Star Trek: Bridge Commander Review - IGN (2024)

I'm not a complete dork (complete being the operative word). Marina Sirtis' birthdate and shoe size still elude me, but the fact that I even know whom Marina Sirtis is should be proof enough for true Trekkies that I've at least seen every episode and movie there is to see. But more than I like watching Star Trek, I like playing games. For intrepid reviewers such as myself, it's a de facto requirement that you put gaming above all other forms of media entertainment, including TV, radio, and co*ck fighting. So I know my Trekking stuff, be sure of that. But more than this, I'm still the IGNPC editing, Dragonrider's playing, PC game knowing Nuts who calls 'em fair.

It's from this formal and prestigious background (I play with joysticks and make peanuts) that I'm able to justifiably conclude a few things you've all probably already figured out on your own... Lawrence Holland and his Totally Games have talent, Star Trek is still cool, and Bridge Commander is a fine, fine piece of space-faring starship simulation whether taken from the standpoint of a fan or gamer.

BC's script, and I appropriately call it that because it plays out, line after line, very linearly, begins not too far after the conclusion of the Dominion Wars of Deep Space Nine. The Cardassian people, now proud owner's of the quadrant's biggest crap hole of a massacred planet, are desperately trying to rebuild their forces. Mix in some always devious and untrusting Romulans, fight hungry Klingons, a mysterious, xenophobic race, and noble Federation types, cram the whole lot of them into an area of space known as the Maelstrom, and you've got Bridge Commander.

As the game starts your Captain's life ends. A routine shuttle trip turns disastrous when a star goes supernova thus devastating an entire system and turning el capitan into a shuttlecraft smore, where he'd be the marshmallow goodness. As the nameless, faceless first officer, it's your job to seize command (because "take" is too sissy of a word), thus beginning your trek to investigate the exploding star phenomena, deal with some Cardassians, engage some Romulans, and make nice-nice with polite Klingonese.

Plenty of Star Trek favorites make showings. Them damn filthy Cardassians are everywhere. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but avid fans may find it somewhat hard to believe that Cardassia could have recouped and developed such a sizable fleet so quickly after being all but obliterated by the Jem'Hadar (it seems like you constantly destroy dozens and dozens of their craft). Overly suspicious Romulans also show up from time-to-time. Their attitude is rather annoying -- one of those deals where they constantly accuse you of being the bad one... No dummy, you're from the treacherous, deceptive race, not us. A lot of war-crazed Klingons are also flying about here and there. Yet somehow it all makes sense. Unlike Armada's unprecedented melding of every single major plotline Star Trek has ever introduced, flying around the maelstrom feels right. The same characters are encountered again and again, subsequently giving the impression that it's not fleets of Klingon and Romulan warbirds that you're contending with, but rather a few solitary flights and independent vessels. There are still a whole lot of damn dirty Cardassians though. Mission structure and the underlying premise are believable from a Star Trek perspective (no alien blob planning on infecting the universe or everybody attacking everybody nonsense).

Doubling as a tutorial, the first mission not only serves as the player's introduction to the ship, but also to Picard himself, who comes aboard solely to ostentatiously direct you through basic operations, I guess he might also need a ride. It's a little light on substance, but the tutorial does well at allowing you to meet, greet, and use every station at your disposal. I'd have liked a little more comprehensiveness and emphasis on the more advanced tactics and such, but not delving too far into this realm keeps it short. Thankfully so, because an initial gripe I developed with the game is the inability to skip through what can become repetitious and dragging non-interactive sequences (if you reinstall the game you'll have to sit through it all again). You can bypass actual dialog, but this will not always breeze you through the video component.

Bridge Commander revolves around a very directed structure. Saves are done automatically only at the ends of missions, which doesn't come off too bad because if the option were provided for, the game would be a real breeze (I can dig this setup because I'm not the type of person that needs to quick save every thirty seconds to beat a game). Negatively, not being able to skip entirely through these transitional sequences (as I mentioned above) means having to trudge through tedium each and every time you die, making the experience of repeating a mission that much more aggravating.
A major gripe gamers are bound to have with Bridge Commander is that it's not nearly as open-ended as it could be. There is little the way of exploration and even less branching conversations (a few yes/no decisions aside). Star Control 2 it is not, which is kind of sad, but still surprisingly workable despite the inherent exploratory aspects of Star Trek going almost completely untouched. Here's how it breaks down: an order comes on the viewer from Starfleet, you do it, and in doing it, find a lot of other tasks that need doing. After that, Starfleet comes back on the viewer. It's all very ordered and structured. You already know where you must go, with whom you must fight, and what you must do, all that's needed is that you go, fight, and do. Naturally each mission is not nearly as cut and dry. Every single one in fact comes packed with a few surprises. What makes it all so passable and enjoyable is that everything is so very, very Star Trek. This makes Bridge Commander the single most engaging Star Trek experience yet in gaming.

A few of the missions can be a bit lame (though most are cool). One of these wrong missions, I believe in the fifth episode, involves orbiting certain planets to scan them, but all the while avoiding enemy patrols that also happen to be orbiting the planets. This is an unforgiving stealth mission that requires parallel parking a Sovereign class without being detected, and you have to do it on like six planets. This kind of instant failure becomes really frustrating.

Other than that one (and a few like it), the game is solid through and through, comprised of about 85% combat. Not a bad thing because the pacing is generally tight and done in such a way that action is steady, remains taxing on your nervous system, and never really bores.

Gameplay, and success in it, means having to quickly assess the current state of a battle, gauge your relative position in it, manage your ship (power, damage), target the bad guys, properly orient yourself, utilize your stations to their fullest, and bust out a little manual control to tighten things up. Despite being so complex on paper, it all comes together beautifully once learned -- partly attributed to the use of hotkeys and an intuitive overlaying menu interface that remains constant regardless of current view.

The actual bridge view can go a little underutilized (practically the entire game can be played from the external perspectives). In spite of this, it becomes a necessity for getting closer looks at ships and being better able to judge their heading and behavior.

Combat is a lot slower than what any space-sim enthusiast might be used to (this is not Starlancer, so don't take it as such). But, it's this speed, or lack thereof, that helps Bridge Commander be Star Trek. Again with the license tie in... Piloting your massive, extremely powerful capital ship is like piloting your massive, extremely powerful capital ship. It's large, brimming with weapons, and requires more in the way of tactics than reflex. You have to maximize phaser distribution, while minimizing the amount of damage you take in specific places. This simplistic ideology coupled with the somewhat complex notion of managing all the critical components of a starship merge to form a unique and lasting play style that emphasizes actually captaining. I don't want you to get the wrong idea, playing is not actually overly complex. Pretty much everything can be automated based off of assigned criteria, alleviating a lot of the burdens of obsessive micromanagement. The kicker is that to be a master you must learn how to augment what is automatically taken care of for you with minor adjustments. Prioritizing what damaged systems you want repaired first, assigning tactics and maneuvers, targeting subsystems of an enemy, and even resorting to manual targeting are all vital to overcoming deadlier and more numerous adversaries (the larger battles are really intense and require a lot of quick and decisive actions).

When you do take manual control and flip to an external view to better engage your opponents, the game uses the keyboard for movement (roll, pitch, yaw), and the mouse for targeting. The external tactical camera focuses on your current target, while the chase camera maintains a fixed position behind your craft. You can rotate the camera about in the chase camera view, but only when you hold down the shift key (a bit disorienting). The thing is, the targeting reticle is constrained to the viewable screen. Moving the mouse to the edge of the screen in this view should have panned the camera in that direction, or even just moving the mouse at all should have correspondingly moved the camera. This would allow for more coordination between assault and movement tactics, but it's comparatively a really minor gripe (more of a secondary wish).

Manual control is in place just to fine-tune all the orders you're laying down. Your tactical officer uses a set of variables to do things (focus on this, fly like this, shoot like this). Normally the model officer, he can at times have a few problems carrying out his assignments (he's the only one who has to really use extensive AI routines to accomplish tasks). He generally does what he's told, but sometimes coupling a fore attack with a separate distance order can confuse him a bit. He'll fore attack alright, but in the process get dangerously close to an object opposed to steadily backing away from it like he's told. It's like he not only has no idea what reverse thrust means, but also doesn't know what's more important, the fore attack order, or the separate distance one. This is but an annoyance that can be remedied by assigning a new order, or using manual control to nudge him in the right direction.
As a matter of more praise, the map is really awesome. In a nod to Tie Fighter, among others, the BC map draws not only the positions and orientations of you and your opponents, but also all of the weapons fire, so helping out friends, and taking the brunt of an attack for them has never been easier. Orders can't actually be assigned from this map interface (I suppose if they could one might not ever leave), but switching in and out of it is instantaneous and easy.

For as much gameplay as Bridge Commander has, there's an equal amount of graphical acuity to soak in. For starters, the ship models are utterly amazing, enormous, meticulously drawn things. Not just technically impressive, all of the vessels have a strange sort of built solidness to them. They're clearly not mere hollow shells of polygons, but creations of weight and dimension.

Lighting, whether it be from thick phasers, vibrant stars, or somewhat unimpressive explosions, is very rich and gorgeously accentuates all of the already impressive in-game models.

Even though the dynamic ship damage is a very cool thing, the texture work on those areas is a bit suspect and the explosions that accompany them are equally questionable. I'm a stickler for things that go boom and these firey balls are more O.G. Tie Fighter than they are the next step after Comanche or Freespace. I just don't dig the orange blobs, but the rest of extra-bridge play is so wonderfully rendered and believably accurate in its portrayal of everything Trek that I'm fine with letting this problem slip by. In the future, more work need definitely be placed on the actual fireballs themselves, as well as the texture work for destroyed areas.

The bridge is a completely different story. A different, much uglier story. It's not so much the actual room that makes you shudder, but rather the models and their lanky, angular, stiff appearance. And the facial animations? Oh lord, don't even get me started on the absolutely horrifying facial animations. As if just to add insult to injury, there are only two bridges (Sovereign and Galaxy class). But as mediocre and bad as the two bridges can be (again, mainly because of the people that populate them), the external universe is so finely detailed and plain beautiful that it really doesn't matter. Take it like this: if the game didn't even have a bridge and was just called Star Trek Commander it'd still be awesome, so eat your icing, and understand that it's not filling.

I attribute the lacking amount of bridges to the fact that the game did not even have a multiplayer/skirmish mode until late in development (last fall). But, even if there are only two bridges from which to choose, you must be thankful every single day that skirmish and multiplayer modes were included anyway. Taking on your friends in heated engagements with a variety of Star Trek ships is just too much fun (even if choosing a locale in which to shed blood is a bit random). Yeah, using a shuttlecraft to lay waste to a Romulan warbird by staying on its backside is completely insane (Romulans have some tough ass ships, in the show anyway), but the fact that you can even set up this sort of battle is sweet. More ships would have been nice (no Intrepid?), but enough are included to keep things lively and interesting.

	What did you think of Bridge Commander?