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Let’s face it: Star Trek games have generally sucked on home consoles. The giant scope of each series has been really hard to capture, and the lack of any regular fast and furious dog-fighting in the shows means a Wing Commander style space fighter simulation is out of the question, too. How do you make two big ships shooting precisely targeted beams of light at one another seem exciting?

You’re Number One, Number One

Upon firing up Star Trek Encounters, it seems like developers 4J have found the answer. Encounters takes a lot of the micromanagement out of running a galaxy class starship (or any other big spacecraft) and boils it down to a simple, overhead battle mechanic that really works. Anyone who’s played classic arcade shooters like Smash T.V., Robotron 2084, or the more recent Geometry Wars on Xbox Live will feel right at home here.

While you control the movement of your ship with the left analog stick, you aim your sensors with the right, and press a shoulder button to fire the selected weapon or activate a particular device. You can even target specific ship systems if you like.

It works quite well, and gives you loads of options each time you go up against another ship. Target their engines to disable them, then come around, switch to your transporter button and transport an away team on board to take control of the enemy craft. Or just prepare some photon torpedoes and blow them out of the, erm…sky.

Trekking Through History

With the basic mechanics in place, the developers made another great move. They included ships from every Star Trek generation, and made pretty much all of them playable; over 60 ships total. And you can square off against each other in anything.

Want to see how the Enterprise from the original series would fare against the ship from Next Generation? You can do that. Want to face your friend in a Romulan vs. Klingon free-for-all? You can do that too. Really, this is a Trekkie’s (Trekker’s?) dream come true.

To go along with the battle modes (which is the main point of Encounters), there’s also an Episode setting, which you can use to unlock various ships and relive moments from the various shows and movies. Make your way through levels based on Enterprise, the original Star Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.

A Need For More Power

But here’s the problem. While the core ship-to-ship battle mechanic in Encounters is good, it’s not enough to carry the whole game. Skirmish modes get old very quickly, especially since the game only supports up to two players, and sports no online options.

It feels as though the developers knew this, too, and felt the need to fluff up the title with useless filler in an attempt to make a compelling single-player game. Hence all of the weird mission objectives found in Episode mode. Things like chasing down a cruiser by following hidden warp signatures (that cause a mission failure should you go off course even a tiny bit), or “racing” an enemy ship through “warp conduits” (basically, racing through little loops in space).

One-Trick Space Pony

The stuff that fills the holes between the normally brief – albeit mostly fun – combat takes up way too much time, and feels so banal and lifeless, it manages to overpower the good bits and drag down the whole experience.

Even though Star Trek Encounters is a budget title, it’s a shame such a good idea had to go to waste in a game that actually feels like a budget title.

Article by: Greg Sewart
Video produced by: Michael Leffler