Fox's Review: Star Trek: Shattered Universe

[Fusion]

(Videos will not do this game injustice.  They are simply just too annoying to bear.  Trust me on this one)

Okay... After the far better Star Trek: Invasion, I have to say this game is an embarassment to the whole franchise.  It's modeled after Star Trek: Invasion, and has you piloting a fighter flying out of the butt of one of the ugliest star ships known to exist: The USS erm... "ISS" Excelsior.  Yes, the universe from the episode Mirror, Mirror plays out here well.  The only classic faces to be recognized are... Well, the Klingons, Sulu, and Chekov.  Where's Kirk?  Oh, right, he's probably dead by now.

Okay, so to the story of the game.  It's a rescue mission, Excelsior's the -only- ship that can help a Enterprise which is falling into a weird kind of vortex.  Go figure Enterprise would get into deep crap like that  ::), but anyhow.  The Excelsior somehow DIMENSION WARPS while being stuck in what is just a giant space funnel.  The -now- ISS Excelsior stays in the vortex, seemingly cornered by the *gasp* ISS Enterprise.  Now who didn't see that coming?  Apparantly the Sulu in this universe had rebelled against the empire anyhow.  Not that a good version of Sulu showing up in the mirror universe helped any.

The Control is at the very least the only defining point, or sorta defining point.  Unlike most shooters, you don't have any form of afterburners so you can't just rush away.  You gotta sit and wait while your fighter travels at the speed of a rock.  Worse yet, you have to HOLD the thrust button to keep moving at a reasonable pace (which is top speed, which is still slow.)  Phasers are simple to control, but are as underpowered as hell.

Gameplay... NOT fun.  Most missions involve constant enemy incursions, scout missions that SOMEHOW relate to collecting raw minerals... Just horrible.  One mission has you fighting FOUR starships, one mission requires that you chain-reaction destroy 4 starships... And all the scout missions again require your to collect raw materials and fight repeated waves of enemies that are just pointless to fight.

You can unlock up to 6 ships... Hardly any of them are different from one another.  3 of them are "Imperial ships" one belongs to a race called "Orion" and the last 2 are a mini Bird of Prey, and a Romulan starfighter.  The best one IMO is the Bird of Prey, simply because it at Mark III fires a torpedo that splits into 4 and homes in on your target.

Simply put, this game is not worth your time.  THIS is worth your time.