Elite Force and Armada seemed to suggest an upswing in the quality of Star Trek licensed games. Now the anticipated Star Trek: Away Team tackles one of the few remaining untapped genres for a Star Trek game: the squad-based strategy game, but with mixed results.

First off, where’s James T. and the red-shirted guys? How can you be a landing party without red-shirted guys? Okay, I’m old school, but imagine how fun it would be to get Kirk, Spock, Bones, and a couple expendables down on some planet with the green-skinned girl and those butt-headed guys. Heck, I would’ve even settled for some Next Generation characters, but although Star Trek: Away Team features some cameos by Worf and Data, all of your controllable characters are invented for the game.

The story centers on the premise that you are an elite “black ops” type squad and this is your first mission. You are thrown into a developing situation surrounding the Romulans, the Borg, and some nasty virus/chemical agent/evil weapon in the wrong hands. The individual missions (there are 18) entail such inspired objectives as “shut down the warp core” or “access the security computer.” Along the way you will have subgoals such as avoid detection or minimize casualties. Completion of all the subgoals allows you access to more weapons/inventories items sooner (Evidently Starfleet is holding out on you).

After selecting 4 crew members from the 17 different characters, each a specialist in either medicine, command, science, or security, you beam down to an entry point for the mission. The game is played on an isometric map, with a locked zoom level, and viewing angle (no rotating). You can use a mini-map to view all enemies and points of interest. There is no fog of war. The team must work it way through hallways and forest-like terrain, avoiding or engaging Romulan guards, the Borg, or security cameras. Teammates can use different items such as Sniper rifles, EMP grenades, or even a Vulcan nerve pinch, as the situation warrants, but most of the action is simply getting your squad within range of a guard and everyone shooting him at once. Then heal as needed.

My two primary gameplay complaints are as follows: 1) An enemy will be firing at the lead squad member. I tell my entire squad to shoot at this enemy and they will all just stand there. They don’t run within phaser range. They do nothing. Meanwhile the lead guy is stuck in a one-on-one fight with this guy, while the other three squad members stand a few inches behind him. Perhaps the game designers knew that if they gave your squad members any AI at all, it would reveal how lame the AI of the enemy is and you could just steamroll through any level. The combat was usually too easy, and when it was difficult, it was the interface/lack of squad AI causing it, not clever levels or interesting enemies.

And 2) to pick up an item and to fire a phaser both use the same right mouse click, so if my cursor slips off the 1 or 2 pixel hotspot designating and item to pick up, I end up firing all my squad’s phasers (since it is common to have all members selected ) in a crossfire, and can easily shoot one of my own teammates! This drives me crazy.

Okay. I have another primary gameplay complaint: unlike the classic red-shirted security guy, whose only purpose on the mission was to take a phaser for the team, in ST:AT, none of your characters are allowed to die. If they do, you must restart the mission. I realize that a character with a certain ability might be handy in later levels, but the player should be able to make that decision. In fact there are no expendables!

For graphics, ST:AT gets a big fat average. They are what you would expect; especially from a high profile publisher, but don't compete at all with the beautiful maps in Commandos, or Baldur's Gate II. My primary complaint is that you are required to play in 640x480. That resolution just doesn’t cut it anymore. May on a console, but not a PC, and its a real oversight to not allow players to go to higher resolutions, even if all it does is shrink the pixels with no scaling.

I feel like I have been overly critical, but it may be because the game lacks any of the extra touches that make something special, especially a Trek game. The game does succeed in the basics. Its playable, the graphics are adequate, it is the Star Trek universe. It just doesn’t go beyond that. In my opinion it is inferior to Commandos, a genre defining squad-based game, which came out two years ago.

So who is going to go for this game? I’m not sure. Die-hard Star Trek fans may be a little disappointed they don’t get to play any “real” characters, and squad-based strategy fans may be a little disappointed that the gameplay is average at best. (I would recommend checking out “Desperados” while you wait for Commandos 2 to ship). That’s not to say you can’t have some simple fun with this game. But it doesn’t do anything to push forward the game genre or the Star Trek franchise.

Install: Easy
Basic install. You should be up in running in minutes. No worries about 3D card support.

Gameplay: 6
AI needs work. Interface needs some refinement, though there are hotkeys for everything. Repetitive, and a little simplistic.

Graphics: 6
Decent graphics but not much variety. Locked into one resolution

Sound: 8
Sound is fine, but nothing too noteworthy. Good adaptive music system.

Difficulty: 7
AI is lame, and when the game is hard, its from fighting the interface, not the enemy.

Concept: 7 
Nothing breakthrough, but it is a sound concept. Just a bit lacking in its materialization.

Multiplayer: 7
The LAN option allows you to play with teammates but, head-to-head play is non-existent, and that might have increased the replayability.

Overall: 6
It's not horrible, but it suffers from what ails most Star Trek games: it should've been better.