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

There are drones in space that I need to track, shoot and destroy. But they will shoot back, so I have been informed that we will need to go to red alert to turn on the shields and the weaponry. So I click the ‘red alert’ button. I’m not joking, it’s that simple and obvious.

Tracking the drone is concluded sooner than I expected and the fight takes me by surprise. I can see two weapon buttons, already we’re being shot at. Both of the weapons take time to recharge after firing. My first missile is a near miss. I remember now, a woman on my crew was telling me that firing range is about 46. I’m guessing that’s kilometres.

I steer the ship out of range, watching the number on the view screen. Then I go in for the rematch in melee. As soon as the drone starts firing, I tilt the ship. Click the phaser, direct hit. I notice his shield integrity has been damaged by the blast. My instinct is to fire the missile again, but I don’t want to miss. So I line up just so and fire before he can. I think maybe his shields will absorb the impact but then he’ll lose shields. Instead, the missile goes straight through the damaged shield and detonates on the hull. The drone is destroyed.

I’m so excited, I do a little dance. Then the officer at the Training Facility says, ‘We also have photon torpedoes.’ Cheeky sod. Eventually I realise that the missiles I had been firing actually were photon torpedoes. What I also didn’t realise is that I also have side phasers. So instead of always attacking my enemy head-on and losing most of my shields in the process, I can do drive-bys.

Gearing up for my second training battle, I have time to contemplate my situation (my Star Trek Land situation, not my stuck in Nintendo World situation.) Firstly, I have still not lost a life while being in Star Trek Land. Secondly, I doubt the Admiral will let me die while undergoing training in a Training Facility, ie the drones are non-lethal.

The second drone doesn’t fall for the same trick. His shields are completely unaffected by my phaser strike, which I take to mean that I missed. Meanwhile my shields are taking major damage from the drone’s phasers. Twenty seconds and I’ve lost outer shields. Ten more seconds and I’ve lost inner shields. My phasers are still having no effect. I have no shields. I finally hit him with an overclocked phaser, but his shields are showing green.

Screw it. I fire photon torpedoes…