By Susie Vee

Nothing could be more fun for control freaks like us than to step into the command seat of big spaceship. If there's a better job than ordering people around all day, we haven't found it. Many is the time we longed for a crew of our own, so we could shout, "Helmsman! Get me a doughnut!"

So when we heard about Star Trek: Bridge Commander, the little dictator in us was thrilled. Perhaps we could finally command a big ship, without all the tedium of "space strategy" games. Those always reminded us too much of geeky metal miniature wargames of the Axis & Allies sort.

The hype looked good, with the game pitched squarely at a mainstream audience. And, even better, it was even compatible with various voice command systems!

So why, after playing through much of the game, are we left feeling vaguely unsatisfied? It's like coming out of a John Carpenter movie -- we appreciate the effort, but it didn't quite live up to our expectations.

The premise of Bridge Commander is that you take control of a starship and progress through the game by giving orders to your subordinates. You've got a helmsman, tactical officer, engineer, science officer and first officer, along with the occasional guest. You can issue them commands ranging from the general to the specific, or take over their duties and do most it manually.

Most of the time, the duties of the various officers are rather perfunctory. You get to a system, someone says you should scan an area, so you click on the science officer and tell him to run a scan. The only real depth comes in the combat -- turning Bridge Commander into an elaborate, talky, space shooter.

You can give the tactical officer general commands, like "take evasive maneuvers," or "destroy a ship," or you can be more specific, and tell him to target a specific system of an enemy ship -- like the shields. Sometimes he does well on his own, but often you'll want to take over the actual shooting, since his "autopilot" seems to include long periods of standing around, letting your ship get shot up. Whoever designed Federation starships sure didn't put a lot of thought into their combat readiness. Your offensive capabilities are somewhat weak -- with your phaser banks always getting discharged and photon torpedoes that take forever to lock on. And, of course, being a giant capitol ship, you're not going anywhere fast, either.

Most battles devolve into two giant ships pounding away at each other until someone's shields collapse. It makes for occasional tense moments, but overall, it gets repetitive fairly quickly.

It's a shame, because the perfunctory storyline doesn't add much, and the voice acting and script are pretty cliché-ridden. Most of the time, you go from one place to another, waiting for someone to attack you.

The game is set in the Next Generation universe, so you get brief visits from Captain Picard and Commander Data -- who seem to be the only ST:TNG crew members interested in doing video games -- they were also together in Star Trek: Hidden Evil, a couple of years ago.

The game design has that bland late-eighties Next Generation feel. The bridge is visually uninspiring, to say the least, and the character design is not up to today's standard.

The ships however are great, with lots of detail. Damaged ships have holes blasted in the sides where you can see exposed decks, and there's a nifty glow effect on all the exterior lights. If only they weren't presented against a lame starfield environment, with little sense of scale or movement.

Controls are pretty simple -- you click on a character, then pick a command from the list presented. It's intuitive after a while, but the limited options keep the game from having an open-ended feel. During battles, you'll need to keep you fingers flying fast to adjust your tactics and keep on top of offensive maneuvers and system repairs.

We tried out Microsoft's Game Voice headset with the included voice command template. It was great fun to bark a few commands and have them followed, but some crucial ones weren't included -- probably because they were mouse-only and had no keyboard shortcuts. During combat, we were glad to be able to switch between officers quickly on the fly -- but you can't do it all by voice alone. A combination of voice commands and keystrokes seems to be the best bet.

And, of course, the explosions during fights often triggered false reactions from the headset -- sending us to the science station just as were about to launch a volley of torpedoes.

On the bright side, Bridge Commander has several interesting female characters you'll run into. Your by-the-book First Officer is female (as is your helmsman) and so is your Starfleet commanding officer -- and a pushy Romulan captain you run into occasionally. In fact, one of the cool tings about the game is that your character is gender neutral. Never seen, never heard, and never referred to as anything but "Captain."

Overall, Bridge Commander is a great idea, undone by linear plotting, repetitive combat and uninspiring design. Despite that, we enjoyed it and think a lot of armchair space cadets wouldn't mind taking the old ship around the solar system for a lap or two.

SCORE: 7.0