The Star Trek series is one of rich... and imaginative ideas that portray the human experience beyond the confines of our home planet Earth. The various mediums through which the Star Trek story is told spans far from the television series of yesteryear. This game, Star Trek Encounters is one of those mediums. Though not a terribly exciting game, Star Trek Encounters is a good pick up and play for any Trekkie with a taste for gaming. The overall design of the game captures the essence of Star Trek as told from outside the bridge of the Enterprise of various generations. The gameplay of this game is reminiscent of Geometry Wars, Asteriods and various other top down arcade shooters, with the addition of phasers and proton torpedoes of course. However, what it has in gameplay, the overall story is accompanied by bland dialogues from William Shatner and various missions involving scanning your surroundings for warp trails for several minutes. This game is definetly not for the impatient. Aside from the bland story, this game has some pretty neat mechanics that can provide sufficient entertainment for those who enjoy a title that can be played at the spur of the moment.
I am a big Star Trek fan... and appreciated this game much. Being able to utilize all of the ships from the different TV series was fun. Being able to play Federation as well as other species ships was great. Each game in of itself was enjoyable. Unfortunately, there was little flow between each mission and series. You could screw up one mission, but still play later missions. Some missions were tedious and boring-but not many. There is not much flow or depth in this game. The best part of the game was the Onslaught game were you fight wave after wave of enemy ships and work to get on a best scores board. It is more of an arcade style game/feel. If you go into it with basic expectations and just want to have some fun flying Star Trek series ships and blowing up other ship-you will enjoy this game.
Since I am a hard-core, die-hard Trekkie (b...ut, no, I don't pay money to buy Ferengi ears and go to conventions), I will start this game out with a blazing FIVE STARS. However, the lack of innovation and replay value really brought this game down to four stars, and the poor control and targeting system brought it down another star, to simply "Average." There could have been a much better campaign mode (like, say, state some target objectives and bonus objectives or something instead of just penalizing me for not doing something I didn't know I was supposed to do...), and the multiplayer mode is simply confusing. I sincerely am STILL confused. Now, I am a true gamer. I used to spend about 60-70 hours/week (loser, I know) playing these things. Now, I'm a bit older, and only pick up the controller if it's a good, CLEAN (I don't want to see a bunch of half naked women running around! If I wanted that, I'd return to my life of sin and disgusting habits!) RPG or, in this case, a game that is worth something to me for the sake of nostalgia. I was disappointed not by the involvement of all the generations of Star Trek (they did a good job on that one), but by the quality of a game that (a) was made by Bethesda (Shame on you, Bethesda, for doing such a lackluster job!), and (b) had STAR TREK on the cover. All in all, it's a good game for Trekkies, but not for many other people.
This is a compressed... Playstation 2 version of the Star Trek: Legacy for the PC. A pretty decent game once you get past its control difficulties. This game will keep you on your toes by testing your foresight abilities and makes you stratagise every move. You will definately need to take your time to complete but not too much as some parts of the game require you to act fast. I only wish that the game has the ability to save in the middle of the mission as it only allows you to save after you successfully complete the mission.
The graphics of this game are very nice, ...and I enjoyed being able to use so many different ships. The controls are a bit tricky to get used to, and some of the warp missions are EXTREMELY frustrating and nearly impossible to complete unless you collect the cards throughout the game. Aside from those missions, the gameplay was great, I had a lot of fun lobbing torpedos at people.