The Xbox Live Arcade is awash with throw puzzlers, overpriced re-makes and cash-in shooters. That’s not to instantly cast off everything that has and will be on the Arcade because there is a lot of great stuff on it. Nevertheless the term quality over quantity is reversed for Microsoft’s marketplac. That’s not to say that out of the three given examples that Star Trek is any of those. Actually what was that last one?
Star Trek is an overhead shooter that has ambitious plans to do what Unreal Tournament did for FPS but for arcade shooters. Or at least it will appear that way when you are greeted with the multiplayer option first. Early suspicions are reinforced when the only offline mode in the game is the same albeit with necessarily capable bots. Star Trek DAC doesn’t come close the high heights of Epic’s deathmatch based sport as DAC simply doesn’t have enough content.
Only three types of ships make up the class system. One allows you to drop bombs while another is your standard laser armed craft. The third turns the game into a very slow and awkward twin stick shooter with a reticule on screen. Nothing wrong with this in concept actually it sounds promising and should add a nice contrast to the other ships but in actuality it’s way too sluggish. Maybe so it didn’t overpower the other classes but gimped and unresponsive controls in the name of fairness just results in frustration.
Star Trek also only ships with a handful of levels which all look too familiar for longevity’s sake. Luckily the games non-Team Deathmatch modes will provide a couple of games worth of enjoyment. In Conquest you have to take over rings on the map akin to Halo’s King of the Kill playlist. Assault is a similar fare but with one team constantly defending while the other attacks. Team Deathmatch is the first on the list so that tends to be what people migrate to and unfavourably it’s the worst of the three.
Not all of the game is bad though. For an Xbox Live Arcade title, the game has a very sleek menu system and visuals to boot. The lighting that radiates from your craft’s jets upon the asteroids and rocks that are strung across space looks impressive. The same can be said for the dusty vistas of space that litter the backgrounds but you can’t fill the void of content with appealing visuals when it comes to the Xbox Live Arcade.
Star Trek DAC isn’t an obvious cash-in on the franchise but it is a mediocre game that’s incredibly thin on content. With a few more tweaks to the overall pace and over areas the game would have fantastic potential. Maybe a few more levels, which as a side note could easily be randomly generated to create variation, along with more ships and you’ll have yourself a decent arcade shooter. The problem is that the game doesn’t have any of these elements and probably never will, so it’s with regret that I can’t confidently recommend this to anyone.
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