Star Trek D-A-C Micro-Review
Riding the warp trail of the smash hit J.J. Abrams movie comes Star Trek D-A-C, a top-down space shooter for Xbox Live Arcade.
Lacking the time to create a full-fledged movie tie-in for the new Star Trek film, Naked Sky Entertainment instead decided to create a quick and dirty online shooter set in the Star Trek universe, much like Auran did when they created the Live Arcade version of Battlestar Galactica. D-A-C stands for the game’s three modes – Deathmatch, Assault, and Conquest – each of which is playable either offline using artificially intelligent bots or online with real human beings of varying levels of intelligence.
Is Star Trek D-A-C enough to keep fans entertained long after the movie credits have finished rolling, or is it a Star Trek game in name alone?
Loved
Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad: While the straight player-versus-player gameplay in Star Trek D-A-C is relatively bland, things get a bit spicier in the title’s slightly more involved modes, Conquest and Assault. Capturing and defending points can be a great deal of fun, adding a bit of strategy and depth to an otherwise shallow experience, provided you can find enough players online to get a match going.
Hated
There Isn’t Much Here: Star Trek D-A-C doesn’t have a whole lot of substance to it. It features two factions – Romulans and Federation – each with three ships to choose from. Bombers, fighters, and flagships handle exactly the same for both sides, and without any sort of story or plot there’s really no reason to chose one faction over another aside from personal preference. A handful of maps are shared between each of the game’s three modes, and while they certainly are lovely to look at, the lovely soon fades when the overall lack of variety sets in.
An Overall Lack Of Star Trek: I debated whether or not to list the abuse of the Star Trek licence in the hated column, ultimately determining that in this day and age, fans have a right to expect more when a beloved licence is attached to a video game. Slapping the Star Trek name on a generic shooter might have passed the muster back in the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, but not today. The game comes across as a generic space shooter with Star Trek trappings tacked on in order to make a quick buck. Whether or not this was the developer’s intention is a moot point; it’s how the game feels.
Take away the licence and Star Trek D-A-C presents gamers with an ultimately forgettable top-down space shooter, good for a couple of hours worth of entertainment before it begins to wear thin. Figure in the licence and now you have a bland space shooter that seems to be attempting to hide its obvious shortcomings behind a Star Trek movie poster. It’s quite reminiscent of Auran’s Xbox Live Arcade game Battlestar Galactica, though that game might have had a better chance of standing on its own two feet once the licence crutch was kicked out from under it.
I understand that Naked Sky Entertainment didn’t have time to create a full-fledged tie-in with the new movie, but that’s no reason to deliver a sub-par game with only the loosest of connections to the forty-three year-old science fiction franchise.
Star Trek D-A-C! was developed by Naked Sky Entertainment in conjunction with Bad Robot Interactive and published by Paramount Digital Entertainment for Xbox Live Arcade. Coming soon for PC and PlayStation Network. Released on May 13th. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Played multiple rounds of each of the three game modes both online and offline in single player mode.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@icarusprime: He is simply making a laughable feeble attempt to be better than someone who likes Star Trek. Because behind the keyboard he believes he is the coolest person around.
imdstig
@Ragnarok: yay internet! you are doing it wrong! try gamefaqs or 360achievements or i dont know ... google?!!
@bobdisgea3: you come across as someone who does not like star trek in general, why oh why have you wasted your time not only with the new movie, downloading and checking out the arcade game AND commenting on a star trek game? O_o something is wrong with you.
"The game comes across as a generic space shooter with Star Trek trappings tacked on in order to make a quick buck"
Hey! That's just like the movie!
Think I'll pass on this, but the iTouch/iPhone Star Trek game is actually quite decent, if frustrating a little in certain places. Feels a bit drawn out, but has good bullet hell moments.
This experience left me with the same feeling that the Wing Commander game of the same design left me feeling, sad and disappointed. There is so much potential for an epic game, it seems like anyone can imagine a much better game to wrap the Star Trek name around.
I'm going to partly disagree with you here on one major thing here Fahey, combat.
The combat system, a very x-wing like style, is better then advertised and plays slightly better on a 2d plane verses a first person view. The tactics of it are actually enjoyable.
but agreed, it isn't... star trekie enough. and is very limited in gameplay styles.
@bobdisgea3: You forgot that you you also hate fun, joy, and life in general. And puppies.
gaijira
@Kasuli: I'll be damned. You're right.
[www.xbox.com]
The Kotaku article stated it was 800 points.
[kotaku.com]
Hopefully this isn't a pricing error on Microsoft's part a la Lode Runner. I'd definitely grab Blazing Birds for 400 but only if it stays that cheap to ensure a decent about of people to squash on-line with my mad angry futuristic unicycle badminton skills with a "Z."
I tried the demo but it pissed me off that I could only choose a fighter in the demo and I also couldn't pick what faction I wanted to play. It would just dump me into a match in progress.
Seriously, want me to buy the game? Give me a reason to want it. Limit my map and gametype selection but let me at least TRY all the different ships. I concluded that fighters sucked. Then I deleted the demo.
I have all the achievements except the "secret" one. Anyone know how to get it?
Thank you for finally explaining what DAC means.
roq
@glassdevaney: Are you talking about the one for SNES?? That game is the best.
I meant to download the demo and accidentally bought it. I am a sad panda. T_T
Maybe I'll grow to like it...
This game disappointed me greatly. I was so happy I went with my gut feeling and just downloaded the demo. Frankly this game reminded me of a space version of Undertow, with some missing pieces. Hell, for the same price, you can get a much more enjoyable, fleshed out arcade title with Undertow. At least that game was able to include a full campaign, that could be played in co-op, 3 factions (another if you include the expansion), a crap load of maps, and two out of the three modes that Star Trek has.
On a side note, I have no idea why there was so much hate for Undertow, that game was very much worth the money in my opinion and I enjoyed every minute and still do to this day. Luckily the time I decided on buying Undertow was the time they gave it out for free, so the money went towards Pac-Man C.E.
@zgreenwell: The new robot-badminton-thingy, Blazing Birds was it, is 400msp.
Kasuli
does it feature lens flare??
@zgreenwell:
Ninja Turtles Arcade game is 400 points when it launched.
What do people expect from a half arsed Game that is only the milk from a milked movie? Nobody expected it to be an amazing game, better than Fallout 3 or Devil May Cry did they?
I haven't tried it yet, but I laugh in the face of people who think this could've actually been anything above a mediocre game.
I hated it pretty quick. From the moment I saw "Fighters" and "Bombers" listed in the ship select, I hated it. (I'm aware that the Remans had fighters in Nemesis) Shuttles could conceptually be likened to fighters (especially something like the Delta Flyer), but that's a stretch.
Had they made it simply different classes of ship, maybe based on size, and included ships from other eras, I may have liked it more. When your only choices are the AU Constitution-class, and two D-A-C-only ones, it gets old. Give me more factions too. In the TOS era, Klingons were a major force against the Federation, branch forward and give us Cardassian, Ferengi, Jem'hadar, even Borg, or go back and pull in the Xindi (or we can ignore Enterprise, I'd be fine with that.)
Example:
Large: Sovereign, Galaxy, new Constitution, Ambassador, Excelsior
Medium: Intrepid, Steamrunner, Akira, Constitution
Small: Miranda, Defiant
Tiny: Danube, Delta Flyer, other shuttles and runabouts
You'd have to make up some stuff for Romulans, which I could accept so long as have the official ones in there.
Thank goodness for reviews. I was tempted to buy this game, because it seemed like it *could* be fun for a while.
Am I the only one here that really enjoyed Starfleet Academy?
@killah101: Duh! STAR TREEEEK!!!! :P
Seriously though, cannot WAIT for the DLC to finally hit my PS3 in the face!
DAC = donuts and coffee
KotakuFreund
pew pew pew
ithyphallus
@bobdisgea3: Turn in your Trekkie badge and pointy ears.
This or fallout 3 DLC? Yeah I think the choice is obvious
killah101
Ya know, I've been wondering what DAC stood for. Ya learn something new every day, I tell ya...
You want a quickie Star Trek game? Clone Star Control. The first one. This would be a welcomed addition with Live support, and I was hoping for just that when I saw the screenshots. This looks too simplified to be entertaining or have much depth, like a Star Trek skinned Armada.
@randomspirits: So you think you might, unless you don't.
@zgreenwell: Five dollar XBLA games trickle out from time to time. The last one I think was Minesweeper Flags back in February. Microsoft seems to want to have it so that XBLCG games comprise the lower pricing tier while XBLA games sport a higher price tag. Seemingly reacting to the complaints about XBLA pricing post-Braid, Trixie 360 did a spot highlighting $5 games, and they were all old XBLA titles or CG stuff. I think this would be a fine plan, and XBLCG development is starting to churn out some great stuff and gradually getting more professional looking, but too many XBLA titles still feel overpriced -- Death Tank and Lode Runner in particular.
I might pay $5 for this game, but I dout I'd even pay that.
randomspirits
downloaded the demo was bored in less than a minute. hated it. then again i think the new movie sucks. and so does star trek in general.
@zgreenwell: Space Giraffe!
Brodka
Who knows, they could be asking to do something with a little more in the way of substance. Doubt it, but gotta keep hopes up.
As is, I think $5 would be better. Then again there is no such thing as a $5 arcade title anymore, is there?
Well, at least they didn't try to stretch it out to a full retail product.
@RyuuzakiBjorn:
I would buy a Devil May Cry clone where Dante is replaced with Shatner-Kirk and the enemies with Klingons.
The rest can stay the same.
Koztah
@Ragnarok: THANK you. Yeah, that's the one I was thinking about, though I think it was a PC game first?
@Durandal377: Yeah... I hate it when games like this lack a main campaign of some sort. Even a bad story mode with text dialogue would have gone a long way towards making this worth $10.
Someone should look into porting Star Control II to XBLA/PSN, there's a freeware version so how hard could it be to convince Toys for Bob to license it?
@bobdisgea3: How can you hate it? Never having watched Star Trek growing up and seeing the movie, I couldn't help but be pulled into the universe. By the end of the film, I was thinking of where I could get my own set of pointy ears.
@imdstig: Probably.
i like that sneaker? how much that cost? lol
flatbush
*coughs* Wing Commander and Battlestar Galactica both had this treatment too. Just do like I do and DON'T buy it. Get Virtual On or Zen Pinball instead.