Star Trek D-A-C Review (XBLA)

A game in the vein of Star Control 2, only minus most of its content, charm, and excellent game design. This top-down shooter is easy to play, but has almost no depth and suffers from severe balance problems. You’d be much better off playing Star Control 2 instead, since it’s free and fun, unlike D-A-C.

Here’s a shocker for you: A game released to coincide with a movie release clearly didn’t go through proper design and balance testing, and ends up being a ripoff. Star Trek D-A-C (supposedly “Deathmatch-Assault-Conquest” in honor of the game modes it offers) is in the same genre as games like Star Control 2 and Subspace. It’s a top-down space shooter, meaning you fly through a low-gravity environment, firing at any enemy you can line your guns up on. Think ’Asteroids if it had other players going at it in deathmatch’ and you have the right idea. If this sounds like it could be a great use of the Star Trek license, you’d be right... but the problem is that nobody paid attention to the details.

Star Trek D-A-C is really easy to play, the controls should take you no longer than four or five minutes to understand to the point of being a viable player online. And while you can play against bots, make no mistake: The primary point is playing online against other people. The basic idea is that the Federation and Romulan Empire are fighting it out for whatever reason (the game has virtually no plot), and players can pick from a Fighter, Bomber, or Flagship. The idea is that the Flagship is the heavily shielded, powerful, but slow unit that forms the backbone of a team’s attack, while the Fighter is faster and easier to aim with and the Bomber does extreme damage if it can get close enough to attack. In theory, this should lead to a fun rock-paper-scissors arrangement where each ship counters one other, but loses to another if each player is equally skilled. This should be a great game.