Introduction

It is the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Incursion (NX-74808) under Captain Marcus Refelian. The vessel is a prototype, Defiant-Class Federation starship equipped with the Holographic Masking System that can transform the physical appearance of the Incursion. The crew is a newly formed group of highly trained, elite specialists called the Away Team. The first test is infiltrating Klingon space to investigate disturbances such as distress calls and reports of battles that have been emanating from the empire. After crossing the border, a distress call is received from a Klingon ship under attack by a Romulan Warbird. The Romulans are tricked and bluffed to leave the area by disguising the Incursion as another Warbird.

The above paragraph occurs in the opening cinematic sequence of Star Trek Away Team from Activision and Reflexive Entertainment. Star Trek Away Team is pauseable real-time squad level tactical game. The player views the action, the characters and maps from an overhead ž perspective. The game is set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation timeline after the Dominion War. The mission of the Incursion. is to seek the answers to what is behind this outbreak of violence in the Klingon Empire. Besides the Federation, Klingons and Romulans, the Borg rounds out the strategic actors involved in the plot. The player will visit locations such as Starfleet Headquarters, Starfleet Academy, Romulus, Q'onoS (the Klingon homeworld), a Borg cube and various bases and outposts.

The Incursion's crew is highly trained Starfleet officers who include many of the well-known races of the Federation: Humans, Betaziods, Andorians, Bolians, Vulcans, Trills and Bajorans. The crew are specialists to be used in special forces-type operations throughout Star Trek Away Team's eighteen missions Specialist skills are related to all five branches of jobs found on a Starfleet ship: Command, Engineering, Science, Security and Medical. These are not your typical make nice Starfleet officers. Along with various technical skills, your specialists are trained for combat and espionage. Seventeen characters are available to the player but only three to six can be used per mission. Star Trek Away Team has only two difficulty levels, Easy and Normal.


Underneath the U.S.S. Incursion.	Commander Data leads you through the tutorial or first mission.

Installation

Star Trek Away Team comes on one CD and includes demonstration versions of other Star Trek games from Activision: Armada, Hidden Evil, ConQuest On-Line and Bridge Commander. Installation is straightforward and the game takes up approximately 400 MB of hard drive space. Star Trek Away Team requires DirectX 8.0, which is included on the CD. The paltry manual is forty-two pages long with only eleven pages spent on the mechanics of gameplay. The rest of the manual is the legal stuff, bios of the seventeen Away Team members, and descriptions of the weapons, equipment and skills.

Holodeck and Communication Badges

The reviewer found the graphics of Star Trek Away Team to be very good but not perfect. The level maps were well drawn and gave a sense of the place where the mission occurs and what race is involved in that mission. The cut-scene movies are especially superb and well directed. There are a few complaints concerning the graphics. The major gripe is there is no transparency effect when the Away Team officers or enemies move behind obstacles. The reviewer was attacked several times from enemy soldiers that the reviewer could not see but were in the line of sight of my Away Team members.

Like the graphics, the reviewer found the voiceover work and sound effects to be excellent. Sounds effects of phasers firing and the transporter are instantly recognizable to fans of Star Trek. The canned phrases of the characters when they are selected can get a bit annoying but that feature can be turned off. The music playing in the background during missions is a little overblown but that feature can also be turned off or the volume can be lowered.

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