This game was definitely a surprise. I have liked previous Star Trek games but have never really been enthralled by them. This game managed to do just that, though. I can say that I have never felt this immersed in a game. I've always had the Age of Empires perspective on computer games in that I am controlling it but not really part of it. The way that you don't just go from mission to mission and instead move around the ship from the briefing to the weapons locker to the transporter room or shuttlebay added a lot more personal involvement to the game.

The basic plot is that you are Ensign Munro, a member of the newly created "Elite Force" which is basically like a Hazardous Ops and Seal Team. Shortly after you start the game, Voyager is attacked by a ship which creates a portal which transports Voyager to a ship graveyard of sorts. Once there, Voyager is badly in need of repairs and cannot escape. It is your job to explore several of the other ships in the vicinity that are also trapped to see if you can find a way out.

The graphics in this game were just incredible. The Quake3 engine gives the game impressive graphic capability. I wasn't even running it at its maximum capability since my Voodoo3 can't support that and was still very impressed. I would love to see this game on a high end Radeon, Voodoo5, or GeForce2. The sound was also very good, although I wish it supported EAX instead of A3D only, which is no more.

The plot of this game is very well written and thought out. The entire game is formatted like an episode of the show from the few scene teaser to the title sequence to the rest of the game. This game had a little better writing than many of the episodes of the series did. Unfortunately, it seems like they get a little rushed in the development because the games starts out with a very well developed and elaborate plot and then rather suddenly comes to a close like they had to cut out a few scenes to finish the game in time. The end of the game also seems very out of character from the rest of the game. The beginning is Voyager in the fullest manner possible, but the end is like some comic book with a hokey villain, hundreds of underlings, and you alone, without the help of the team you have been with the rest of the game.

I was very happy with this game but was a little disappointed with the ending. I am very much interested to see if they make an add on campaign for this because this does have a very large potential.

This game is definitely worth buying. It has a great single player story mode and a multiplayer mode (that I haven't been able to try out since I don't want to tie up my phone line).

Recommended: Yes