Star Trek DAC Review

Other than Castle Crashers, downloadable games don’t tend to tickle my fancy. So suffice it to say I was a little apprehensive when Jonathan London asked me to go check out this new Star Trek game with him at Paramount. Of course getting an opportunity like that is always fun and interesting but I didn’t think about that too much. I was thinking more about getting the opportunity to play this game that had been released back when the movie came out and why it needed to be re-released. At first, I wasn’t sure why it WAS getting released. Having played the game for about an hour, I can now talk about why this game is worth revisiting since so many people seemed to have overlooked it the first time.

So, like I said, for almost an hour we got to sit in one of the developer’s office and play the game. Right away Michael Giachinno’s amazing score invaded my eardrums and I was pumped to start playing. The controls were extremely easy to pick up and the single player was fun but I can tell that single player isn’t where the meat of the game lies.

And by meat I’m referring to the multiplayer aspects. I mean sure if you don’t have any Xbox Live friends (like me, sadface) you can play a single player campaign or some co-op. In multiplayer you can play against 11 other people (two teams of six) which, I can only imagine, can get pretty intense.

So the main features of the game go as such. The style is very Geometry Wars meets Smash TV, as the camera angle is god’s eye. It was very reminiscent of the Battlestar game that was on the 360 not too long ago. There are three game play modes, single-player, online multiplayer, and online co-op. I only got to play the single-player which is basically a glorified capture the flag campaign but it’s still super satisfying to catch a Federation base when you’re a bad ass Romulan bomber ship. There are four game types, which include Survival, Team Deathmatch, Conquest, and Assault. All of which are pretty self-explanatory for game modes. I played Survival probably the most and felt like the increase in difficulty is fair. At first I thought the computer enemies were weak but after several space pirate onslaughts I felt like it was getting pretty difficult to keep up. Earlier I mentioned the Romulan bomber; so how about I take some time now to talk about the ships featured in the game?

So there are five different ship classes for both factions and the ships go as follows: missile cruiser (a sniper type ship), support frigate (medic), bomber (does exactly what you think), fighter, and flagship (Enterprise). New to this update are the missile cruiser and support frigate. Both of which I feel add new layers to the game and are both fun to play as, even if the support frigate doesn’t have any actual guns. All of the ships handle pretty differently. However, my favorite has to be playing as either of the bombers since I tend to play reckless with games like this and it’s easy to fly in quickly as the bomber and get out of an enemy base since they are the smallest of the ships available. Another fun little thing about the game, if either you or your enemy’s ships are destroyed, you launch out of the debris in an escape pod! It sucks of course being the one in the escape pod since you have to stay alive for five seconds in order to get a bonus when you re-spawn but it is so fun to gun down enemy pods. Except, I feel like some corners were taken when it came to naming the ships. To me, names like bomber and fighter are too generic. Especially when we are dealing with a universe like Star Trek where there are so many cool names. That’s really a small specific thing that doesn’t take away from the game.

As far as licensed properties go, this game faithfully reproduces both sound effects and bits of the score from the most recent film. However the game features many more ships for both the Federation and Romulan then what you get to see in the movie and I tend to like little subtleties like that.

I know I’ve mentioned previously that the game is only ten bucks and you do get what you pay for but I couldn’t help but feel more ships and factions would be welcomed with open arms by the nerd community. The game is based on the film so it wouldn’t make sense for there to be the Borg or Klingons in this game but Star Trek Legacy did come out for the 360 three years ago and it had all the ships you could possibly want in a Trek game. So that’s the rub there, because I like that the game is faithful but I really want more ships. How hard would it have been to add in Klingons? They were mentioned in the film and in the DVD release you get to see the scene where Nero is tortured by them, so why not? I hate to call lazy game developing here, so maybe in future add-ons we can get more factions to play as. Yet again, though I stress the price because the game I just mentioned was a full game published by heavyweights Bethesda Softworks so it isn’t exactly fair to compare the two but I just now feel spoiled when it comes to Trek gaming experiences and it is hard for DAC to measure up to that.

Most of you will probably be getting either the 360 or PS3 versions but I feel that the PC version is worth checking out. I say this because I was handed a pair of high tech 3-d glasses for the PC demo and was blown away. 3-D of course is drowning the film industry right now and is slowly creeping into the game market but I have to say that I was actually really impressed. Depth of field and the 3-D effects are what really sell the thought of immersive 3-d to me and I think that what this game has to offer is much more than just a gimmick. Of course in order to run in on PC you need NVIDIA 3-D Vision and a sopped up graphics card but if you are into playing PC over the consoles and have the tools needed, then I say go for it since it’s a pretty fun experience. Just don’t be like Jonathan London and look at the game without the glasses, or you may puke up your Noah’s Bagel just like he did (joke of course please don’t kill me, Mr. London) (I’m still too sick to kill you. -Ed.).

I didn’t play the game when it was first released but having now played the update I can say that Star Trek DAC is a good excuse to waste a few hours online with some buddies. Shadow Complex and Castle Crashers this game is not. Still, I know I enjoyed the shit out of blasting some Romulan ass out of the sky (space?) with the Enterprise. I really feel like those who are into fun, competitive online multiplayer diversions will love this game. So put on some Vulcan ears (I mean if you wanna) and revisit this game if you haven’t already.