Product Description

Following the plot of Star Trek: Insurrection, you have been ordered to command Captain Picard's shuttle to the Ba'ku planet. On Ba'ku you find a peaceful colony who have discovered the fountain of youth. Romulan forces seek to enslave the inhabitants of Ba'ku and it is up to you save the natives. This game features story-driven missions filled with combat, exploration, and intelligence any fan would enjoy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22752 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ACTIVISION
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 95

Amazon.co.uk Review
Star Trek: Hidden Evil continues the story line from the film Star Trek: Insurrection, placing the player in the role of Ensign Sovok, a young Vulcan male fresh from Starfleet Academy. During the course of the game, Ensign Sovok must investigate excavated relics, combat the nefarious Romulans and rescue Captain Picard from danger.

Guiding Ensign Sovok from a third-person perspective, the player explores the planet, speaking with other Starfleet officers--including Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Commander Data (Brent Spiner)-and planet residents to advance the story line. Gameplay follows standard action-adventure conventions such as puzzle solving and dialogue sequences. Infrequent action segments feature phaser combat with Romulan guards.

Star Trek: Hidden Evil's easy-to-use interface closely resembles the movie's art design, which should please die-hard fans. Sovok must use a variety of Star Trek tricks and tools, including the communication badge, tricorder, phaser and Vulcan neck pinch, in order to solve key situations and combat the Romulan enemies. Adventure fans will be pleased with Star Trek: Hidden Evil; the story line is solid and the puzzles are challenging. Serious action gamers, though, will find Hidden Evil's combat sequences lacking. --Doug Radcliffe

Pros:

• Includes voices of Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner
• Interface and visuals capture the essence of Star Trek
• Adventure sequences offer challenging and interesting puzzles

• Doesn't offer many hours of gameplay
• Limited action sequences create uninteresting combat

Customer Reviews

Many Small Mistakes = One Big Mistake
In an age when it takes about 20 people 18 to 24 months to create a computer game, how do bad games get made? Every single person on the team has no knowledge of gaming? Or the team leaders aren't listening to the team members? Whatever way you cut it, this game is one of the worst ever written in any genre. Here's the breakdown:

* Fixed perspective on each scene : sometimes you can't see that you're walking directly into danger.

* One handed character? : your character can either use a weapon, a tricorder or press a button. i.e. you have to put your weapon away to activate some equipment. While being attacked by aliens. 'nuff said.

* Repetitive areas : each area in the space station is almost identical. Realistic, some may say. But this is a game - gameplay is the primary concern.

* Story : or rather, a very silly sci-fi plot and a script written by a 6-year-old in crayon on the inside of a Cornflakes packet. Most egregious moment: after having discovered the location of the space station, and even informing your captain of them, you then find yourself flying aimlessly around a nebula in search of said station. Suddenly your character calls out "There it is!", and your ship is directly in front of it. Handy that.

* Voice acting : Patrick Stewart tries, but you can tell his heart isn't in it. And with this script, why should it be? Brent Spiner does his usual. Whoever does the voice of the player character should be sent back to shoveling fries in McDonalds.

* Game depth : there isn't any. 2 hours or so should see this game finished, re-packages and returned to the vendor with a strongly worded letter.

Is there anything good to be said about the game? Well, the music is of atmospheric and of a generally high standard, if a little repetitive. The pre-rendered scenes are nicely done, but you can download nice rendered sci-fi scenes for free off the web. The animation of the characters isn't bad. But all that stuff is cosmetic.

The only hidden evil in this game is the fact that it's still on the shelves, when you could be parting with your money for a good Star Trek game like "Voyager: Elite Force" or "DS9: The Fallen".

If you're unfortunate enough to have already parted with your money for this abomination, you can register your opinion with Activision... Anyone who likes Star Trek will definitely buy this game..." - F.M., Galesburg, IL

and there's the problem.

BTW: I tried to give this a zero rating, but 1 star is the least you can register.

Not bad
This is a game with comic style story-going gaming! people have to appreciate the different gaming experience this game offered, no comparing it with the others, because there is no others like this one.
I think this game is good, the story is great, it is just like reading a comic book, not bad, however, further improvements can be made.
If you are a big fan of star trek and you are intelligent, try this game! It is very enjoyable!

Engrossing
Yet another Star Trek game but this one manages to be faintly intriguing as the crew of the Enterprise (Picard and Data) try to get to the bottom of mysterious goings-on on the planet Ba'ku in a series of events which take place a short time after the end of the Insurrection movie.

The plot is nicely paced, never moving too quickly or slowing down to a crawl and the graphics are pretty good for a game of this type. The only thing that provides a negative is the quality of the voice acting, which is all a bit stilted, still for all of that Patrick Stewart injects a suitably Shakespearan tone and Brent Spiner does his best to sound ... faintly robotic :)

All-in-all this is an intersting Trek slant for those who like a slower paced game without all the resource gathering and stilted shoot-em-up-eventually action of games like Armada.