There are games that are long-awaited, and there are games that are just late. Star Trek: Generations, being released over three years after the film and now bearing on a year after the _next_ film, probably falls into the latter category. Unfortunately, this small pre-judgement would be more than just for this disappointing game...

Perhaps unfortunately for Generations, the game does not feature any conveyor belts or cuddly toys (aaaaah), unless you consider Klingons cuddly. Instead of course, we have the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew, i.e. the hair-ially challenged Captain Picard et al, boldly g- er, travelling onwards in an intrepid fashion (cliché free zone, here), in another adventure.

For those that haven't seen the film, this one involves a rather nasty Dr. Soran who likes to go around blowing up stars in a rather spectacular fashion. All very well, but unfortunately Soran's artistic spirit is not appreciated by the Federation (or, I suppose, by the inhabitants of the orbiting planets, but then they don't get much of a chance to do anything), and your mission is to 'cramp his style' and foil his dastardly plot or whatever.

(isn't she Picard's girlfriend with the roll-up piano?)

Anyway, this is achieved (the mission, not the piano), by nipping about from planet to planet chasing after the not-so-Good Doctor. And it's here we see with much excitement that at least Microprose have included the best part of the film in the game. You remember: the bit in Stellar Cartography where they zoom in on different bits of the map and the screen all went 'whooosh!' past you? Well, here you get to do it again and again - in fact, whenever you have to progress in the game (they've even included a clip from the bit in the film where it does it - excellent!).

Basically, the on-ship bits of the game are based down there in Stellar Cartography, the room that mysteriously gained huge computer screens and a nice crane-platform just in time for the film. You have a nice view of all the relevant star systems, and you have to scan them and warp about between them to find where Soran is (you also get various clues and things provided by the crew). Once you've located him, you get a nice flashing red 'TRANSPORT' button, and you get to beam someone down to go and nip Soran's plans in the proverbial bud.

And it's here, in the 'away missions', that the real game that is Generations lies, and unfortunately it's not very good. It seems Microprose thought you definitely can have too much of a good thing, and they replaced the slick, professional (if occasionally irritating) top-view adventure bits that graced 'A Final Unity' with - wait for it - Doom style bits. You can imagine the designers wringing their hands with glee after coming up with this one. "Final Unity - good, but not exciting enough", they must have thought. "How can we make it more exciting?". "Aha! DOOM bits! We'll simply plagiarise the most popular game of the age to get sales, and then twist it and turn it to make it fit the sort of adventury feel that the game/license demands! Yes! Players will obviously be so enraptured by the though of controlling Commander Riker(TM)'s every move, that they'll just not notice the sh*te graphics, terrible engine, and poor level design!".

Well, not here, mate. Calling these bits 'DOOM style' would be insulting - to DOOM. Wolfenstein 3D would almost make a better comparison, but at least that was fun. They're just awful! OK, maybe graphics aren't the most important thing, but by current standards they are pretty pathetic. The view window is tiny, and this causes practical problems as well as aesthetic ones - you can't see the floor, for one thing. Now, in DOOM this might not be so bad, but Generations attempts to be an adventure game as well. So you have to pick up items. Except you most of the time just can't see them! There's a look down function (thankfully), but it works in huge jerks rather than smoothly, and there's no way you can walk around with your head down all the time.

And, yes, there's more - because, even when you see items, you can't just pick them up. Oh no, that would be too easy. You see, the actual view window is 100% non-interactive, except for shooting. To manipulate things, you have to maneuver up to or over them, until what they are appears in a special window below the main screen.

This is infuriating! Things stubbornly refuse to appear there, and you can spend ages edging backwards and forwards over something just trying to pick it up! It also means the game loses a substantial amount of flexibility. All manipulable items are clearly identified, and few and far between, so your capacity for experimentation is severely limited. To make it worse, the 'use window' doesn't even allow you greater control of the objects - most of the time you don't even know what you're doing, and just have to press buttons at random. OK, so that's what it looks like they do in the film/series, but it's just silly. Looking at things in the traditional sense just gets you a one-line (and obvious) comment, like "it's a computer terminal" (and that's a real example).

This really does get ridiculously silly - once, whilst controlling Deanna Troi, I managed to best Soran and get him to beam away, only to the go up to his computer pad and accidentally launch his star-killer myself! I know Troi's not supposed to be very good with these things, but come on! All in all, the adventure bits seem just soldered on top as an afterthought - not nice, not nice at all, especially as 'A Final Unity' was not a bad effort at all.

Definite need to be sarky

The thing is, with this fancy (yeah, right) 3D interface, they could make it 'more' than just an adventure. Yes, indeed, there is the potential for the fun of the exploration, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to bo- erm, well, yes, you see what I mean.

But oh, what fun it is. Oh yes. Oh, yes, really. You get to wander about for ages, 'admiring' the graphics for all their wonderfulness, absorbing the 'rich atmosphere' and not at all spending ages falling down holes you couldn't see because of the stupid interface, falling down more holes because the jump button is so unresponsive or falling into water again and again because you bob up and down on reaching the surface, with very annoying, nay, very, very, annoying splash noises, every time.

You certainly don't find yourself utterly confused by the fact the graphics engine doesn't properly show changes in height of the floor, so you can't see that you're about to bump into a ridge, or that you're standing on one (and about to fall off), or that the missing thing you're looking for is right above you, or that you're heading for a dead end. And, no, you never get annoyed by the fact that you can miss the essential items so easily and thus have to spend hours searching, by the way there are so many utterly, utterly pointless bits of map there 'just for fun'. Or by the fact that the game insists on PUNISHING you every time you make the slightest mistake, so moving an inch to the side means you fall off and have to spend ages moving all the way round to get back to where you were, only to do it again (they even put in little pits everywhere in some levels, just to trap you, which are clearly not deep enough to prohibit climbing out of in real life, but which in the game require you to go round and round the edge between several different staircases).

Oh no, it's just an endless carnival of fun: dynamic, engaging, continually intriguing and exciting, and satisfying! Oh, then again - maybe not.

And then of course, there are the combat bits themselves. At least it can't get worse. The engine strikes again, though, with its supreme clunkiness removing most of the fun before you've even started. Running around feels terribly unnatural, and the 'detailed' environments just mean you're always bumping into and getting stuck behind things. There isn't even a 'strafe on' key (just separate left/right strafes), which means you generally just stand there and get hit.

It's also frustrating the way the enemies don't even have (or seem to have) an animation or whatever for when they get hit, so they either die or seem unharmed. This in particular makes barehanded fighting seem utterly futile - and I think this may well be because it is. And when you're playing the 'possessed of megastrength' android Data, this is really silly.

There are minor consolations - the noise the phasers make is just right, and it has to be said there's a strange satisfaction to be gained from vaporising people with a single blast, but it's overall a huge disappointment.

It's also a bit conceptually silly. Whilst you can fry people with a single shot (they DO vaporise nicely), the enemies always seem to have their weapons set to 'take off a tiny bit of health only'. No.

Have I mentioned the way all away missions are one-man only (hence not an 'away team'), even the ones that aren't undercover? Or the way that you're always under equipped (can't the Enterprise spare phaser recharge packs or something?) Or the way you can't have the map and your health bar visible at the same time? Or the way the map is strangely filled in only as you explore, despite the fact it's done by a fancy trek tricorder? Or even the way you can't even save from within an away mission, indicating lazy programming and meaning you can't even stop playing! It's almost too much! I really was almost driven to tears of frustration with this game.

OK, well, there's only one bit of the game left where it could redeem itself - space combat. This bit's been given the first-person treatment too, though it's not done too badly from it. The main problem is you can't see what's going on around you at all, expect for on a puny map. OK, the numerous camera angles in 'Final Unity' were impossible to handle, but at least it had the atmosphere of the film/series. 'Generations' has effectively a cockpit view.

Once again it seems to be a step backwards, more so, seeing as the space combat graphics in 'Final Unity' were really quite good, if a bit small. Those in Generations have all the beauty of the away team missions - i.e. none. You generally see ships as tiny dots, and they're totally obscured by the thick red (single-colour only) rectangles that are supposed to be your phaser shots.

The control of the ship has also changed. Once again, what were the good bits from 'Final Unity' have been removed, in favour or 'exciting' arcade style action, or so it seems. The number of tactical maneuvers, which were definitely the most realistic and interesting part of combat in the prequel-of-sorts has been drastically reduced, to only 'Close on Target', 'Evade', 'Maintain Distance' and 'Stop'. It seems you're supposed to (by using the cursor keys to fly the ship manually) get up out of the Captain's chair and wrest control of the ship away from the Conn yourself - something that I can't remember happening all that often in the film or series.

Despite all this, the space combat bits are substantially more interesting than the away missions - but that's probably just because you're actually doing something rather than just wandering around (but let's not start that again). This part of the game is more disappointing that terrible, but when added to the rest of the game certainly isn't enough to salvage it. Not by a long way.

Generations is a strange dichotomy of a game. The not-in-game interface (menus etc.) are done really well. The window dressing is nice - the video is really good, with new FMV clips almost seamlessly fitting in with actual footage from the film. And yes, it's got Stellar Cartography. But the actual game bits are terrible. Sometimes, some missions, you begin to think it's OK... then it all goes wrong. How it got through playtesting is anyone's guess. And yet it seems indeed they do know what it's like, but either are blinded by the love of their own product, or are relying on the license for sales - because the game is summed up by, indeed, itself. Data on one of his missions (complete with new emotion chip, if you remember from the film), falls off something necessitating yet again a walk all the way round again, across obstacles etc., and then comes out with the line "I believe I am experiencing... frustration". Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed.

Star Trek Generations by Microprose

Specs	O/S	Processor	RAM	Graphics	CD-Rom	Soundcard	MMX	Direct3D
Required	Win95	P90+	16Mb+	SVGA card	X4	All major sound cards supported	No	No
Tested On	Win95	P120	32Mb	Matrox Millenium 2Mb WRAM	X4	SB AWE 32	N/A	N/A

Oliver Lan for Game Over!