Star Trek Encounters - PS2

Picked this up in the bargain bin for $7.00. It can't be that bad, can it? You start off seeing that you have different era's that you can choose to do missions in. The recently canceled era with the guy from Quantum Leap, Kirk, Picard, the stupid stationary Deep Space Nine and Voyager. As a bonus they throw in a level named Sovereign, which is Enterprise E. This all seems very interesting when you first start and you have to finished one era before it will allow you to go to the next. Nothing wrong with that, its all cool.

So the game plays like a top down shoot em up. Much like the old Arcade game, SMASH TV. Only you are a Star Trek ship and not some crazy dude with a gun.You can lock on multiple targets, shoot phasers or disrupters and fire torpedoes , distribute your power to shields, weapons, sensors, engines and all that cool stuff ya seen on tv or the movies. Again, all this sounds cool (or at least to me) in theory.

When the missions finally do start, all the sounds of phazers and photons torpedoes firing is pretty good at capturing a Star Trek ship battle. Again, it seems so far that I am enjoying myself. But that all ends with the next mission. Again I do the same things over and over.I do enjoy flying around and shooting phazers and torpedoes, but there has to be a little more. So what does the game do, its adds timers to the missions. GREAT...now I have a timed battle. They vary it up with track a ships warp signature, the bad thing is, you actually feel has if you are traveling across the nothingness of space to find the ship. Flying through space with nothing to do but follow a green blip is not gaming.


Then the mother of all fuckups. When I get to the Voyager missions, the game has been pretty much, level starts, I shoot , follow that guy, kill this, mission ends. Until one disgruntle game designer musta said, all this gameplay is pretty easy. I'll give them something to whine about (has if the actually game wasn't bad enough) and you do a level where you have to race through warp conduits and make it to the end before another ship. There comes a point at every game, where what you are doing is no longer fun. It was the 2nd time I tried this level and it was no longer fun, BUT, it was on the 37th try that I finally got pass this stupid level. WHAT..37..theres not suppose to be a try 37 on any today games unless you put it on stupid hard difficulty!!

Anywho, the game is beat, you unlock a boat load of ships, some levels, and the only fun you get outta this game is playing it on mulitplayer, where you and another friend can take on loads of enemy ships together or test the limits of different era ships against eachother. But for $7.00, one shouldn't complain....much.


3/10