Star Trek - The Kobayashi Alternative
In this sequel to The Promethean Prophecy, you are once again in command of the Starship Enterprise. While in the first game your time on the ship was very brief, you'll now be able to make much better use of your vessel in the sequel. A new window has been added to the game which displays your ship's status and heading. Yes, you can now lay in a course and warp around the galaxy to your heart's content. Well not quite; as the game opens you will receive a message from Star Fleet Command instructing you to locate the missing USS Heinlein which mysteriously disappeared in the Trianguli star system, so that trip to Risa you've been looking forward to will have to wait.
The interface is very similar to the previous game. One new addition is a dialog window which appears when another character is addressing you (and you can address every one you meet). Also unlike the previous game where you were limited to a select few sections of the ship, you now have a complete run of the Enterprise. Every single deck can be explored, and you may find a few surprises on a some of them. If you hate typing you'll be happy to find that you may now use the arrow keys to indicate direction rather than typing commands such as north or aft. Not to fear though, all of the other usual commands are here and as for your crew, they are all at your command. You can call McCoy to the bridge or chat with Scotty in engineering, and all are once again in full character.
All of this has the making of a great game, but unfortunately in the end I found it to just a bit frustrating. That's not to say it isn't a good game, but compared to the Promethean Prophecy it is much more difficult. Now you are not only in charge of moving your own character about, but an entire starship. You have access to the ship's computer, giving you full access to information about your officers and other tidbits of knowledge which any self-respecting star fleet captain should know. You can travel to any planet in the game, beam yourself down or send a landing party. There is so much to do and the game is so open that it can become overwhelming. The parser is also annoyingly strict, requiring you to type in very specific commands. However the biggest obstacle I found was the little clock ticking away in the corner. That's right, there is a time limit in which to complete your mission so don't spend too long wandering about on alien planets or looking for Uhura's quarters (they aren't in the game, I looked).
I found the game ran quite well in Windows XP, so you shouldn't experience any technical problems. As in the previous game there is a copy protection system, so a program called NOKEY from Central Point Software is included to bypass it. Simply run the file Go.bat and your off on your adventure.
Reviewed by: Guybrush
