo didn't demonstrate that well was how the
gameplay would be, apart from shooting slow
moving Borg. But overall the demo wasn't very
long at all, keeping me busy for less than an
hour. At the end when 'to be continued...' popped
up I thought, 'oh no that's it?!'. But that
is probably a good thing too, as I was looking
forward to more of the game. Hopefully it will
be released very soon, as it looks like it will
be quite a fine shooter.
