You begin with a mission briefing which directs you to your special operation, the away mission. Controlling many different crew members of different races, skills and temperaments, you navigate through different scenarios on different worlds.

Your "birds eye" view puts you in a command position to view your teams actions. In addition to phasers, phaser rifles, and tricorders you will also be equipped with a teleportation brig (really handy to hide those bodies that will pile up at times), plant extractor (for use in healing (and harming) hypospray replenishment) as well as proximity mines and other cool toys.

The team that you control in Star Trek: Away Team is an elite ‘Special Forces’ unit that is responsible for handling the ‘sticky’ situations that arise throughout the Federation. This Covert Actions unit is comprised of handpicked Starfleet Officers, and they are the best of the best... the equivalent of the U.S. Navy S.E.A.L.'s for the Federation. The missions they are assigned are extremely dangerous. This Covert Actions unit will consist of 17 highly trained specialists that Starfleet has assembled especially for their unique problem solving abilities. Actual ‘Away Teams’ that you will control will consist of 3-6 of these specialists per mission, and part of the game dynamic will be the actual selection of personnel that will make up the team.

Game play will combine strategy and action elements as the player will sometimes have plenty of time to plan moves that can have results requiring quick action and reflexes. Since they want to immerse the player into the action as much as possible, just about everything in the environment will be interactive in some fashion. Control panels can perform numerous tasks for the talented engineer or computer expert. Every item in the world can be scanned, and in some cases, this type of interaction with the environment will give clues to how the next step in the mission can be solved. Most missions will have many ways to solve them. Star Trek Away Team will allow different players with different techniques the ability to solve the mission in slightly different ways. This hands-on approach that the game will be taking will lend itself to a real sense of exploration and teamwork that is apparent in the Star Trek universe.

The game is designed to appeal to strategy/action fans in general, though enjoyment and knowledge of the Star Trek Universe will enhance the appeal of the character building and story/plot elements.

Too true guys and gals… Activision wasn’t kidding.

The starting cinematic is fantastic! For your first briefing you see a Romulan warbird fire upon a Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Another Romulan warbird approaches and orders the other to stand down per order of the Tal Shiar (Romulan KGB so to speak). Once they leave, the U.S.S. Incursion inactivates it holographic imaging system and you see a ship very much similar to the Defiant of DS9 fame, but more streamlined.

The Admiral and Commander Data have briefed you on the specifics of your mission and send you on your way. While you have 17 officers to choose from you DO need to pick according to the skills necessary to the mission. I only have seen one or two required skills and 3 to 4 extra to help round out your team. Your job is to free two Klingon scientists being held prisoner, while also having to fend off some encroaching Romulan forces on the Klingon homeworld, Q’onos. As you begin to perform actions, Data will pop in and tell you how to do them. (Annoying at first but easily squelched by using the space bar)

A plus to the game is the PAUSE feature, which allows you to issue orders to your team before carrying them out. You can assign a different task to each or just order all to open fire. Unfortunately this tends to be a bit tedious, as they do not auto-defend. Once you’re fired upon you have to select one or all of your people to fire back, and if your phasers aren’t selected… OUCH!

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