Xbox Addict

Starsphere elaborated on this episode and did a what if with Captain Sulu and the Excelsior and Commander Chekov commanding the Enterprise, which I thought was decommissioned at the end of Star Trek VI, again this is a what if.... Star Trek: Shattered Universe was born. Shattered Universes warp core breached on arrival with a substandard plot, poor gameplay, mediocre graphics, and humiliating voice acting from two Star Trek icons. Pass this game by, Trekkies may want to play it for the Trek aspect of it, but use the money to buy a DVD or better Star Trek game. Throw this one in the bad Trek game pile.

Sulu sends you out on 19 missions to, for the most part, defend the Excelsior. You start out in a stock fighter brought over from the normal universe. As you go, you can get up to 25 different fighters ranging from stolen alternate universe fighters to Klingon and Romulan fighters. All fighters have the same basic weapons, phasers, bolt weapon which is a short phaser burst, and photon torpedoes. Phasers are going to be the only weapons you will probably use during small fighter combat since the targeting system isnt advance enough to get a lock on your target. The only time you will use your photons is when you are attacking a capitol ship. Targeting systems are poor and you never lock on to a target with your weapons. Targeting certain systems of your enemies would make me feel like Im actually trying to accomplish something instead of flying and shoot.flying and shoottake damage.flying and shoot. Determining if your target is difficult because the HUD shows enemies targeted as a green ship with a revolving red halo, friendly targets, green ship with a green halo. The green ship in the targeting area shows the current state of the targets hull. The sensors are of no help. Sensors only show ships and nothing else like planets or asteroids which can make battles difficult running in to objects you cant see. Speaking of objects you cant see, the sensor map is very tiny, so its pretty much useless. Piloting your ship really feels like you arent going anywhere, even when you have an object in your sights you feel stationary and movements seem like you zoom in, zoom out. This makes the gameplay stale and you quickly lose interest in Shattered Universe. Thrusting around during battles is all the maneuvering you can do. Its more green light, red light flying. Nothing you can do will make piloting these fighters interesting. It would be nice to have controls over all your systems, boost your shields, more power to the engines, something to break the mind numbing gameplay. Control over your allies would have made a big difference since you are not the only fighter Excelsior has. Having the ability to tell them to cover your !&%$@#* or attack this target would make a huge difference in this space sim.

The missions are not any better. You will have to defend the Excelsior the majority of the time. Endless squads of fighters, I mean ENDLESS. There are missions that will take 30 minutes or more to complete. The mindless AI doesnt help too much. Fighters and Capitol ships will target either you or the Excelsior. Most of the time they will not come close to hitting you with their weapons, but there are time where they cant miss and knock you silly. Usually that happens near the end of a mission or when your objective is coming close to completion. This can be really frustrating because you will go deep in to a mission and get destroyed by an AI that has been able to touch the whole mission. Fighters will just circle you in a programmed pattern, stop, turn around and fly right towards you and then do it again and again. The constant waves of fighters take away from any other objectives you may have. Battles become more of an irritation than anything, same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

In battle sounds; phasers, shield hits, explosions are dull and eh. With all the Trek material out there to base a game on, you think sounds from the Trek shows or movies could be used in a game like this.

The soundtrack is Trek-like. During the CG, the soundtrack adds the Trek flair for a stick situation. In game battles, the sound track is muffled by the constant button mashing of your controller.