Product Description

Star Trek: Away Team puts you in charge of an elite group of officers brought together to take care of the Federation's dirty laundry. Your Special Forces unit will consist of 22 characters, each with a unique expertise such as medicine, engineering, science, security and command. Before each of the 18 missions, you'll pick a team consisting of three to six officers, based on what type of skills you'll need in order to complete the mission. During the missions you'll view the game from a classic isometric perspective, and can move your squad in real time or pause the game to issue commands. Enemies include Borg, Klingons, Romulans, and rogue Federation members. Locations include Qu'nos, Romulus, Earth and Vulcan. Equipment includes tricorders, phasers, hyposprays and phaser rifles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9935 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: ACTIVISION
• Released on: 2001-03-30
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 95

Amazon.co.uk Review
Star Trek Away Team is a top down optional RTS game that sees you command a four man away team through a number of missions behind enemy lines. With an interface similar to Commandos the movement is mainly controlled via the mouse and shortcut keys rather than face paced First Person Shooter action.

Armed with the task of helping out where the Federation can't, Star Trek Away Team sees you play Captain Refelian on the USS Incursion, a new class of ship that can cloak/mask itself to look like any other class ship across the Star Trek universe.

Guiding you through your missions as you fight the Borg, Kinglons and of course Romulons is the voice of Brent Spinner--otherwise known as Data--and although you are unable to play him, it offers the familiarity that we all come to depend on in the Star Trek games.

Anyone who enjoyed Commandos or general strategy will be at home with the control system, especially the visual shortcuts. Trading on the roots of other great strategy games makes for a good start; and you can skip the handholding of early missions.

The 2-D viewpoint makes for a specification-friendly game except for the 600 Mb disk space; the main processor can trade down to under 350Mhz and less than 32 Mb on your graphics card. Being Star Trek it's almost blood free. The morality code within the game encourages stealth and long-range tactics; not the wading in with all guns blazing prevalent in Elite Force. Like its first-person elder brother, it succeeds by being a good game, Star Trek or not. --Kenneth Henry.

DailyRadar.com
There hasn't been a rush to embrace squad-based strategy games in the last few years. But considering that Paramount seems intent on creating a Star Trek game in every conceivable genre, it's no surprise that we get one. Star Trek: Away Team is Reflexive Entertainment's respectable addition to the recent rash of good Trek games. It has a clean interface, clear mission structure and a sufficiently Trek-y plot. It did lock up on us on more than one occasion, and your teammates don't respond to threats well enough. But the atmosphere, superb production values and action/strategy mix make Away Team an enjoyable addition to our collection of plastic vulcan ears and Tasha Yar lunch boxes.

One day something is going to happen in the Trek universe that is seedy, lurid or grotesque, and we just hope we're still alive to see it. In the meantime, we have to make do with this sort of melodramatic plot and kind of intrigue. Star Trek: Away Team puts the player in command of a 17-member squad of the Federation's best do-gooders. As Captain Refelian, gamers have to unravel a plot involving a Federation splinter group, Klingon scientists, the intrusive Borg and those Romulan bastards in search of a deadly biological weapon.

We were hoping that the "black ops" section of Star Fleet would explore things like nefarious Federation torture chambers, secret sex clubs and state-sponsored assassinations on opposing Admirals. No such luck. It seems that the undocumented actions of Star Fleet's elite corps of secret officers isn't much more trashy than most episodes. But the story about biological warfare and Federation traitors is interesting and compelling nonetheless.

The gameplay has the same feeling as the story: It's fun and familiar but hardly new or daring. Players begin every mission at the loadout screen, where they get to select which member of the away team is best suited for the mission. The action begins by beaming into a dangerous situation with a series of primary and secondary objectives. New objectives will occasionally pop up during a mission, but everything is kept clear with a simple tap of the objectives button. Moving the away team through the 2D worlds is simple and straightforward. Officers can be selected by clicking on the characters, their portraits or their corresponding numbers on the keyboard. Hitting the A button will select all characters, and selecting their run speed is as simple as tapping the X button.

By the end of the first mission, we were moving characters around with ease -- which, ironically, led to a slightly annoying problem. Because hotkeys make it easy to control the game, we would have liked to have the option of turning off the left and lower menu bars so more of the game world was onscreen at one time. This, unfortunately, is not an option, although it is possible to zoom in and out slightly to get nearly the same effect -- but it is not possible to rotate the camera because of the fixed, 2D isometric perspective.

A useful mini-map, complete with blinking blue objective points, makes getting through the world fast and easy (there are only two difficulty settings, "normal" and "easy.") The objectives throughout the 18 missions are always fixed, so the real strategy and variety comes in how gamers choose to complete the objective. Stealth play is possible thanks to personal cloaking devices, silent Vulcan nerve pinches and sniper fire. Or demolition experts can be used to chuck grenades and then blast the survivors. The key comes in choosing the right collection of crewmembers at the loadout screen.

The emphasis, though, is really on slow, deliberate gameplay. Reflexive has taken the familiar vision cones of other squad-based games and added the natural extension to sound. Players can toggle on or off the sound waves that emanate from the team members, giving them some idea of how much of a ruckus they are making. It's a great idea -- we didn't employ it a lot, but it was vital when we needed it.

The only major problem with Away Team is that the officers are simple mannequins when not directly under a player's control. When they are attacked they simply cry out with a ridiculously understated "I am hit," or "I'm under attack." Speaking from personal experience, we have a tendency to scream profanities and flail around hysterically whenever we are attacked. Unfortunately, these overly stalwart officers would simply take it until we told them to return fire. This was a problem whenever we had split the party up across the map to accomplish separate goals simultaneously. We would have preferred to have some option to set the ferocity of reaction, but there isn't any. This is particularly a problem given that the death of any member of the away team is a fail state in almost all of the levels.

This sort of handholding extends sometimes to path finding. In some missions there are camera or security towers to be avoided, and clicking too far in front of the team will result in some of these crack officers running right through the vision field of the cameras, instead of running around them. We also had a few system lockups on two different systems, one with a GeForce 2, the other with a Voodoo3. Fortunately, gamers can save anywhere with an unlimited amount of save slots.

PC gamers who didn't enjoy Commandos will probably not get into the Away Team-style squad play. The missions usually only take two or three tries to get them right, and the whole thing can be over rather quickly. There is very limited multiplayer support in the form of cooperative two-player games over a LAN only. But we enjoyed the first-rate voice acting, including some Next Generation favorites -- and who doesn't love mind melding some guard and walking him into a land mine? It won't win any awards for graphics or AI, but Away Team is a solid and fun experience. --From DailyRadar.com

Manufacturer's Description
The focus of Star Trek Away Team is to engage the player in one of the most gripping and compelling aspects of the Star Trek episodes and movies�the Away Missions. The player controls a special team of Starfleet Officers on Away Team Missions as they explore alien environments throughout the Federation. Just like on a Star Trek Away Mission in the television shows and movies, the team will use tricorders, phasers, hyposprays, phaser rifles and most of the other "Trek" items that have been seen in the Next Generation era of Star Trek. The game is designed to appeal to strategy/action fans in general, though enjoyment and knowledge of the Star Trek Universe will enhance the appeal of the character building and story/plot elements.

Customer Reviews

Great!!
I think the main flaw for most people with Commandos: BEL, was from the very beginning it was incredibly hard, and getting past the firs mission was an acheivement. The good thing about Star Trek: Away Team is that the learning curve is much better. I hope that an add-on will be released soon.

PS. My CE geography project was 1000 words max. What are they expecting us to write???

Ok
The game promises much-does it provide? I don't really think so. The game's demo included some good CGI animations but in the full game, after the 4th level, the CGI animations disappear and we see a star field in the briefings. This touch meant that the game seemed unfinished. Another point- the autonomy of the team members was appalling! If shot they simply said a phrase and DIDN'T fire back!! Some of the theories in the game (like sound cones) didn't always work so you might be sneaking through a base in crouch mode, staying out of sight and earshot and suddenly WHAM! the entire base is upon you! Dissapointingly short (17 levels) and rather easy

I thought it had a lot to give
Although there are glitches in some missions, once you've learnt how to play the game well, the only thing that can stop you are your mistakes. So your Team doesn't return fire when attacked. This is good on some missions, though, where you aren't allowed to kill anyone.

The missions get progressivly harder and although the third or fouth might 'seem' hard when you first play it, the game has a lot more to offer.

With spectacular backgrounds, you can visit a lot of places. I just might ask, cutscenes???? Also the graphics could be better when you zoom out to get a better look around you.