Review: Star Trek DAC

Browser games. That's where it's at.

There have been many happy work hours that should have been spent productively that instead slipped by unnoticed while you slaughtered 3-frame-animated zombies, or organised your tower defence, or conquered territory with dice-rolls. Great stuff. Their attraction is limited, but it's ok. They fill up an hour or so, then you get bored and go back to work feeling refreshed.

Star Trek DAC is a browser game given a reasonable amount of polish before being released on Arcade for 800 points worth of your money. Ask yourself if you'd have had quite so much fun on Tower Defence if you'd paid. Actually, that's a bad example – Tower Defence is still fun after an hour. Star Trek DAC isn't.


The basics of the gameplay are covered in the name. DAC stands for Deathmatch – Assault – Conquest, which are the three game modes. Two teams of up to six players each do battle online, picking either Romulan or Federation ships. That's the Star Trek bit. In fact, excepting a little bit of music, that's all of the Star Trek bit. No cast, no voices, no clips, nothing. Not even an appearance by Bill Shatner (he was probably too busy writing the novel where Kirk travels through time to rescue Spock Prime and set everything back on track – he did it to Generations, he can do it again). If you're a Trek fan or a fan of the reboot film on which this game is already based, you'll be feeling a little hard done by already.

Deathmatch is a first to 50 kills thing. Assault sees one team defend four points on the map against the other team, then you swap. Conquest, the more fun option, is a modified version of Assault. That's it. No options can be adjusted, but at least there are bots to add in to make up for missing players. Mind you, you can't adjust their settings either, except for how many there are.


Games of any mode are pretty dull affairs after the first hour of browser game fun. The first five minutes are spent feeling a bit like you're driving a cross between a dodgem and a broken shopping trolley. Backwards. All the while you're opponents have been given F-16 fighters and you die a lot and get frustrated. Suddenly, something clicks and you realise you mostly just need to sit there, watching the radar for approaching enemies, and then blast them. You die, or escape in your pod, respawn and start again. Occasionally you pick up a power-up that doesn't do anything. Someone wins. Yay...

Between this game and the Watchmen equivalent, we're seeing the arrival of an ugly baby. Film marketing folks are going to be releasing a lot of this kind of thing over the next few years. Get used to it. Ignore them. Who knows, eventually they may give up and go bother someone else. In the meantime, if you're a Trek fan, watch the trailer on YouTube. Don't pay good money for bad browser games.
http://xbox.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=18161