Star Trek: Hidden Evil Review

With all the publicity of Star Wars and Star Wars games Trekkers were starting to feel left out but a whole series of new Star Trek games are under development at Activision, the publisher that recently acquired the rights to all Star Trek based games for the next ten years.

This game is based around the Star Trek film Insurrection on the planet Ba'Ku in an area of Federation space called the Briar Patch. This game takes place nine months after the film, where the crew of the USS Enterprise-E are protecting the Ba'Ku planet from the threat of the Romulans, who have a plan to endanger the Federation, well there's a surprise.

Anyway you play a recently graduated ensign called Sovok who's first assignment is the help Captain Piccard and the rest of the crew excavate some ruins that have been recently found on the planet.

This game is a mixture of puzzle, Adventure and Action. There are dialogues with other crew members, the planet's inhabitance and new forms of alien life and lots of puzzles as you would imagine. These range from easy code sequences to operate transports to action combat sequences with the enemy.

Star Trek fans will also like the realism compared with the film. As with all away missions the members of the away team, including Sovok who you play, have the standard issue inventory. This includes the phaser, the federation officer's primary weapon, this is used in the action parts of the game to defend yourself against the Romulans or the various alien bugs in the excavation site. The tricorder, which you can use to scan the surrounding area for any abnormalities or possible dangers and it has a mission log so you can keep track of the story so far and your current objectives. There is also the communicator with you can use to contact Captain Piccard or Data at any time. You can also add items to you inventory during the game that will assist you in the later puzzles.

One of the differences of this to any other game is that because you play a human federation officer that was raised on Vulcan he can use the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, and you will master this technique in the first mission in the game. The graphics are quite impressive with the use 3D pre-rendered environments, and the fluidity of the game was good as well especially as the story is easy to follow.