Nintendo Dreams – Star Trek: Tactical Assault DS (part one)

…When I return to the place where I destroyed the tanks, that colourful arrow reappears on my screen and my superior tells me there’s an enemy Mech nearby. All I have to do is get close to it and attach the claw and I can steal the Mech. That doesn’t sound too difficult.

The obligatory guard tanks give me a bit of trouble, but once I’m around the corner, I see the Mech in the distance. It’s big. Really big. But it’s not shooting at me, yet. So instead of flying, which would probably only irritate it, I cautiously make my way toward it, instinctively staying close to the wall. Which won’t help because there is nothing between me and the Mech.

I’m not scared. Just a game. I’m not scared. BOOM!

Every other time I wrecked my suit, I was carted off back to base and put in a shiny new one; most of those times I fainted and woke up as they were strapping me in. This isn’t like that. I’m awake. I’m sure of that, but I can’t see anything. I don’t think that explosion just wrecked my suit. I think I’m dead.

The good news is I’m not dead. The bad news is I’m not a woman anymore. It looks like I’m inside Star Trek. I don’t think I’m teleporting from world to world. I think the game worlds are changing around me. I must have a certain amount of lives in each world. My only hope is that when I die for the last time, in the last world, I am returned home and not treated as just another game character, disintegrated and redistributed among the nets as code.

My crew in Star Trek Land are really quite meek, but that’s okay. I think they think they’re being respectful. My command seems to involve alot of talking – or I should say conversing, as communications with the crew and other vessels appear as readouts. This doesn’t bother me for now, as there is not much to read.

The ship’s controls are cause for some concern considering the fact that I’m controlling a Federation Starship and these controls are laughably simple. Various buttons are used to hail other vessels, detect objects and examine. The ship’s directional controls are merely a set of steering arrows. I would have expected something more sophisticated.

Learning when to squeal the brakes or tilt the ship are both easy, but I’m glad I’m learning all this at the Training Facility. I am getting antsy to see some real action, though.

How to describe how much fun it is to engage warp? Not as much fun as it was for real, when Kirk did it. For me it was like sitting on a tame rhinoceros while playing virtual hackey sack – on a portable console.