Game Review: Star Trek – The 25th Anniversary (PC, The White Label)

When it came to RPGs, Interplay were one of the giants when it came to the genre for in the 80s and 90s. Responsible for the legendary Bard’s Tale series amongst others, there can’t have been many gamers who hadn’t played or owned at least one of their games. But even with their experience and track record, it came as a shock when they acquired the license to develop and release a series of games based around the Star Trek franchise, which they kicked off with the release of Star Trek – The 25th Anniversary for the PC…

NCC 1701. No Bloody A, B, C or D…

When first released, Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary was only available on 3.5″ or 5.25″ disk and it wasn’t a small game, needing 8 double sided or 4 high density 3.5″ disks. While most point and click adventures at the time told a single story from start to finish, this was different. Rather that trying to be game based on Star Trek, it attempted to put the player into a number of individual mini episodes, and giving you complete control of everything going on – from interacting with Starfleet, ship systems and combat, to the point and click adventure itself.

These Are The Voyages…

The game kicks off with the first episode, Demon World. Before diving into the episode proper, the Enterprise is taking part in a combat exercise with one of its sister ships, the USS Republic. This gives you a basic run down of how ship-to-ship battles work in the game and while the end result won’t impact on the game in any way, it’s a good introduction to this part of the game.

We Come In Peace…

Controls for the actual combat are simple enough. Pressing W and S on the keyboard at the start of combat arm weapons and raise your shields respectively. You pilot the Enterprise using the mouse, and the left mouse button fires phasers and space for photon torpedoes (although they’re disabled during the opening exercise). At the centre of the screen above Kirk’s head is a radar showing the position of the other vessel in relation to your ship.

To the sides of the screen are panels with images of the Enterprise. You need to keep a close eye on these at all times as they display damage to the various systems on the ship. If any are shown in red, or if the shields are weakening, pressing D brings up the damage control menu where you can assign Scotty to prioritise his repairs on a particular part of the Enterprise.

Hailing Frequencies Open…

So the story begins properly with a communication from Starfleet, informing you of an incident on the planet Pollux V, where the inhabitants have described a series of attacks from strange creatures that they can only describe as “demons”. Eager to find out what is going on, the Enterprise has been assigned to this mission.

To get there, you bring up the Navigation controls (pressing N on the keyboard) and this displays a starchart. On selecting Pollux V (or the appropriate planet depending on the mission) the Enterprise warps off. Once you arrive, simply press O to enter orbit and then the fun starts. One thing to note here is that when you use the starchart, none of the planet names are revealed when you move the pointer over them.

To identify these, you need to use the matching starchart in the manual that identifies all of them for you. Presumably this was done as an anti-piracy method when the game was released, because selecting the wrong one will send you straight into combat on arrival which will almost certainly lead to the destruction of the Enterprise and game over.

Beam Us Down

Once you arrive, it’s a simple case of pressing O to enter orbit around the planet and then using Kirk’s command menu to select the Transporter Room. This will take you to an automated cut scene with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the obligarory Red Shirt – err, I mean Secuity Officer – who head down to the planet below.

Do You Want To Build A Snowman?

As soon as you land on the planet you can already get a feeling for where the game is heading. While the storylines themselves are – for the most part – quite serious, the dialogue between McCoy and Spock are exactly what you would expect from the series. While it’s not the coldest of climates on Pollux V, McCoy is complaining about the weather, much to Spock’s delight and even the security officer joins in the banter. While none of this is relevant to the plot, it just adds a level of depth to all the characters.

The Landing Party

When you’re on any planet, control switches to using the mouse. You’ve got a pointer on screen and you primarily control Kirk on your adventure, The pointer allows you to decide where your group walks, and by pressing the right mouse button allows you to bring up a menu which lets you select options to interact with objects and other characters in the game. Some conversations are straightforward, but others will give you options of a range of things Kirk can say to those you encounter so you need to make the right choices (although these are all fairly obvious to be honest).

This also lets you select your inventory which will then allow you to make use of tricorders, phasers, medical kits and anything else you collect along the way. In here you can also combine items to solve puzzles where needed.

I’m A Doctor, Not A…

As well as Spock being the more scientific one of the party, McCoy’s skills are vital on most missions either to use his medical scanner to check the condition of those around you, or even provide vital medical treatment to anyone who might be injured. It has to be said though, even to this day – 60 years after Star Trek first aired – I always wondered why the writers had the three most senior officers of the ship beam down on missions…

Jim, This Man Is A Klingon…

It’s a cliché, I know, but it wouldn’t be a Star Trek game without the appearance of the Klingons in some form or another. The Klingons – and the Romulans – make appearances a number of times during Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary, but not to the extent that it becomes obsessed with the two races. While they’re obviously both fan favourites, it’s far too easy to fall back on using them at every opportunity and then you tend yo expect them constantly. It’s pretty much the same thing that’s happened with Doctor Who with the Daleks and Cybermen and overuse can result in them feeling rather stale.

He’s Dead, Jim…

One of my favourite moments in the game occurs during the first episode. While solving one of the puzzles, one of the Enterprise crew is killed (one in a red uniform, no less!) and as you would expect, McCoy utters the immortal line, “He’s Dead, Jim…”. You can solve this particular puzzle without leading to the unfortunate crewmember’s demise (which will potentially allow you to get a maximum 100% score at the final mission briefing), but his sacrifice is worth it just to hear those words from DeForest Kelley.

Graphics and Sound

First off, there’s no getting away from the fact that this is a VERY old game. Right from the start, you’ve got the option of playing it with a resolution of 320×200 in 256 colours or a higher 640×400 but reduced to just 16 colours. Naturally, I opted for the former and despite being a much lower resolution it’s actually all the better for it.

Where Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary really comes into its own is in the sound department. While the original disk version was good, offering the player fairly good versions of all the classic Trek themes recreated for the PC soundcards of the day and featuring a great selection of effects sampled straight from the show adding an incredible amount of depth and atmosphere to the game, it’s this enhanced CD version that really brings the game to life.

For this edition, Interplay managed to get the entire original series cast involved (as well as additional voice actors) to record all of their dialogue for the game, recording a total of over 6,000 lines of dialogue spanning more than 60 different characters. I really can’t describe how much of a difference this makes to the game in turning this from a entertaining Star Trek game (as was the case with the Amiga conversion that was released a few years after this first came out) to a fully-fledged series of short Star Trek episodes. That really is the best way I can describe this game. Each of the missions really do feel like mini episodes and adding the voiceovers is just the icing on the cake to take it from being “just a game” to making you feel like you’re being part of the show itself.

Location, Location, Location…

One thing players have been critical about when it comes to Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary is the limited number of locations available to explore in each mission. In the first one, Demon World, for example if you including the Enterprise Bridge and Transport Room (which is really a cut-scene more than anything else) there are less than 10 locations to visit.

This may seem disappointing at best, and give you the feeling that you’re being short-changed at worst. But there are a few things to bear in mind. First, the game is made up of seven missions plus an Epilogue (exclusive to this CD version) so that expands the size of the game considerably. Also, I feel that the limited number of locations is actually a positive…

Presentation

I’ve talked about how much I admire this game for capturing the look and feel of the original series, and the lack of locations in each episode only adds to that. If you look back at any episode of the original series you’ll notice that they use very few new sets in each episode. Any that use location filming often used existing sets on the Paramount lot, and these were often followed by “bottle” episodes set entirely on the Enterprise using existing sets to keep costs down.

Even my all-time favourite episode, The Trouble With Tribbles, is limited to using a couple of model shots, three new relatively basic sets and everything else is set on the Enterprise. So creating episodes for this game adds an extra level of authenticity. The gameplay doesn’t take a linear approach so you’ll need to visit many of the locations several times, but this just adds to the feeling that you’re in a real episode.

Puzzling Times

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet are the puzzles themselves. Most are fairly straightforward to figure out as long as you follow the dialogue carefully. Just remember to scan everything (using McCoy and Spock) and talk to everyone. Fortunately, you don’t need to worry about losing any of your Security Officers as they’re not essential to the missions, but it will affect your final score when your performance is assessed by Starfleet.

Back On The Bridge

As with almost every episode of the original series, it ends where it begins – back on the bridge of the Enterprise. You get a communication from Starfleet congratulating you on completing the mission and giving you a final score rating you on how well you did. But then you get a final segment with dialogue between Kirk, Spock and McCoy reminiscent of the ending of most of the Classic Trek episodes. It might not be important to the casual player, but this is just another small touch that adds that extra level of detail the developers put in to make this feel as close as possible to the show.

Shields Up, Red Alert

As much as I love the game, Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary is far from perfect. Starship combat is clunky at best and you’ll often find yourself struggling to hit your intended target. Not because of your aim, but because of the oversensitive mouse controls and the limited nature of the combat engine. It takes a LOT of practice to get past these and I have to be honest and say that I would have liked to have seen an option to skip these so I could just focus on the adventure side of the game. It can also take a lot of practice to focus on the combat and damage control at the same time and there’s no way to automate Scotty’s actions during those segments of the game.

Computers are more efficient than human beings. Not better.

Unfortunately, the biggest issue I had with Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary wasn’t the combat, or even the in-game controls, but rather getting the game to actually run at all. Unfortunately this is a game that is over thirty years old and while it’s become dated on a technical level as a game, it’s become dated even more so as a product overall.

I don’t need to tell anyone that modern PCs simply do not ship with optical drives any more and while you can get external CD/DVD drives, that’s only part of the battle in getting this to load. The game needs to install a small amount of files to the hard drive before it can run, and then accesses everything else from the CD during play. Unfortunately, the installer itself won’t run on modern PCs so you either need an older PC, or purchase the copy that’s available on GOG or Steam which is compatible with newer systems.

Overall

Star Trek: The 25th Anniversary has stood the test of time remarkably well. Putting the issues aside around compatability, and the quirky controls, this really is a must-have game for fans of the original Star Trek series. I absolutely loved this game when it was first released, fell in love with it once again when it was converted perfectly to the Amiga, and it’s just as playable today some 30+ years later. If you’re a Star Trek fan then this really MUST be in your collection.

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