"Ensign!
The replicator won't give me my tea earl grey, hot. Plot a course for the
nearest coffee shop, warp seven. Make it so; I'm getting thirsty."
Trying to capitalize on the immense cult popularity of the Star Trek
television series, Spectrum HoloByte adds the Macintosh version of
"A
Final Unity" to the Star Trek: the Next Generation computer starlogs.
A solid game full of Quicktime movies and references to the show, "A Final
Unity" is definitely worth consideration by the trekkie and not-so-trekkie
alike.
The Starship Enterprise, forever on its continuing mission to seek out new
worlds and new civilizations, and to patrol the neutral zone in search of
Romulan invasion fleets, starts out the game responding to a distress call
from a small, badly damaged Garidian Scout ship that has just crossed the
border into Federation space. Soon afterwards, a Garidian Warbird of
Romulan manufacture decloaks behind the scout ship, demanding that the
Enterprise stand down while it deals with "an internal Garidian matter."
Yes, kiddies, it's time for "Picard Plays Around With the Prime Directive!"
Not wasting too much time in debate, the Enterprise beams three refugees
named T'Bok, Lucana, and Avakar aboard and takes off into the wild black
yonder in search of something called the Lawmaker's Fifth Scroll.
Pretty good segue, huh?
ST:TNG "A Final Unity" remains true to the
television series, incorporating several televisionesque aspects, such as
the captain's log narration, placement of the "episode" name in a showlike
fashion, and full use of the entire officer staff in potentially hostile
away team missions (a foolhardy risk I never fully understood).
"A
Final Unity" comes through with authentic voice acting for all
characters by the likes of Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard),
Jonathan Frakes (Commander William Riker), LeVar Burton (Lt. Commander
Geordi La Forge), Michael Dorn (Lieutenant Worf), Gates McFadden (Dr.
Beverly Crusher), Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi), Brent Spiner (Lt.
Commander Data), and Majel Barrett (the ship's computer voice); character
voices accompany every line of text read. All the while, Quicktime movies
of the Enterprise in flight tie parts of the story together. As a
finishing touch, there's even an opening sequence that would make Gene
Roddenbury proud.
Game play is overall very smooth. Some challenging puzzles are to be had
and every mission has different degrees of success to it. Unfortunatly,
character death is never a problem, and the player cannot really lose. The
game is linear enough that, given enough time and attention to detail, any
stage can be overcome and Starfleet will tell you if you performed
optimally. Though the game can be set to any one of three difficulty
levels, using common sense and poking around with the mouse a lot generally
gets the job done. Talking amongst the members of an away team is the best
way to get out of a jam when you're stuck.
If the game were to be compared to the television show, it is long
enough so that there'd be a "to be continued..." somewhere in the middle of
it. The meaning of the title "A Final Unity" is not even hinted at until
you're a good way into the adventure, but be assured that all the isolated
missions end up linking together...eventually. The length of the game would
not ordinarily be a factor, except that the Save Game feature decided not
to work on my PowerPC running System 7.5.3. Obviously, the game designers
didn't plan on a player completing the adventure in one sitting, but it
seems that
"A Final Unity" is just one of those games that isn't
fully compatible with System 7.5.3. To get any sound out of the game,
Sound Manager must be installed, which means an extra INIT for those going
with the latest Mac OS System Update's unified Sound extension. And unless
you have at least 16 megs of RAM, you'll need to turn on virtual memory to
play the game, as the extensive use of human voice and video sequences
requires a dedication of 12 megs of RAM, though it isn't wasted use of
it.
It's such a shame that this incompatibility problem could mar such an
otherwise exceptional game. Although
"A Final Unity" is best suited
for the Trek fan, it doesn't alienate the rest of the galaxy, either. Some
good puzzles and plenty of character interaction combine to boldly go where
few games have gone before. If not for the resource hogging, the
game would go further.
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