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Posted By	Discussion Topic: Star Trek: Away Team Review
Froy King Shit *board owner*	posted on 03-29-2001 @ 5:24 PM
O&A Board Veteran Registered: Feb. 01	The high concept of Away Team is very intriguing: combine the stealth and unit specialization of Eidos’ Commandos with the frenzied action of Origin’s legendary Crusader series. The settings for the missions are highly diverse and draw upon locales from both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine series; examples are the Klingon homeworld of Qo’ Nos, a Borg Cube Starship and even the vaunted Starfleet Academy itself. You are provided 17 highly trained operatives, each bearing unique skills and abilities; such as the Vulcan mind meld, holographic projectors and personal cloaking devices. It appears that Paramount really took the reigns off the license and allowed the developers at Reflexive to take a few risks. There are even cameo appearances by Brent Spiner and Michael Dorn; who portray the Data and Worf characters from the aforementioned shows. Honestly, what more could one ask for in a sci-fi, real-time, tactical-strategy game? Activision must presume that the only people purchasing Away Team are fans, since the story is told in such a way that it assumes extended foreknowledge of the characters and the settings. I’ll summarize: at the conclusion of the Deep Space Nine series, Starfleet found itself weakened militarily from the long Dominion War. Now vulnerable to incursion from enemies both within and without, a secret team of highly trained specialists have been recruited to carry out covert assignments that could not be officially sanctioned. Through your surrogate, Captain Refelian the leader of this Special Forces unit, you learn of a plot to undermine the Federation, which initially appears to be an internal rebellion led by high-ranking Starfleet officers. However, the manner in which the elements are combined results in some surprisingly flat gameplay. Away Team is basically an interactive story where you play out the action sequences. Instead of allowing you to create a persona and build your team (as in the original X-COM) you are provided a set of pre-created characters; whose personalities have little or no impact on storyline. They are simply mannequins that deliver lines of dialog to advance the fiction. Additionally, your team is utterly incapable of acting without your direct control, even when attacked they will simply stand there – the game at least auto-pauses so that you can consider what to do next. Worst of all, your team must survive one hundred percent of the time. The death of any one character fails a mission immediately, but there is no apparent reason for this. I would have much rather been able to create my own team then run the risk of getting them killed mission to mission. Even a game like Panzer General provides more role-playing than Away Team. The story is told in linear fashion, you may not choose the order of the missions. Completing each one reveals another piece of the puzzle, which leads through the Borg, the Klingons and The Romulans. Your contact at Starfleet is an admiral who directs you to points all across the galaxy with only the barest of explanation. Why? Because he’s an admiral, mister, and you’ll follow your orders without question! At points along the way you’ll encounter Data and Worf, who join your team as active members, I guess because it amuses them to do so. But if the existence of your team is supposed to be such a big freaking secret you certainly wouldn’t know it judging by their dialog, both seem to accept that you are doing your job as a Starfleet Officer. So what if you’re running around shooting people that are supposed to be comrades and allies? Ultimately, their appearance is merely a foil, and not a very convincing one at that. The action in Away Team occurs in three-quarters perspective (the same isometric view as seen in games like Baldur’s Gate or Diablo II), but is locked at 640x480. These maps are 2D that don’t allow for rotation, though you can zoom in, but the effect causes some unpleasant pixelization. Your on-screen team members are so small as to be nearly indistinguishable from one another, however you may click on their portraits to take direct control. You can mouse-drag to select the entire team to facilitate efficient movement or to equip a common weapon and you may pause at anytime during the action to issue new orders. A panel along the bottom of the screen shows the equipment in-hand for the currently selected character, left-click to enable a specific item or right-click to select from their full inventory. The interface is simple, effective and takes up minimal space. There are also icons that allow you to see the vision cone of an enemy unit or display the noise radius of your team while moving or firing weapons – but these are novelties at best and don’t really enhance gameplay as much as you might think. Each mission consists of a set of relatively simple primary and secondary objectives; completing the secondary goals is optional, but will often lead to the discovery of a new gadget or some other equipment modification. After the admiral briefs you on the situation you are left to assemble your team. This is where Away Team should really shine, but unfortunately your hands are tied more often than not. Equipment, aside from basic hand phasers, tends to be unique to certain individuals and may not be shared or transferred between to anyone else. Since each mission invariably requires three or four items that no one or two characters possesses in full you are left to make only the narrowest decisions about whom to assign on a given scenario. Forget about creating an all-Vulcan or an all-security team. This is some serious hand holding and indicates that the designers were more concerned about moving the story along then letting you solve problems or come up with creative solutions. The missions themselves tend to be a bit on the dull side, retread situations like stealing of information from a computer, capturing an enemy or rescuing a hostage. “Shut down the warp core” is an objective twice before the game is one third over. The missions also tend to be very, very short. More than once I nailed the primary objectives within five minutes and thought, okay, some event will occur that will send me in another direction entirely. No such luck. I generally ended up grouping the team, equipping phasers then simply running around shooting everyone, completing the larger objectives along the way, for hope that the next mission would be more interesting. Never happened. Even on the Borg ship, where I expected lots of action, I was bored stiff. There is no fog of war, so you can observe where every enemy stands and totally predict when they will enter your weapon range. When a firefight ensues simply pause, have your entire team select the nearest enemy and fire. Repeat as necessary. There are only 18 missions in total, which means Away Team is a very brief game – although much longer than the average television episode or movie! The designers of Away Team must not have a particularly high opinion of their target audience. Normally I am in favor of concise mission objectives, so that I might focus on the tactics involved with completing them. But Away Team goes out of its way to make things too easy. A mini map can be superimposed in the lower right-hand corner, which displays current objectives as blinking dots. Once you arrive at an objective zone just roll your cursor around the screen until it switches to the action icon, select your entire team and right click. The most appropriate party member walks over to the computer or security panel and announces something like, “I could probably work this device if only I used my engineering tool kit”. At which point you choose the engineering tool kit from their inventory and they’ll finish the job. What’s the point? I like my steak tender man, but you don’t need to chew it for me. AI is a bit of a moot point. Your team members are puppets waiting for orders and will happily eat phaser fire until you tell them to do otherwise. The enemy troops come in two flavors: those guarding a door or and those walking along a set path. If you enter their cone of vision or make too much noise they will blunder forward in a straight line until you kill them dead. In a really bizarre design twist: a single phaser, when set to stun, will immediately drop an enemy, but your entire team combined may have to fire on a single enemy several times when set to kill. Sure the stunned enemy will get up again, but you are usually long gone by then. Also, once you leave their sight most of the enemy will go back to playing pocket pool like they were before they saw you. Super-duper! There are lots of other bugs in this game that I didn’t mention. Issues with audio, weapons that won’t stay equipped and generally unbalanced gameplay. However, Away Team is a very stable title and can be played on relatively low-end systems. Given that this title is hitting shelves at the end of a fiscal year pretty much says it all. Expect a big patch soon. Star Trek Away Team is a very simple, very short action game that tells a decent story and has a fair amount of fan appeal. But it isn’t much of a strategy game. The sad thing is that this could have been so much more if the mission and team selection were more flexible and less emphasis were placed on the underlying story – there are umpteen episodes in syndication I can watch for that. Fortunately, there are numerous other games in development bearing the Star Trek moniker. At the end of the day Away Team is likely to be remembered as little more than a small course correction. -- David Kozlowski -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Want to share your opinions with the world? Talk about it on the IGNPC message boards, or send some mail to IGNPC about this story. Presentation The menus and mission briefings are very polished and feel “Trek” authentic. The manual is a short 24 pages but conveys the necessary info. 7.0 Graphics The maps are tiny, but visually diverse and attractive. Troops are small and the animations can be jerky, though explosions and other special effects are nicely handled. 640 x 480 is the resolution. 8.0 Sound Voice-overs are crisply delivered, but are absent of any emotion or humor. Sound effects are typical phaser bursts and computer boinks. The music is subdued and not terribly memorable. 5.0 Gameplay The missions are far too simple and repetitive; most boil down to running gunfights. Your team is incapable of autonomous decision-making and will just stand around getting. Enemy AI is simply stupid. 6.5 Lasting Appeal The 18 single player missions can be finished in less than 20 hours by even modestly experienced gamers. No online multiplayer either. 6.0 OVERALL SCORE (not an average) 6.5 ~Matt/Froy from Jersey Official Protector of Gay Marco & SwampJunk...if he ever decides to post.

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