Star Trek: Shattered Universe (PS2)

“Star Trek,” I once heard it commented, “is romance for science fiction fans”. A strange comment, however one that might make a lot of sense those who love it. In a very real world, where the future is a worrying place filled with war, environmental catastrophe and the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, Star Trek is a beacon of optimism in a storm of gloom. A vision of a future where capitalism has been overturned by the utopian ideals of self-fulfilment and the pioneering spirit, and economic concerns play no part in defining the human condition. Admittedly, it’s also a world ruled by a military government, where there is always a righteous moral lesson to be learned from any situation and everyone looks good in Lycra, but then cynicism and idealism never were comfortable bedfellows.

I’m a fan of Star Trek. That doesn’t mean I have a replica uniform hanging in my wardrobe or I dress up as a Vulcan on weekends. I do not begin my diary entries with the words ‘Captain’s log, stardate…” and I have enough problem communicating conventionally to wish to add the Klingon language to my repertoire. My interest does not even begin to approach the frankly disturbing obsession for which so many of Star Trek’s fans have become synonymous. Star Trek stories are good (if often a little loaded with sickly, sweet patriotic American bollocks), the concepts impressive and the vision uplifting. If only the world could truly be that way! Who wouldn’t like the opportunity to travel the universe in a huge starship, fitted with computers capable of synthesising anything you desire, and bonk all manner of cute, alien chicks? ET, I’m coming home!

Yes, the Star Trek world is a very rich and wondrous place filled with unlimited opportunity, which begs the question why anyone would consider Shattered Universe to be fit to wear the Star Trek name?

Licensed tie-ins can either be wonderful experiences, which capture the spirit of their source material perfectly, or they can be insipid affairs, conning loyal fans out of their cash with the delivery of sub-standard, unoriginal gameplay wound around paper-thin plot. Personally, I view any game that falls into the latter category as an offence against creativity and an insult to those who are so enthusiastic about the subject matter. Star Trek Shattered Universe is worse than that. It’s a poor excuse for a game, with a dubious plot whose link with Star Trek is weak at best and downright misleading at worst.

The story, for those of you who are still reading, involves the crew and captain – voiced by George Takei (Captain Sulu) from the original series – of the starship Excelsior, rushing to the aid of the Enterprise when they fall into a vortex which threatens their ship. As the title suggests, both ships are sucked into a mirror universe where good is evil and evil good (although strangely, the crew of the Excelsior remain aware of their own inherent goodness). The vortex closes behind them and the only way of getting back to their own universe is to travel across the quadrant in order to re-enter the same wormhole, which will presumably take them back. However, the evil Federation stands between them and the way home.

Doesn’t sound too bad, eh? Well, this is where it gets bad. Star Wars, as we all know, is generally about small fighters fighting other small fighters, as was Battlestar Galactica and the majority of other science fiction of the time. Star Trek, on the other hand, stands almost alone with its pseudo naval battles between giant capital ships. It’s one of the series’ signature attributes. Well not in this universe. Breaking with all convention and one of the defining attractions of the licence, we are treated to the discovery that combat will now take place in numerous, “newly discovered” fighters. Riiiiiight.

It wouldn’t be half-bad if this was actually well executed, but it’s not. It’s woeful. The game is a series of boring and linear missions, involving travel to numerous way-points, combat with numerous rather stupid enemies, coupled with the appearance of the odd capital ship. Quite why they simply didn’t make this a combat game using capital ships I will never know, as the fighters feel like it anyway. There is zero feeling of speed and it looks like it could have been programmed ten years ago. The graphics are blocky and objects fail to have been given the required amount of shading to enable them to look like they weren’t designed on an Amiga. It feels like the programming team happened to have an old Elite clone which they’d been trying to work out how to release since the 90s, and have finally decided to get rid of it.

The combat arenas themselves are also suitably uninteresting. Perhaps an opportunity to dive into a planetary atmosphere and do a little dogfighting might have given the game some unique sales point, however get too close to anything and you are warned of a ‘dangerous gravity well’ and are encouraged to pull up. Another fantastic ruse to get out of having to actually expend effort in making a decent game.

The gameplay itself is both simplistic and lacking challenge. There are three weapons on offer to you; all distinctly similar except for the graphics they make when fired. Just in case the enemy isn’t quite stupid enough, there is a secondary target that appears on screen to show exactly where to fire ahead of the enemy in order to score a direct hit. Really challenging. Presumably this is because the graphics are so bad? The lack of any original aspect with regard to the gameplay screams out like an Iraqi in Abu Ghraib.

It’s hard to say anything positive about Star Trek Shattered Universe. It represents the lazy and greedy side of game production. It’s merely an exercise in churning out a license, whilst attempting to cover up what is a very poor game indeed. If I were the programmers at Starsphere, I’d be fairly embarrassed to having put my name to this piece of work. Surely at some point during play testing someone must have raised the point that, getting to the very core of the problem, the product was crap? If they did, why did nobody listen? Does anyone care? StarTrek Shattered Universe is a spit in the eye for fans of Star Trek and an abbhoration of games production which could have been put together ten years ago (although it would still have been considered a poor game). Save your money and go out and buy yourself a William Shatner record instead. At least there’s fun to be had there.

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