Starfleet Academy Reviewed by Alex van Kaam on a P200 with 3DFX card Being a Star Trek fan and a 3DFX user I could not resist when I saw this game in the store, so together with Lands of Lore 2 I bought it.... Let's first start with the game's requirement: - IBM PC or 100% compatible Pentium(TM) 90 or faster - Windows(R) 95 - 16mb RAM - 4x or Faster CD-ROM drive - Sound Blaster(TM) or 100% compatible sound card - 180mb free hard drive space - 100% Microsoft Compatible Mouse - DirectX(TM) 5.0+ - Optional: 3DFX card After opening the box I saw that the game came on a staggering 5 CDs!!! Installing was a breeze and soon I was greeted by the Dolby Surround movie, for those of you who visit the cinema this is a familiar movie. Next came the introduction, a brilliant movie again... the Enterprise entering the space station near Earth, Captain Kirk and Commander Sulu taking a shuttle down to the Academy on Earth, real actors in a rendered background, and what a brilliant job they did, the movement is fluid and actors don't look "cut" into the background. After the introduction it's clear that you are Cadet Forester and you and your crew have to make it though the academy, not only have you got to complete all 20+ mission, but you also have to keep your crew together as a team. The game is built up very simply, before a mission you get a briefing, either from Sulu, Kirk, Chekov or some other guy who runs the academy but whose name I forgot . Next the mission starts, of course you are in a simulator (this has been made very clear in the introduction movie), but once you're in you really feel like being there. The missions consist of old and new ones, meaning that sometimes you fly a really old constitution class vessel and other times you fly the latest version. The missions start off easy, eg blow up a mine field, but gradually they get harder and harder, but once you reach mission 18 it seems to get easier, like they ran out of ideas ??!! Not all mission consist of attacking Klingons or Romulans, some have you rescuing complete planets, or saving a new life form that lives in space and you even get the play that famous Kobayashi Maru ... will you cheat as well After each mission you get a little movie, about you or some of your crew, during these movies you have to make decisions that will influence the performance of your crew, sometimes you have to push people, sometimes give them some slack, other times you have to decide if you study or work on a project with your science officer. As I have finished the game I only noticed that one decision probably made an impact, at one point I choose for studying and not for the project with my science officer, after that I kept choosing for the project but I never got it finished before I graduated...... so maybe that is why. Another thing I noticed was that the game is still a bit buggy, I experienced 3 bugs so far.... 1) during a very difficult mission, just near the windows threw up a big error, crashing the game, it took me 2 days so finish that particular mission... very annoying if you know how but you can't... 2) while trying to stun a sun create the game gave me a debug box, I had to press OK to close it, it close.. I could continue with the game but a few seconds later it came up again and could no longer be closed... restarting the game was needed to continue 3) after the graduation ceremony the game started up a movie, but this was a mission briefing of a while before, so I guess that was wrong too. But don't get me wrong, it's a great game, if you like ST that is, the different space ships you fly all handle differently, shields get blown to pieces by decloaking klingons, life support gets critical, your warp engines are off line when you need them most, lots and lots of things happen when you're in a battle, so beside flying around and using your phasers you also need to direct the damage control. However at the same time you wonder if there was not more potential in the game, you can visit all the stations on your ship, but you really don't. Knowing how to get to damage control is enough to start with, a bit later you need the energy allocation menu and that's about all you use of your huge ship... a shame..... So to sum it all up... Sound: perfect, sometimes you feel like you're in a ST movie. Voices: these are of the same high quality as the sound. Movie: these are the best I have seen so far in any game. Game Graphics: well, I am not sure, in space everything is black, the only real Game Graphics are that of space stations or other ships you encounter, they all look great using the 3DFX card, in normal Direct 3D they are a bit more pixeled, but still good Difficulty: starts easy, gets very hard in the middle but then eases off. All in all I enjoyed this game, but the price was quiet high for a game that just took me 7 days and I am not sure if I will restart the game again....but if you are a ST fan then this is a must :-) - o -