Frustrating, not fun, and sadly devoid of real Trek.

User Rating: 5.8 | Star Trek: Tactical Assault PSP
The gameplay is pretty much shooting, turning, dodging, talking and recharging your shields. Over and over. You get some points to spend on upgrades for weapons and shields, but you always seem to be a few points behind on those upgrades. I had to start over a few times to try charging up different capabilities, and that gets old really, really quickly. I couldn't bring myself to do it again, and realized that I just wasn't having fun with it.

It looks nice enough, with some decent effects and a very heavily populated space background. The interface comes across like a museum kiosk from the mid-90s however.

It sounds nice, with a great symphonic soundtrack which follows the tone quite well. However, I frequently heard a strange stutter in the music, which immediately took me out of it.

The biggest disappointment, though it is probably stated in giant letters somewhere and people should take note before diving into this one, is that it's barely Star Trek. We have the races, ships and weapons modeled after the Star Trek tech, but none of the personalities that make up the heart of that beloved universe. So it could have been any other space-based game, were it not for the tech and the intro.

Now for the strangest game design issue that I think I've seen in years: you can crash into planets. The planets are really only there to be a part of the generally linear plots in the missions, and instead of doing something smart like keeping them a certain distance from you so you don't feel like you're close enough to just ram into them, you can turn a corner and suddenly your shields are *scraping* a planet, which is only somewhat larger than the chunks of rock floating around you. It instantly reduces any sense of space that you had developed.

In the end, the name is perfectly fitting for what it is, it just doesn't offer *anything* else.