Rating: 
Summary: Second Helpings Aren't Always Good For You
Review: I was very disappointed in this game. The original Star Trek Armada was a wonderful diversion, and I was very excited with the ability to build my own starfleet and do battle in the vastness of space. I must admit that I was never a big Star Trek fan. While I had a basic pop-culture understanding of the Romulans, Klingons, and Federation, I didn't know all that much about the intricate backstory the decades of Star Trek shows had developed. Yet, I found Star Trek Armada very easy to get the swing of, but it certainly was challenging to play. Some of the episodes were far more challenging than others, but all of them held my interest until I ultimately "beat the game". I never got bored with Armada. Star Trek Armada II, however, is a whole other story. First of all, the people at Activision did a good job of fixing some of my main complaints with the first Armada. For starters, Armada II gives you better control of your fleet. You can select ships into up to 9 standing armadas, and then issue orders to individual armadas and direct them separately. These armadas can even have AI levels set for them, and can thus move about on their own if you choose, or fire their special weapons on their own if you'd like them to. This is a big improvement from the first game, where it was difficult to manage large numbers of ships at a time. Aside from this, I can't think of any real improvements that were made to Star Trek Armada to warrant an Armada II. In fact, all of the smaller vessels in the old game were renedered worthless in the new one by the decreased integrity of their hulls. It makes no sense to devote resources to creating anything but the largest ships and most advanced super weapons in this game, since the smaller ships are destroyed so easily by the enemy. The larger ships are more easily destroyed in this game than its predecessor too. The superweapons are far less devastating, but are easier to develop than in the original armada. All in all, it just feels disappointing and kind of pointless to be playing this game. When I had finished with it, I put the original Armada back in and found it to be more enjoyable, though I did miss the advanced control of the ships. The new features of colonization and galactic mining introduced in Armada II are a good idea that were not developed fully. It would have been interesting if the developers had added a little bit of city-building to this game, in that you could actually go down to the planets you colonized and build facilities and cities there. This would give the planets more meaning in the game and actually differentiate it from the original Armada. I really missed the Romulan phase of the first Armada too. The Romulans provide a good balance to the other races represented; the noble Federation, the warrior Klingons, the single-minded Borg. The Romulans' treachery and deceit, their cloak-and-dagger machinations, were some of the best parts of the first Armada. You can still build a Romulan fleet in the Instant Action phase of the game, but this seems hollow to me. It is easy to beat the computer in Instant Action even at its highest AI intelligence level...and the player versus player mode works only if you can find a LAN connection to someone else willing to play over the internet. These games are not as much fun as the campaigns from the original armada, as they amount to little more than playground games of capture the flag or king of the hill. It just feels pointless. I hope there is an Armada III, but only if Activision comes up with some real developments for the game. Go back to the non-3D board used in the first Armada, as the 3-D maps were really a moot point I thought. They did not contribute anything worthy to the game play and I found myself rarely moving about in 3D. I'd like to see an Armada game that took the best features from the original Armada and worked in some of the city-building from the Impressions and Sierra games like Caesar III, Pharoah, and Zeus. If you could build up planets to colonize with real cities, and could create a Homeworld to defend, I think this Armada series could take on whole new dimensions. They also have to work on a balance so that smaller ships are not so easily destroyed - this way a player would actually build smaller ships and make use of their special weapons without fear of them being knocked out of the game like so many gnats. All in all, I would suggest passing over Armada II. The first game is enough great entertainment for you to play again. This second helping feels like that last piece of pie you know you shouldn't have eaten at dinner. The first piece was good, but too much of the same thing with no real improvement just makes you wonder why you even bothered.
Rating: 
Summary: Really, very disappointing
Review: If you played and enjoyed the first Armada, this is probably NOT the game for you. Frankly, Armada II adds little to your gaming enjoyment and actually manages to detract from it in a number of ways. 1) Several people have noted this already, but the ships in Armada II are made of tissue paper. I have never played an RTS game where units (even the strongest ones) die so quickly. This is a huge change from the original Armada. For me at least, one of the appeals of the original was the clash of fleets of well-armed, sturdy starships. You could engage, withdraw ships as they were damaged, reinforce with fresh ships, so on. Now you just gob them all together and hurl them at your opponent's gob of ships. Heck, in Armada II a turrent can take out most starships in a number of seconds. 2) The new resource model is a travesty. I know people may disagree with me here, but I don't really think "now with more resource micromanagement" is a selling point for a RTS game. In most games of Armada 2, you will build a trading facility and then spend a ridiculous amount of time selling off dilithium to produce metal and latinum. That's it - just extra clicking. It doens't add any strategy or complexity to the game. Oh, you can try to harvest the resources from planets and nebulae, but I guarantee you will be overwhelmed if you try. By the time you have enough metal to start producing capital ships, your opponents will have dozens of them. 3) I have yet to see an RTS game sucessfully implement a z-axis. Yes, it is neat that you can dive under turrents in Armada 2. But it does not make up for the difficulty you will have laying out your base, controlling your fleets, and moving around the map. At its best, these additions provide a little extra eye candy. At worst, they interfere with your enjoyment of what was already a mediocre game. Honestly, I really wanted to like this game, but it is VERY disappointing. If you can only buy one RTS game, I would go for Battle Realms or Kohan - Ahriman's Gift.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the BEST GAME EVER!
Review: Get this game, (...)GET THIS GAME!!!!!! Sure it is (about the same price) in most locations, BUT IT IS WORTH THE MONEY! Imagine all you star trek fans, being species 8472, fighting the borg on the internet, fed on your side! IT IS CRAZY FUN! And, now they have Intrepid type vessels, Tactical cubes, FUSION CUBES (which, by the way, is probably the most powerful vessels in the game), get this, you are able to fuse 8 cubes or tactical cubes into one ship! My goodness, it is CRAZY! Okay, maybe I shouldn't tell you ALL the details, but get the game, (...)GET THE GAME!
Rating: 
Summary: Star Fleet Command 2
Review: This game is a good game. It is a good naval simulation of starship combat. Although the campaign mode is flawed, it is still has a variety a different missions to complete, altough after the campaign is completed, some of them get slightly monotonous.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice touches
Review: The game was very well worked, I would say. Having to deal with metal, dilithium, AND crew and officer limits was a nice little challenge that makes the game just that much more difficult.
The numerous ship classes and their special abilities help with the strategic part of the game, as does putting your ships and stations on all three planes.
Being able to position your troops to fire special weapons on their own, have them follow enemies passing by their range of vision, and setting them on green red or yellow alert so they will or will not engage an enemy attacking them helps as well.
Having quick attack craft, long range artillery, and hit-taking ships help get the right mix when launching a large offensive or just setting up a good defense.
Armada 1 was a pretty big screw up, but this game nearly blew me away when I started playing it. I put it on an old 333 mHz machine with an old ATI Rage Pro and the graphics were still clean. The nebulas are almost hypnotizing in the way they flash and swirl. These nebulas help add to the game, stopping the warp, weapons, life support, and shield capabilities of ships, depending on which nebula your ship enters.
Overall, I think this game is a must have for any Star Trek or RTS fan. The campaign has some challenging levels, and when playing multiplayer having 6 races to play as and having gigantic maps full of planets, nebulas, and asteroid belts can push a person' strategic skills to the limits.
Rating:
Summary: Some good, some bad
Review: I have mixed feelings about this game. Perhaps I should note here that I played and very much enjoyed the original Armada. In some ways, I think the sequel improves on it, where in others the developers seem to have taken a backward step. On the progress side, there are many new units and two completely new races- Species 8472 (yes, I had to look that number up) and the Cardassians. The new units generally comprise an assault ship of some sort, two new frigate-class ships, and one battleship. For example, the Federation gets the Galaxy as its battleship, Aegian and Sabre class ships as frigates, and the Iwo-Jima class as an assault ship. This gives you quite a lot of choices for ships other than the originals (which are all here, and looking exactly the same as they used to). However, you can play this exactly like you played old Armada and that will work just fine. Naturally, there are also a bunch of new special abilities, though the superweapons remain very much the same as they were in Armada 1. You can also change the camera to a 3-d movement mode, though it is still quite difficult to control your forces from this perspective. The graphics have been updated and generally tweaked for the better. There are also the new resources metal and latinum, harvestable from planets and nebulae, respectively. Planets can also be used for colonization if you need more crew. Now, some things I really wish they had left alone, or at least put less emphasis on. In general, the new 3-d camera mode is little more than a good show. It's still too hard to move things around in it for it to be practical in combat. Sometimes ships will move close or farther away from your isometric perspective camera, appearing incredibly big or small and having to move up or down to attack. This can be rather disorienting. While the new ships are cool, as I mentioned earlier, they aren't really necessary. Also, the old ships haven't changed AT ALL. You would think they might have moved some things around, such as making the Defiant and Akira higher up on the food chain, but they haven't changed a thing. Defensive platforms shoot far slower than they used to, but their hull can actually take damage now. Also, you can't just charge a starbase with a lot of ships, even really powerful ones, because even though they won't take down your shields they will kill crew off like nuts. Not sure how or why that happens. Warp. I don't think I need to say anything more than this, and if you don't understand, you haven't seen it happen in the game. It looks ridiculous, isn't realistic, and the game could really do without it. At faster than the speed of light, you would think your fleets would get to their targets instantly, but that would be rather cheap, so they just go at about double their impulse speed. You lose shields in warp, so you can get screwed up on the way if you aren't careful. Also, ships sometimes jump to warp to engage an enemy just outside range. It can get extremely disorienting and looks totally retarded. I hope they patch it out altogether. In general, I think Armada 2 is a good deal of fun and more or less an improvement over its predecessor. It's just that I was hoping it would be a really BIG improvement, and it simply isn't. In fact, in some ways, I think it's actually not as good. Alas, it is difficult to live up to gamer's expectations of a sequel to a truly great title, and Armada 2 did not live up to mine.
Rating:
Summary: Hey hey!
Review: Give it a try! This is almost a new genre, considering it's Action/Sim/Strategy combo. Anyway, it's worth the (money), and is a great addition to your game collection, escpecially you Trekkies! The characters, ships, and story are somwhat tedious however, in that the Enterprise is not in it, neither are the Borg, or many Klingon and Romulan ships, oh yeah, there isn't really a story. Hmm, a good game anyway.
Rating: 
Summary: Star Trek: Armada 2
Review: Save your money, this game is a dog. It couldn't carry A1's lunch-box. If you liked Armada 1, you will really be shocked at how bad this game is. It reeks from top to bottom...
Rating:
Summary: Be Careful What You Wish For . . .
Review: I wrote a review of Armada I about a year ago, in which I blasted the product due to the horrific bugs a large percentage of users were experiencing (almost certainly a majority). I later revised that review, once the worst of the bugs had been successfully patched. Outside of the bugs, the game itself had some flaws, but was generally successful and could be a lot of fun. With its semi-realistic graphics, it was always entertaining to watch opposing fleets of starships duke it out on the computer screen (especially for an old Trekkie like me). On the surface, Armada II would appear to address the worst shortcomings of Armada I. For starters, it's virtually bug-free - I haven't seen it crash once in over 12 hours of playtime. More ships and races have been added to the game, to spice things up a bit, and the resource model has been expanded to make resource management more complex and challenging. The ability to travel at "warp" speed was added as well, allowing ships to move from one part of the map to another more quickly - a good thing, since the maximum map size has been dramatically increased. Unfortunately, the developers didn't stop with those beneficial changes. They also saw fit to make Armada a true 3D game, wherein your ships can move up and down the Z axis. But it's difficult to tell where your ships and stations are at along that axis in the strategic view (overhead, top-down), and while you get a better feel for their "depth" in the tactical view (in which you're immersed in the game, similar to Armada I's cinematic view), that mode is virtually unusable for deploying units in battle. Worse, when ships or stations are placed very "high" on the map, they block your view of whatever is beneath them. Ships or stations placed far "down" on the map shrink to the size of ants unless you zoom in on them, making it difficult to tell exactly what's going on with them. I mentioned the tactical view being useless. The reason why is because all but the most powerful ships can be destroyed in about a second by their opponents, particularly when they go up against the bases or turrets. Apart from the largest capital ships, vessels in Armada II are essentially disposable cannon fodder, and even the capital ships don't last long against a station (or each other). Once you've developed the technology to build the capital ships, there's simply no reason to build anything else. So much for the addition of all those new ship types . . . Battles in this game seldom last more than 10 seconds - it's like watching fleets of gnats on crack swat each another. Strategy involves tank rushing your opponent with as many ships as you can build as early in the game as possible, in an attempt to destroy your opponent's developing technology and resource mining operations. You want to keep him from developing the deadly capital ships, or at least delay him until after you've developed and deployed them yourself. This kind of rush grows tiresome, fast. The whole point of a Star Trek-universe based RTS is to control fleets of Trek-accurate starships in battle. Unfortunately, those battles are so fleeting and your control over them so limited as a result, Armada II as it currently stands is a rather pointless exercise. A feature has been added to allow your ships to deploy their special weapons without direct intervention - a good thing, since you'd never be able to react fast enough to deploy specials manually during most Armada II battles. Your ships can even be placed completely under computer control, giving them the ability to move wherever the computer determines they're most needed, and essentially turning your team into another AI player. I suppose this is great if all you want to do is handle resource management, but frankly I find that the most boring aspect of Armada II, hardly worth the price of admission and a waste of the Star Trek environment the game inhabits. The graphics have been slightly improved at the 32-bit color depth over Armada I, although at the 16-bit color depth, Armada II looks terrible (reminds me of Tie Fighter or something). The game does seem somewhat faster than Armada I in both modes, though. I have a nVidia GeForce 2MX board, so I would expect similar, poor looking 16-bit color graphics even with the newer, more powerful boards (though they'd animate everything even faster). If you have a board that can't do at least 1280*1024 at 32-bit color depths, I would not recommend this game to you. I just can't imagine playing this game at a lower resolution - it wouldn't look very could, and even zoomed out all the way I don't think you'd be seeing enough of the map at once to get a good feeling for what was going on in battle. And that's crucial, since you'll have about two seconds to determine whether to fight or flee before your half your fleet gets wiped out. It's possible a patch could be released to fix Armada II's "crunchy ship" problem, but I doubt anything could be done to correct the 3D view issues. If Armada I is any indication though, such a patch is at least six months to a year away. Until then, I'd recommend avoiding Armada II. If you want a decent Trek-based RTS, pick up the original Armada, which is probably selling at a discount right about now.
Rating:
Summary: Vast improvement over Armada 1.
Review: Positives: Armada 2 is a vast improvement over Armada 1. Most important, the campaigns, instant action and multiplayer have run without a single hitch. I have encountered no bugs. The greatest in-game improvement, hands down, is the new interface. Terrific grpahics and very intuitive interface make this game a hoot to play. The expanded selection of ships and wonderful new Borg and Species 8472 designs mean that the species actually play differently (especially the Borg). Also notable is the voical talent of Alice Krige, the voice of the Borg Queen, who manages to be seductive and creepy at the same time. It seems she didn't just read the lines off the page (think Patrick Stewart), but that she is actually acting. And very, very well. Negatives: Although pretty to look at and a cinch to control, where is the strategy? A battleship with special technology lasts about three seconds in combat. The player who wins does so by throwing huge number of ships at you. I would have much preferred fewer resources neccessitating fewer ships (that don't die so easily). That way the loss of a starbase or fleet would actually mean something. As it is, the game is essentialy build, move and watch a (short) fight. The terrific interface has one downside--because everything is so automated, there isn't much to really do. I felt like a spectator rather than a participant. Still, the game is so attractive it can still be fun to watch. Unit balancing. The units are too balanced. I hear people complaining about unequal balancing, but here a Sovereign can beat two Cubes. I realize it's a game and not the show, but the game feels so balanced, it becomes impersonal.
|
