Less Trek, More Armada
Written: Jan 01 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Balanced, challenging space RTS gameplay.
Cons: Not the most faithful "Trek" game, some instability issues.
The Bottom Line: A satisfying space RTS that may have a few Trekkers running to their Star Trek Encyclopedias.
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| billservo's Full Review: Star Trek: Armada 2 for Windows |
Star Trek games have been given a bit of a rebirth lately, thanks in large part to games like Voyager: Elite Force, and Star Trek Armada. Both were excellent entries into established gaming genres. Elite Force faithfully recreated the feel of running around as an Away Team member in a first person shooter. On the other hand, Armada, while a fun Real Time Strategy (RTS) game, wasn't quite able to capture the grandeur of ship to ship battle.
A little over a year later and we have the latest, Armada II. Like the first title, Armada II pits the Federation in battle with the Borg, but this time with the Federation on the offensive. The main campaign puts you in command of the Federation's fleets as you try to drive the Borg back into the Delta Quadrant. Intertwining storylines bring in 2 other campaigns: the Klingons, who must defend the Alpha Quadrant while the Federation is vulnerable, and the Borg, who must try to hold off the Federation's attack. Armada II features 3 more playable races, but with no campaigns behind them: the Cardassians, the Romulans, and Species 8472.
Differences between the races are as noticeable in-game as they are on the show. The Federation, as most Trek detractors point out, is the perfectly well-rounded race (if you can even call them a race). The Klingons, known for their aggressive nature, are born warriors. While they'll slow you down a bit on resource collecting, their attack capabilities make up for the advantage. All races have similar advantages/disadvantages and the balance is good, if not perfectly tuned.
Like any RTS, certain maps can exaggerate these differences. Maps with almost no resources can severely hurt some players, while maps with an abundance of only one type of resource help another, like Species 8472 who don't distinguish between resource types. In this aspect lies the one imbalance between races, however careful map selection should lessen the impact. In a space based RTS, maps don't look like your typical topographical landscape view. Armada II's maps are more akin to a star chart, etching out a chunk of space and the notable celestial bodies within. Thanks to the non-terrestrial nature of the game, maps can get pretty interesting, providing the game with some cool scenes: maps here are filled with nebulae, planets, moons, asteroid belts, wormholes and blackholes. One of the changes made with the sequel is fully 3D maps. As a result, certain objects, like nebulae, actually look like gaseous, floating masses. Planets and moons are also on different planes, requiring travel above or below the "zero-plane" to reach them. This definitely adds a touch of realism, but can mostly be ignored for players who want to stick to 2D gameplay.
But even within 2D confines, the possibilities within maps are impressive. Wormholes allow for surprise ambushes, especially when you've got one right in your backyard. In an instant action battle I had a wormhole almost entirely hidden in a nebula just off my base. The first few minutes of my game I was constantly under attack by Borg Spheres that seemed to come from nowhere. But wormholes aren't fool-proof: like in Deep Space Nine you can sabotage your end of the wormhole. Towards the end of this battle Borg ships were coming out of the wormhole only to be instantly vaporized. Other objects can serve as a weapon in and of themselves. Certain nebulae are hazardous to your crew and ships, building next to one of these can virtually corner off an attack front while building close to a black hole ensures that you can't be attacked at all on that side. Graphically, maps can be breathtaking at times. Zoomed in, nebulae come to life, wormholes open and close, and moons and planets show an impressive amount of detail.
Using these familiar objects maps are surprisingly faithful to the show. Trekkers will definitely appreciate things like Metaphasic Nebulae which help regenerate shields, Mutara Nebulae which disable your shields and sensors, or Latinum Nebulae which provide money.
On the resource end of things, Armada II mostly sticks to the basic three resource formula. A few races have no need for certain resources, distinguishing the game a bit from others in the genre, but for the most part the resource gathering aspect is nothing spectacular. But then, Armada II is less about this and more about the battles, which is a good thing for fans of the shows where a lack of resources is rarely an issue.
But you do have to deal with this, and Armada II makes it a bit cooler than chopping down trees. Dilithium is used to power and build ships and must be mined by certain ships. Metal is needed for bases and can be found on a variety of planets. These planets can be colonized for resources or mined from orbit. Latinum- money in the Star Trek universe- is actually a gas retrieved from Latinum Nebulae. Resource harvesting ships here are actually smarter than some on other games, actually looking for alternate sources once they've tapped out others.
While mining ships aren't exactly "regulars" on the shows they actually have a look that fits in with the universe. Not all ships and bases are quite as consistent, though, with the exception of Starfleet. There simply wasn't enough established ships and bases for some of the other races for the developers to draw from so certain things just had to be made up. For the Klingons almost everything meshes well with the established look of the Trek universe, but on the Romulan side some of the made up vessels look ridiculous- almost a testament to the looseness with which Paramount hangs on to the license. Romulan vessels have always had a "bird" look to them- but some of their ships here look like straight eagle models with hull plating textures mapped onto them. As goofy as some of the ships may look, they are pretty even at the highest zoom level. Sound effects accompanying the ships are usually good, if not excessively cheesy. For example, clicking on a Klingon ship gets you some Klingon dialog. One of the lines is a Klingon curse (don't ask how I know this) which really doesn't make sense.
The differences in ship capabilities makes it easy to ignore the departure from Trek lore. Races don't have a one-to-one mapping of ship types, which forces you to play differently depending on who you are. Klingons don't have repair ships, Starfleet doesn't have super heavy artillery ships, while most Borg vessels aim to disable your shields to board and assimilate.
During actual combat ships are mostly self sufficient. The whole idea behind Armada is to arrange fleets to attack with. After grouping together a set of ships you can command them to do certain things for you: guard, scout, search and destroy, etc. There's also different AI settings that can be applied on ship or fleet level, such as combat alert (green, yellow, red), movement autonomy to keep your ships from straying too far, and special weapon usage settings. Computer response to these settings is accurate and ships usually attack as you want them to. Once in a while, a few gaping AI holes do show up. For example, a ship set to guard another object usually doesn't return to that task after engaging in battle. Also, within your base ships may have trouble navigating around other ships and planets causing some quirky, unnatural movement. Ships with low movement autonomy can eventually find themselves far from your base if they participate in too many skirmishes. These kind of problems keep you managing a little too much since you always need to head back and baby-sit.
Within a battle ships can sometimes show a little more sense. When engaged, ships do a good job of going after the biggest immediate threat and once a target is disabled leave it alone and go on to the next. Setting attack patterns also help you run a smarter fight. Fleets can circle-strafe targets, run a clover leaf pattern, or do quick fly-bys. These help make you a tougher target to hit, but can also get you into some serious trouble. Ships don't have enough sense to run these maneuvers altered in the presence of hazards. A clover leaf pattern may run your fleet into a black hole and the ships' AI does nothing to avoid it.
A more hands-on approach yields more satisfying battles, especially when managing a couple large fleets. Even during the heat of the battle the fleet management aspect is easy to handle. Fleets are assigned to numeric buttons on the key board, and a simple press gets you back in touch with every ship in that fleet. Ships can be added or removed from fleets, allowing you to send damaged ships out of the battle for cover or bring reinforcements quickly into the fray. When a fleet is made up of ships with differing special abilities, the game takes a most common denominator approach to allow you to access all special abilities of any ship in that fleet. This allows you to group together fast, hard-hitting ships with slower raiding ships. You start your attack with your faster ships then use the special abilities of the raiding ships to send an assault team onto the enemy vessel. Just as in the Trek universe you'll need your fleet to band together in times like this since shields must be lowered for transports to work. The only problem with controlling ships as a fleet is that they'll usually only attack one target. There's definitely ways around this, using multiple fleets to accomplish one objective, and more skillful fleet managers will be able to use this as an advantage.
The scale of the battles almost captures the feel of those in some of the Trek shows. Federation battles against giant Borg Cubes reek Wolf 359 as smaller Federation ships buzz around Cubes with your bigger Galaxy and Sovereign class ships dole out the big hits. But the game doesn't make the creation of those larger ships taxing enough. The end result is you can have a ton of these bigger ships- something you just don't see in Star Trek. The loss of these ships is supposed to be a dramatic event, but in Armada II you just keep churning them out like shuttles. Likely, this is a balance thing, but there has to be a more faithful way to achieve it. Trek issues aside, though, the battles are as exciting and strategically demanding as any other RTS. The end of result is that Armada II fails where the first did- providing some awesome ship to ship RTS play, but not nailing the whole Star Trek thing.
This isn't to say Armada's not a fun game. It's actually a blast, and for those who need to play a little RTS off the ground it's an awesome fix. Needless to say, Trek fans that can ignore a little blasphemy will find themselves playing yet another great Trek game- Patrick Stewart voice-overs never hurt, either. Of course, there are bugs and a little driver click work may have to be done, but once in Armada II is an engaging experience.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
billservo
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Member: Bill Saez
Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 98 members
About Me:
Lifelong game freak. Recently got to work with Sega and THQ in developing cellphone games.
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