The Klingon empire has established an Elite Command Academy organized by the infamous General Chang (played by Christopher Plumber) to prepare a new generation of Klingon Warriors in hopes of seeing the federation fall. You are Torlek, a first year cadet who holds much promise for the future of the empire. You go through your basic tutorial (which is quite informative) just before you start your first of 25 missions. Missions vary quite a bit, but there are lots of options out there for you. Some missions will have you calling for support, while others are calling you to save their tails.

PAY ATTENTION TO MISSION OBJECTIVES! You may need help or you may need to lend a hand to your allies; but if this violates your mission objectives, you will find yourself expelled from the academy. Now ain’t that a drag! The nice thing is that if you screw up in a mission, the movie playback of Chang balling you out will at least shed light on the way you screwed up so when you replay, you are not sure to make the same mistake. (Unless you are dense like me!!!)

The nice thing about this sim is that there is a whole lot more than point and shoot, save the galaxy, get the girl, become the hero, yadda, yadda, yadda. Flying these ships takes some getting used to and you manage pretty much the entire ship. There are some pre-set standards for battle, defense, stealth and repair (to name a few) which are as easy as a point and click away. When you really want to fine tune what needs to be done, the possibilities are endless. This comes at a bit of a cost though.

Imagine Windows (you know, the OS you are probably running on your PC unless you have a Mac or are a Linux guru) where you point to the tool bar, lists cascade down in which you move your cursor to the next heading where the command you want to perform is, then you click. Well instead, here there are 9 major menus where you use verbal commands, each represented by numbers 1-9. Say you want to target a ship, you press 8 -- then 9 options present themselves. You pick the 2nd option, subsystems, which is targeting specific areas of an adversary's ship ( waaay cool by the way) and 8 more options present themselves. So we will go with choice 2, target warp engines. So in short, your Verbal orders system would be 8-2-2 which you can blast right though with no hesitation. Sounds simple right?

Well, not so easy when you are being blown apart from the enemy which, needless to say, doesn’t need a quick reference guide to help him along. All in all, it is a fairly easy interface to follow -- it just takes some getting used to. Like anything else, practice is key and the commands will be like the back of your hand (which is where I have written all the really cool moves!).

The missions are nicely done with the results being dependent on the next. Beautiful movie footage splices each mission together, which provides a nice break between games. There are over 90 minutes of actual movie footage. Way to go Paramount! No wonder the game is spread out over six disks and took three years to make! 

A variety of ships that you can command are available for you as you progress through the academy. From the Bird of Prey to the Accuser class Dreadnaught, each ship has different capabilities and armaments. You will face some 40 enemy ships of all classes to boot. If you want to become accustomed to your vessels before you start your campaign, stop by the simulator to get all the advanced training you need! “Practice...you may rock, but you are not made of stone!”

Prove yourself worthy in all ships and you may be fighting next to Chang in the most glorious battle ever!

Installation was a bit lengthy but not too terrible, but hey you need 500MB of disk space and that is not even a full install!

Gameplay 7 - Quite nice, easy interface once you get an idea of what does what. Missions run smoothly from one mission to the next, with a break of movie footage to let you know how you are doing at the academy and what goals are to be obtained in the next mission. Was a bit bummed that there are limited joystick commands that took away from the realism when you command a sidewinder, yet to roll the ship you have to use the keyboard.

Graphics 7 - The graphics were not too shabby, and the movie quality was definitely top notch. But Allegiance still holds the best graphics of a space sim in my book.

Sound 7 - All in all, not bad; however, I experienced some sound effects not performing on some missions after replaying them. Not totally blaming the software here, but I do have the latest drivers.

Difficulty 9 - Steep learning curve but good documentation eases the frustration. Because the game is so involved, I believe it hinders performance because there is sometimes too much to do while trying to get out one command as you are being blown to bits. But for those who are experienced in the Star Trek games, this will not likely be a problem for you.

Concept 8 - Trekies will enjoy this game to the fullest, especially for those who want to be the bad guys for a change. Just remember to think KLINGON!

Multiplayer is available via LAN and online. Did not find any online games at time of review, but setting up to host was quite easy and looks to be a good concept.

Overall 7 - Not a bad game that will keep you playing for hours at a time. The movie quality ROCKS, but for a game that took three years to make, I expected a bit more. Overall enjoyable -- but even though there is multiplayer; I do not see much replay ability here.