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Star Trek: Shattered Universe Review - Xbox

Star Wars and Star Trek are each others biggest rival. Most people will agree, however, that Star Wars has always led the way with its captivating environments and characters and plethora of merchandising. Star Wars has always led the way in the gaming world, too; while Star Trek has had its fair share of games, the Star Wars games have always been better and more popular - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy for example. Recently a new Star Trek game, Star Trek: Shattered Universe, merged into the fleet of Star Trek games. Does it have what it takes to surpass the Star Wars games once and for all? In short, no.

Gameplay

Star Trek: Shattered Universe is a standard Combat Flight Simulator centred upon the Star Trek series and characters. You pilot various fighter ships throughout the game, more and more becoming available to you as you progress. These new ships feature advanced attributes and weapons, keeping you up-to-date with the increasingly powerful enemies.

At the beginning of each mission you're briefed with your objectives and sent on your way. To keep the story involved and flowing, after each mission is a cut-scene in which the crew chatter away and convey to you updates on the fleets progress towards the exit of the unknown universe. The mission objectives are fairly basic, usually requiring you to perform standard tasks such as destroying all of the enemies in the area or destroying a certain command station, meaning the missions can grow repetitive quite quickly, not only due to this but also to the fact that chasing and shooting other ships over and over again isn't fun for long at all.

Fortunately the ships control fairly realistically and are easy to handle, and you can perform all of the standard spacecraft moves such as thrust and roll to help you evade and chase enemy fighters. Each craft comes standard with a Phaser Beam, which fires a timed long range burst of energy, and has a secondary weapon attached such as laser bolts or Proton Torpedos. The only major complaint I have with the fighting is that for some reason it's hard to judge the distance between you and an enemy fighter. For example, sometimes they look like they're quite far away so you'll speed up in order to get close in for a more accurate shot and find yourself crashing into them. Fortunately the enemy fighters are generally quite smart, rolling over your craft and pulling away sharply to avoid fire.

I found the game quite hard at times; even the fact that the crafts come standard with regenerating shields didn't help. Most of the time you're fighting alone, meaning you've got squads of enemy fighters all over you with no help from any comrades - yet, when was the last time a Combat Flight Simulator actually had helpful AI comrades? Some missions are timed, which pushes the (continued next page)