The gamer plays as David Forrester, a third-year cadet embarking on Command School training. Cadet Forrester is assigned as "captain" of a bridge crew including (predictably) a Vulcan science officer, among others.
As I recall, this game was highly touted as it came out, but many were disappointed in the ultimate result. As a fan of Kirk and Co. and player of the previous Interplay product "Star Trek: 25th Anniversary" (complete with the voices of the original cast!) I purchased this game with high expectations.
The opening sequence did nothing to tamp down my expectations, as it featured William Shatner and George Takei reprising their roles as Captains Kirk and Sulu, not to mention some lovely shots of the Enterprise-A. (See for yourself, it's on YouTube.)
It seems, however, that the opening sequence was just about the high point of the game. Which isn't to say that the actual game play wasn't at least semi-interesting, but to me it just didn't accurately simulate the kind of space battles that one saw in the filmed versions of Star Trek. The battles felt more like space dogfights than anything akin to naval conflicts.
The parts of the game that seemed more faithful to television/movie Star Trek were the verbal encounters that you had with other ship captains, in which you had to determine the proper response (Star Trek showdowns--at least prior to the later seasons of DS9--always seemed to consist mainly of talking anyway!).
The most interesting aspects of the game to me were between scenarios. Some were simply "cut" scenes that showed Mr. Forrester's encounters with Cdr. Chekov (again, Walter Koenig reprising his role). However, many of these scenes required the gamer to interact with the bridge team. The performance of the various team members went up or down depending on what the gamer did to resolve conflicts. Some of the off-duty arguments between bridge team members were pretty interesting.
The cast performed relatively well (as well as can be expected for a video game, I suppose). Peter Kluge stood out as Cadet Forrester (although he seemed too old to be playing a cadet).
In my opinion, if they had made a movie (even a TV or direct to video movie) of this, it would have been pretty awesome, but as a game, it wasn't great.
