Star Trek: Encounters
Arcade space combat spanning five Star Trek series.
Star Trek: Encounters is an arcade-style shoot 'em up video game set in the Star Trek universe, released in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. It was developed by Scottish studio 4J Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks in the U.S. and Australia, with Ubisoft handling the European release.
Quick Facts
- Developer
- 4J Studios
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks (NA)
- EU/AU
- Ubisoft
- Composer
- Jason Graves
- Series
- Star Trek
- Released
- October 3, 2006 (NA)
- EU/AU
- December 7, 2006
- Genre
- Shoot 'em up, space simulation
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
- Platforms
- PlayStation 2
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
Encounters is an arcade-style shoot 'em up featuring ships and characters from five Star Trek series: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. The Skirmish section offers single and multiplayer options with identical objectives. In Head-to-Head mode, the player selects a ship from any unlocked faction, chooses an opponent, and sets a frag limit. Battlefest pits a preset group of three ships against another group of three; when a ship is destroyed, the player or enemy respawns with the next ship in sequence, and the first to eliminate all three opponent ships wins. Onslaught mode restricts the player to unlocked Starfleet ships, requiring them to fight endless waves of enemies that grow progressively harder; some waves include the objective to destroy the Romulan Nestar Station and its probes. The story portion has six sections, five based on individual television series and a sixth based on the Enterprise-E from Star Trek: First Contact. Each section has a self-contained storyline with no overarching plot. The Enterprise missions involve defending Earth from the Xindi threat, beginning with a tutorial against Xindi fighters, then locating and destroying the Xindi planet-destroying super weapon, and finally destroying construction orbs that produce parts for the weapon.
Reception
The game received mixed reviews, with a Metacritic score of 51% from 17 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews. Common criticisms included the lack of an overall storyline, poor graphics and controls, events that did not fit established Star Trek canon, and repetitive, poorly implemented gameplay. Juan Castro of IGN argued that the game did not feel like a Star Trek title, comparing combat to playing with radio-controlled cars and stating that the Star Trek license was not exploited for its greatest assets. Greg Damiano of Game Revolution noted that William Shatner's introductions were surprisingly muted and anonymous, and that the game offered little to draw the player in, citing a planet-killer boss that failed to follow through on its premise. Benjamin Turner of GameSpy described the controls as surprisingly awkward, particularly the target lock-on and firing controls mapped to R2 and R1, which caused hand pain and forced an unconventional grip on the controller.
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