Star Trek D-A-C

Xbox 360
JJ Abrams’ big-budget big-screen resurrection of the Star Trek franchise lured out Trekkies and their ridiculous costumes as well as a whole heap load of newcomers.

Gaming - Star Trek D-A-C screenshotNormally this would signal the arrival of an equally large video game tie-in, hoping to make a quick buck off of the movies‘ success; but instead, we’ve surprisingly been treated to a small, downloadable title, much like Watchmen: The End is Nigh earlier in the year.

Sadly, Star Trek D-A-C doesn’t have much to do with the movie; rather than follow its narrative and base a single player game around that, it’s primarily a multiplayer title.

D-A-C stands for Deathmatch-Assault-Conquest, so as you would imagine these are the three game modes you’ll be taking part in.

Each one can be played alone or in co-op against bots, or you can take it online to face off against the easier human opponents. That’s not to say that people that play this game are rubbish, rather the AI is so frighteningly accurate, it’s pretty hard to get any practice in against them when you’re starting off.

If you jump straight into the online game you’ll find three classes of ship on offer for both the Federation and Romulans.

The fighters are the smallest, they’re especially fast but their weapons are weak and they don’t have much hull strength; the bombers are also very small and they only fire backwards which only really works when defending an area.

The flagships are by far the best, and the only ship I ever felt was effective for my style of play.

They look like the Enterprise - or alternatively, Nero’s ship if you’re the Romulans - and they pack the biggest punch and hull strength; of course the downside is that they’re quite slow, so finding a ship that works for you will be your main priority.

Gaming - Star Trek D-A-C screenshotOnce that’s sorted it’s time to start learning the nuances of each game mode.

Star Trek D-A-C is a top-down space shooter; you use the left stick to steer and the right stick to aim and shoot. It’s relatively easy to get to grips with, but isn’t particularly exciting once you do.

It’s all very slow and feels like you’re moving battleships out on the open sea rather than futuristic space weaponry.

You have one basic weapon to fire and you can pick up special power-ups in each battlefield; whether it be a missile, a shield or even the ability to duplicate your ship.

You’ll utilise these the most in Deathmatch where your goal is, obviously, to rake up more kills than the other team.

There’s not much strategy involved here, you’ll just fly around till you find someone and then blast away until one of you end up in an escape pod. It gets pretty tiresome after a while and I never felt any urge to go back to it afterwards.

Assault and Conquest are a tad better. They both revolve around capturing and defending different points on the map; there’s actually some strategy involved here, and even some turret systems to contend with.

Gaming - Star Trek D-A-C screenshotBut that’s all Star Trek D-A-C consists of. Their aren’t that many maps and you can only see so many different views of space anyway. For a slow, seemingly tactical, multiplayer game there’s just not enough emphasis on working together and coming up with different strategies so it gets extremely boring in a short amount of time.

The Star Trek licence hasn’t been put to good use, other than through the use of the movies' brilliant soundtrack, so this ends up looking like a cheap tie-in. There are already enough top-down shooters on the system and Star Trek D-A-C simply doesn’t stand out above the rest.

SUMMARY

PRO: Excellent use of the movies' soundtrack.

CON: Not enough variety in the maps or gameplay.

CON: Doesn’t utilise the licence to good effect.

CON: Too slow to be really engaging


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