If you’ve played ‘Super Star Trek’ or ‘EGA Trek’ then Visual Star Trek has a pretty shallow learning curve. It follows the classic Star Trek gaming style where your objective is to kill x number of Klingons in x days in a square galaxy. But it’s not just Klingons that cause you problems; you’ll have to deal with aggressive Romulans, obstructive Tholians and, if you’re not careful, intensely annoying Tribbles on your way.
What makes this version unique is its complete devotion to graphics. Everything from torpedo stocks to shield strength is visible on the main game screen.
There’s absolutely no typing involved either, so you don’t need to look up destination co-ordinates or vectors like in other Star Trek games. You literally click where you want the Enterprise to be and it goes there. The same goes for weapons, which means you have to aim carefully if you want to avoid accidentally hitting a star, which could send you hurtling into another sector.
You start a typical game by first selecting the difficulty level and game time – and turning off some annoying features if you want. The main game screen appears where you can see absolutely everything you need to see (except where all those Klingons are, of course). Time is always of the essence in this game, however, so you
can’t delay. Look out for Klingons, Klingon Commanders and the occasional ‘Super Commander’ on the galaxy map. Once you get used to the game, this process becomes a mopping-up operation. You click in the middle of a cluster of Klingon icons, decimate the Klingon ships, and then find some more. When you get worn down, there are usually some Starbases nearby where you can dock and replenish your torpedo stocks and some much needed energy.
Of course, that would be true only of the easy levels. Visual Star Trek isn’t just a mechanical sweeper operation. For one, you can orbit planets and beam up some spare dilithium to power your ship – but BEWARE! You might just beam a Tribble on board too, and they have a way of multiplying and messing up your ship. Sometimes your enemies can overpower you and you need to be creative in order to save yourself. VST’s answer? You could use the death ray – which might solve all your problems in one go – or it might mess you up big-time. Perhaps you could blow up a star and send everything haywire in the galaxy. Or, as VST conveniently supplies, you could just blow yourself to smithereens and take as many Klingons with you as you can.
Visual Star Trek is a great, intuitive little game that you can start and finish in a short time and still find entertaining. The click-visual approach makes the interface incredibly fluid and easy to use, so it’s not a difficult game to play either. Happy Klingon-hunting!
