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If you have ever been a Star Trek fan and dreamed of sitting in the Captain's chair, this is the game for you.
Bridge Commander places you right in the center of the action as Captain of the USS Dauntless in a troubled region of space. You start out with a few tutorial style missions, guided by the legendary Captain Picard, voiced by the real Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart. You are then put to work trying to solve the mystery of a star that went prematurely supernova, killing many people and wiping out numerous colonies.
While the game is linear and the bulk of the action is combat-driven, you are given a few missions that are not fights or that can be resolved through diplomacy. The story is well constructed and compelling, as are most of the characters. Each of your bridge crew officers has his/her own personality and motivations, along with some biographical information in the manual. The voice acting is generally good, with one glaring exception that deserves mention. One of the other Starfleet ships you encounter is captained by a man with the worst fake Scottish accent I have ever heard. However, you get to hear Captain Picard and Data (voiced by Brent Spiner) throughout a majority of the game, which is a pleasure.
Bridge Commander came out in 2002, so the graphics are understandably dated. However, you can find numerous upgrades through the mod community online. These can update everything from the musical score to the Starfleet uniforms, ship appearance, explosion effects, and so on. Once you complete the single player campaign, you will find many available standalone missions and a multiplayer component to keep you interested. Totally Games (the developers) released an SDK for the game, which helped to create a vibrant mod community that is still alive today.
Even though Bridge Commander is not new, it is still a refreshingly new and interesting game to play. The game affords you the luxury of choosing not only how you want to command the crew, but to what degree you want to control the action. You can choose to take charge and fly the ship manually or allow the crew to pilot and make maneuvers. You can take over weapons control or allow your tactical officer to do the shooting. It is also possible to destroy or disable specific subsystems of enemy ships, which adds much more depth to combat. Similar control is available for each of the various bridge positions. The primary means of controlling the game is the mouse/keyboard, but the game practically begs for voice commands to be used. I spent quite a bit of time tailoring this and found a rewarding experience as the payoff.
Sometimes you just need to see a different viewpoint, and Bridge Commander lets you do just that. You can watch everything from the Captain's chair through the viewscreen, or you can access one of the many external views, which are typically preferred for combat. These include the chase camera and reverse views, as well as a camera directly on the target or one chasing torpedoes, among others. Combined with the available ship appearance and effects updates online, Bridge Commander's space battles still look brilliant and exciting.
Despite its age, Bridge Commander is an excellent game. It puts you in charge of a masssive starship and sets you out on an exciting adventure. It provides you with a very rewarding experience on top of everything else. This is the kind of game that is screaming for episodic content to be released through digital distribution channels, but that is a whole other discussion. For any fan of Star Trek, or anyone interested in starship command, space exploration or space combat, this is a definite purchase.
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