Starfleet Academy Preview
Essentially a sexier, greatly expanded version of the ship combat mode found in the Star Trek: Judgment Rites adventure game, Starfleet Academy sends the player on a series of simulated missions with an emphasis on ship-to-ship combat. Ships are highly-detailed, texture-mapped objects ranging in the hundreds of polygons, and the combat is a true 3-D, roll-pitch-yaw, dogfight-style affair. The designers at Interplay clearly know and love their subject matter, as evidenced by the fine graphic detail (shrieking photon torpedoes act as moving light sources) and film-inspired touches (you can effectively emasculate enemy ships by shearing off their engine nacelles with phaser fire). Starfleet Academy promises to be the flagship of Interplay's successful Star Trek line of games - assuming we're ever allowed to play it.
