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

I hit him. He’s damaged. But my ship is almost a wreck. I back out of range while my photon torpedoes recharge. I decide to chance it and overclock them, (overclocking increases their power, but also increases recharge time.) Once recharged, I can’t afford to get hit anymore, so I swoop in on tilt. Carefully centre the front of my ship (where the guns are) on the drone. And fire, destroying it. I let out a whoop, because this time I earned it. I won. But my ship is black and blue.

I can see really blackened damage on my ship’s hull. But there’s an emergency. Without repairs, I have to go into an actual battle to rescue a vessel from a rogue freighter. Apparently the freighter has small guns, but it’s big and hostile.

I warp to the location, which is still fun despite my anxiety about having no shields. I find the freighter and start hitting it with my starboard phasers. And a photon torpedo for good measure. It’s not going down. The vessel I was supposed to rescue explodes. The freighter is still firing, so I continue firing back.

As much as I enjoy certain elements of the experience and everything looks so cool, this battle really is no different from my last battle with the drone, and the one before that with the first drone. The only real difference is that this one is taking a really long time to kill – long enough that even with feeble guns, it might eventually destroy my ship.

I receive a hail from the Admiral, which is almost a relief. He’s telling me to abort mission and return to the Training Facility. I respond that I don’t want to, because I haven’t killed the enemy, yet. He repeats the order, so I comply.

When I return, I am told that the battle with the freighter was a training exercise and I didn’t fail, after all. Far from it, according to the Admiral, I and my crew acted outstandingly, with one exception – I need to learn to follow orders.

Finally, I am ready for my first mission: patrolling the Neutral Zone. As mundane as this sounds, it’s pretty obvious I’ll run into hostiles. This is a game, after all. As I’m leaving the Training Facility, I see a ship, so I hail it. This only results in idle chatter, so I try hailing the Training Facility. The Admiral offers his goodbyes and good lucks officially and that’s the end of that conversation. So I set out on patrol.

I don’t know which direction to go, as patrolling is pretty vague, so I pick one at random. I’m not going very fast, can see nothing but Space, and am unsure if I’m even going in the correct direction. After three minutes of this, I decide warp would speed things up a bit, and I discover my error…