 Star Trek: ConQuest
Online: A version of chess for the next generation, or a blatant attempt to capitalize on
the ever-popular Collectible Card Game genre? I’m
willing to compromise and say that it is neither and both at the same time. It attempts to capture the fun and excitement of
buying, collecting and trading collectible cards on an online forum, but at the same time
it's obvious that somebody is really trying hard to get a little extra milk out of the
Star Trek and CCG cash cows. Moo.  ST: ConQuest Online
is an on-line turn-based strategy game that uses the “Collectible Bits Technology”
from Genetic Anomalies. Now, I’m not
saying that a 4-hour lecture on marketing strategy would be more fun, but there were
several things about the game that really disappointed me.
The basic idea of the game is that you have a collection of “pieces”
that are maintained on the ST: CO server under your account name. You customize your Control Group (the set of
pieces that you use to play) and pit your Control Group against that of another player. A Control Group consists of a Q, plus 40 ships,
items or people. If you buy the boxed game in
a store, you get to register one character and receive 7 booster packs to start out your
collection. You also get an “Ambassador
Spock” unique piece that is only available when purchasing the boxed game (so pretty
much everybody and their dog has one.)
 The
game is split into “basic” and “advanced” games. The basic game has 3 phases (Deploy, Attack and
Move) and uses 2 maps with 3 or 5 planets. The
advanced game adds an Auction Phase, a Special Phase and a few other goodies. This is the first thing that really got to me
about the game. A lot of the pieces have a
description of “abilities” that the piece can perform. The thing is, these abilities can ONLY be
performed in the advanced game. Some pieces
are completely useless in the basic game! For
example, the Emergency Transport Armband allows you to spend one control point to beam a
person to a friendly ship, but only in the advanced game.
The advanced game also adds a location called “The Continuum.”
Players can place pieces from play into the Continuum during the move phase of their turn. The Continuum is supposed to be the
other-dimensional home world of the Q species, but in the game the only pieces that cannot
move to the Continuum are the Q pieces; how much sense does that make?
 The graphics in the
game were fun to look at, as far as the pieces go. Each
piece has a picture associated with it, which gives you an easy reference when playing the
game. It would have been neat to have some
sort of 3D graphics for at least some of the pieces.
I would’ve been happy to see a rotating ship piece, or a phaser that
opens up, but that’s forgivable--the pieces needed to be small enough to download, I
can understand that. The game play graphics
were pretty poor. The attacks were “symbolized”
by different colored lines from one ship to another (I think they used 3 colors). This was an area where the poor graphics actually
hindered game play. I had a hard time
figuring out which lines were pointing to which ships.
If you had more than 3 attacks in one battle, then the line color skipped
back to the first color, furthering the confusion.
The sounds for the
game could have been way better. Most of the
events in the game either played an explosion or one of six random sound bytes from Q, who
doesn’t have the most pleasant of voices to begin with. There was no background music or sound FX to speak
of so the game usually drags along pretty quietly. I
would think that they would have hundreds of sounds to choose from in the Star Trek
universe.
 I have to admit
that I did have a little fun with the game once I got used to the poor game presentation. It is always a good time playing games over the
net with other people, especially if you can manage to win a game or two. Having the computer handle the point keeping and
progression of the turns is a nice thing. And
having both players decide their actions at the same time and having the computer execute
the actions was a good idea. It was also nice
to have a “Trainer” that teaches you how to play the game and lets you practice
a little before you go out and get your butt kicked by players who’ve spent hundreds
of dollars on booster boxes.
Obviously, I didn’t really get much out of this game. I wasn’t interested in
spending a bunch of money to “enhance” my Control Group and was rather
disappointed when I found out that unless I shelled out the cash, my deck would pretty
much be stagnant. It may have been fun
if more work were put into it and the developers focused more on making a fun game than
making money. If you do have a little extra
cash to spend and really like Star Trek, it may be worth looking into. Otherwise, if you’re still curious, I’d
download it first and check it out for yourself. You
can try it out for free (being an unregistered character) at www.conquestonline.com.
--Tim Johnson |
