Star Trek: Klingon Academy Preview

I know what you all must be thinking, not another Star Trek game. Well, it's true that there have been many released and only a small handful have been decent. I personally am not a huge fan of the Star Trek series, but I have heard some good things about this game and I would hate for it to fall between the cracks unnoticed. Let's get started... this game is a space shooter type game like Descent. It combines many new things to create a, lets say, unique game.

Story:

This is actually a prequel to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which all you Star Trek fans should know about. General Chang, the Empire's greatest living warrior, has established an Elite Command Academy to prepare a new generation of warriors for the inevitable conflict with the United Federation of Planets. As Torlek's mentor, Chang will instruct him in the ways of battle tactics and teach you the rigors of warship command. Once that is done with, you join a full scale galactic war and prove yourself worthy of glory and honour.

Gameplay:

You take control of the "mother" ship, as opposed to most space shooter games where you control smaller combat ships. This game really gives you the feeling of being in control and in the captain's chair. The most unique aspect of this game is the way you control your ship and other ships. You bark commands to your crew and allies using a menu system. For example, you can easily tell your Helm to increase or decrease speeds or your Engineer to change the weapon power distribution. This system lets people jump right into the game without having to memorize a long list of keys and it allows you to easily control everything around you. Another thing that's interesting is the damage system. Instead of ships just blowing apart in a huge explosion, they break apart. This makes everything seem very realistic and even fun to watch. You are equipped with a variety of weapons and this game features almost 40 different types of starships. There are also a variety of races (Klingon, Federation, Romulan, Tholian, Gorn, and Sha'kurians). Klingon Academy will have 25 different missions that will give you full control of your own starship and crew. There is also a mission editior, which will add hours and hours to the game and tutorial is also very good, as with many games of the genre, allowing everyone to learn everything there is in just a short time.

Graphics:

Well, the graphics in this game are quite nice. They are definitely in the league of its competition and the explosions and such look absolutely stunning. Another thing is the lighting effects from weapons, which look extremely realistic and are a pleasure to look at. The battlefields look great and are nicely designed. The game ran nicely on my PII 350 with almost little slowdowns. The graphics add greatly to the overall feeling of the game.

Sound:

Sound...well, what can I say. It is great and as with the graphics, just makes the mood more intense. The commands and voice acting sound are also amazingly convincing and simply make this game a pleasure to play.

Multiplayer:

Yes, Klingon Academy will feature a multiplayer mode where you can take control of a variety of ships and go head to head with your friends or complete the single player with the coop feature.

This game is definitely something all Star Trek fans and fans of the genre to take a look at. It seems to combine many great features such as graphics and variety of ships and weapons with the unique command system to produce an overall fun game to play. It should definitely not be overlooked. Expect it to be released within the next few months.