Star Trek Conquest

Wii, Star Trek Conquest (2007), game

I've had a long association with 'Star Trek,' less so with games based upon it. I think I can only lay claim to 'Star Trek: Generations - Beyond The Nexus' and 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' both on the humble Game Boy, and 'Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary' from the Amiga, but which I played through DOSBox, as the few I've played. Despite there being a Tribble-load of games based on the best sci-fi franchise ever made, most of them have been PC games (don't own one), or for non-Nintendo consoles. Maybe they felt Nintendo's image didn't fit with Trek's, I don't know, but I was pleased to find, after many 'Star Wars' examples on N64 and GameCube, at least on Wii there was one solitary Trek title. I didn't expect much from it, I hadn't heard anything about it, and from first plays I saw it as being quite simplistic and shallow, especially when compared with the 'great novel'-like source material of the Dominion War of the latter seasons of 'DS9.' But that series, and those seasons especially, have always been my favourite of all Trek, just as Trek is my favourite of all entertainments, so the novelty could almost have been enough in itself. But novelty alone can't cause me to play a game for eight hours in one day (as my Wii informed me was the case recently!), it has to have addictive and absorbing gameplay, and that's exactly what this contains.

It's a basic kind of turn-based strategy, with real-time, action-based attack or defence missions for a bit of variety and in case players needed more bang for buck-age, those 'Star Wars' people that can't get their head around just looking at menu screens and icons perhaps, and could easily have not been included at all. The good thing about them is that once you have the measure of the game, you can save yourself damage to your fleet by choosing this route rather than the easier one of letting it play out in icon-based simulation, which saves time, but means you'll sustain some damage or casualties. When you're up against tougher opposition or you can't afford to replace or repair your fleet and are threatened by near foes, it makes a good alternative tactic. Then you simply keep your distance from the defence weapons and starbases, and take them all out leisurely without a scratch. It's not such a good idea if you're attacking a system which contains an enemy fleet as the computer tends to be very efficient at dealing out justice, and if you're defending against an attack I always found it more profitable to use the simulation - even if you don't have a fleet to sway the odds in an attacked system, strong defences can weaken the opposition and occasionally even triumph. Some races will even retreat if robust defence is maintained.

One of the positives about the gameplay is how races respond differently to each other, with some tactics more suited to certain enemies. For example, true to their headstrong warrior nature, the Klingons never back down, so they're most likely to be defeated by selecting an Offensive defence of flinging all your power into the weapons systems rather than into the shields. Though there are really only two options when it comes to battle, Offensive or Defensive, this simplicity is given depth by the temperaments of the races and what advantages or disadvantages they have. This is what makes the game so enjoyable, drawing you in with its simplicity, but providing an enjoyable challenge at the same time. The downside is that once all races have been taken to a winning conclusion I doubt there will be anything to go back for, which is usually not the case with either real-time or turn-based strategy - I still go back to random maps on 'Age of Empires II' even in recent years, and the same can be said of 'Settlers' or X-Com. At the same time, placing all the races in the same place with the same galactic map means you know what you're up against, and I did enjoy trying the game with each of the six races - every time I included all races, with the Fog of War on, and played on Medium Difficulty.

I found that there was a definite hierarchy of power, with the Dominion and their high hit-point vessels proving to be the toughest race and therefore the easiest to win with. At the opposite end of the scale, the Breen were weakest in their overall pros and cons, providing much more of a challenge to becoming victorious. I would say Cardassians were next toughest after Dominion, followed by Klingons, Federation and Romulans. Indeed, who you choose to play as when you first take up the game makes a big difference: I found myself losing a number of times when I began with the Romulans because it took a while to get the hang of it and they weren't one of the more powerful races. So I would certainly recommend beginning with either Dominion or Cardassian forces for the new player. The Dominion have the advantage of a 'safe' area the other side of the Wormhole, guarded by DS9, a tough defensive station that can be hard to dislodge if a good fleet is there to protect it. The Federation were by far in the worst position, right in the middle of the map, while all the others have a good, solid corner to build from, excepting the Breen at the top. Another tactical advantage comes at the bottom of the map with the Argus Array - whoever owns this piece of kit can see the whole map - obviously this only affects a human player because I doubt the computer changes its tactics based on what it can 'see.'

If there had been a multiplayer game this would have been a great leg up, but sadly, one of the game's major faults is being entirely one-player, further reducing its replay value. I can just imagine an epic game of up to six players, and because it's turn-based you'd only need one controller, everyone else looking away during each player's turn. Control with remote and nunchuk works well, although the latter is only necessary for the battles you choose to play in Skirmish, the action mode, so if you wanted to avoid those the whole game can be played one-handed. The battles do take some getting used to, steering with the analogue stick while pointing the remote to aim weapons. What would have been much more enjoyable would have been a sim-like approach where you actually feel in control of a flagship, rather than swirling around like a shoal of fish, but that would have taken a lot more development and as this part of the game is nonessential, perhaps wouldn't have been worthwhile. When you know what you're doing with the game as a whole, you can be zipping in and out of each system, upgrading this structure, creating a fleet and replacing damaged buildings, the remote making it very easy to control, almost like a mouse. The real tactics come from deploying your resources and moving fleets.

You're limited to only three of these, each led by a character from Trek history, specific to your race. You might have Martok as your Captain if you're Klingon, or Tomalak for the Romulans, and all are based on 'real life' figures from that universe except for Thot Rong of the Breen as I don't believe he was pre-existing, but then it's difficult if you add a race that had so little fleshing out in Trek. In some ways it might have been wiser to use a more familiar species, but although the setting isn't a hundred percent accurate (in that certain characters, although all from the 24th Century, weren't in the Dominion War), they were keeping to that war era quite well. I would have preferred if the English speech for each action would have been changed exclusively for the Breen to their metallic grating noise, but I can see that would have confused people, and they did at least have the sound underneath the speech. Attention to detail was rather good, and you even get some cameo appearances from other races since the majority of the systems from the start of the campaign are controlled by others such as Borg, Ferengi, Orion and Xindi! This side of things didn't make a lot of sense, the Borg would have taken out any fleet with ease, and the Xindi wouldn't even have been around at that point, being an enemy from the 22nd Century of 'Enterprise,' but this isn't a game to be taken completely seriously, it's a representation of the Trek universe, not an accurate portrayal, so these additions were fun.

As ever with resource-gathering, territory-expanding gameplay, you have to decide whether to sit tight and build up resources or strike out and risk what you have to speed up the development, and this was a finely balanced area of the game. Although the options were limited, it fit with Trek's simple, but deep nature - in the same way that its complex races can be divided into aspects of humanity, Romulans are devious, Klingons are aggressive, etc. You build a science station or a mining station on each planet. You defend it with either a standard starbase or the high-powered variety, and you can add defences to both. Your fleet, in turn, can be made up of three different classes of ship and all of this costs credits which you earn by mining. Research gives the chance to upgrade ship power, mining efficiency and various other aspects of your race (such as a specialist single use weapon), depending on which you choose to play as, so there's a balance to be struck between earning the cash for more ships and structures, while also improving what you've got overall. Cash or development, offence or defence, it's simple, but compelling. I soon learned the best way to survive is to get a certain number of systems under your control and then upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, because you can't defend what's weak. The sooner you can deploy a fully kitted out fleet with the toughest vessels, the better, and that's a further source of tactics - as you win battles with your fleet it becomes stronger at offence or defence and might even get more movement spaces.

This in turn opens up your options for expansion and attack - one surefire way of defeating an enemy fleet is to attack it, then retreat, and if you have multiple moves for that fleet, and the resources to pour into replacing ships, you can send it back to attack again on the same turn. The enemy hasn't had a chance to repair or replace, so like the waves on a beach you can overwhelm their forces. On the other hand, this can be hugely frustrating if the computer players do it to you! Another wise tactic is to aim for the heart of the enemy's strongholds, their Homeworld. You don't get to do anything special with it, but if you can hold it they won't be able to create a new fleet as these can only come from the Homeworld and once their existing fleets are destroyed they're out of the game. As you can tell, these various tactics make for a satisfying gaming experience. Each race even has a different menu layout and computer voice. Sadly, we don't get any Trek actors (not even JG Hertzler as Martok!), to voice their respective races, nor do we get any official Trek music (which occasionally strays into 'Star Wars' territory, though for the most part is reminiscent of the Trek era they're representing here), so it does come across as a slightly budget-conscious evocation of Trek. It doesn't harm the game itself, but the bells and whistles would have been nice. However, usually it's the other way round, the bigger companies able to pay for music and voice artist talent, but not always putting the effort into the gameplay when they know it'll sell for simply being a licenced product.

Bethesda Softworks have put in the effort, and although it is 'only' a Wii game, therefore it doesn't 'need' to have greater depth because Wii is 'supposed' to be shallow with short, gimmicky play, there's enough depth for many hours of absorption. With the addition of a multiplayer or a random map generator it would definitely have been worthy of an extra star, but it remains a good, enjoyable game in its own right, regardless of whether you're a Trekker or not, and if you are, there's plenty of fun to be had spotting all the little Trekky details, whether that's the summary of facts about each system or planet that you can read before heading into 3D battle, or the names of the Captains, the way you upgrade in rank, and the sheer joy of being able to command a Breen warship or a Romulan Warbird. It's also fun spotting how well they know their stuff, and they do very well - for every cry of "For Earth!" from Federation vessels ('Earth is only one planet in the Federation,' I point out in my nitpicky, nasal voice), you get a "For the Founders," from Dominion forces, and it's just a slight thrill to be playing a game where these races and names are used when I've been so starved of Trek content on the systems I use.

War and money-based resources may not be the best suited themes for a Trek game, since most of it's about teamwork in exploration and solving problems, but that's why 'Star Wars' wins on number of games out there because it's all about action and it's harder to translate the cerebral thrills of Trek into computer game territory, especially when consoles are played down to in complexity for ease of use and quick snatches of gameplay. This game succeeds on both sides, it can be played in bursts (there's even an option to play the Skirmish mode on its own, pitting various races against each other, though there's not much to it), but is also involving and rewarding enough to play for hours at a time, and when you're deep in a campaign you don't want to budge, you'll happily sit there into the night trying to corner that last Dominion fleet so you can take sovereignty over the galaxy. Although I wish there were a multiplayer, the difficulty level does give some replay value, and you unlock ships or locations for Skirmish mode if you win the campaign with each race. Unfortunately, after that there's nothing to earn, and there is a lack of 'set' play to the game in that you can adjust a campaign however you want from the start, so you could just have two races against each other with no Fog of War on Easy. All that being said I've enjoyed it enough that I'm now going to complete all the campaigns with each race on Hard. I think I can say this is the best Trek game I've played. On second thoughts it does deserve the extra star. Die quick, and I'll prosper!

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