December 3, 1999
Web posted at: 4:11 p.m. EST (2111 GMT)

By D. Ian Hopper
CNN Interactive Technology Editor

(CNN) -- If you're a "Star Trek" fan, it's hard to resist a title based on the series. It doesn't matter if you recall the horrendous full-motion video "Star Trek: Borg," or the plodding "Starfleet Academy," or the bad joke that was "Star Trek: Pinball." Resistance is futile.

Nevertheless, you must resist -- or at least resist long enough until "Star Trek: Hidden Evil" is in the bargain bin.

"Hidden Evil" is based in the "Next Generation" universe, and Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner lend their voices to Picard and Data respectively. The game is an adventure with plenty of action sequences, with the player in the role of a human raised as a Vulcan known as Sovok. (His backstory is mentioned in the manual, but has little to do with the game. Functionally, he's a Vulcan.)

Being a Vulcan, Sovok gets to use the cool Vulcan nerve pinch to knock out enemies quickly and quietly. It's not at all difficult to use, and made even easier by the fact that no one seems to raise an alarm at any of the unconscious bodies you leave around. But some friendly imp must drag them away, because they disappear when you return to the area. "Star Trek" fans are used to suspending disbelief at key points, so this shouldn't be much trouble to take in stride.

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In addition to the pinch, Sovok can also use a phaser, tricorder, communicator and anything else he stumbles upon. The tricorder is used well in the game and could have been made a little more important. The phaser targets enemies automatically when used and after some practice is a good tool. The comm badge, it seems, must be meant to give a sense of partnership with Picard and Data. In practice, the badge is used automatically to give plot direction but isn't very helpful when used by choice. Your senior officers are always conveniently out of range, busy, or impatient that you bothered to check with them.

The tools, as well as the in-game graphics and front-end menu systems, work well to maintain the immersion of the Star Trek universe.

The movies are shown as cutscene animations, but are very low-resolution and look horrible unless you install them to the hard drive. That's a large investment of space just for movies, and there's no way to run them at high resolution off the CD no matter how fast your CD-ROM drive is.

The game also asks which renderer (Glide, Direct3D, Software) to use every single time you start, another very odd situation. There are also no visual options, either for resolution or to turn eye candy on or off. Gamers used to the flashier graphics of recent games may be disappointed with "Hidden Evil," though they are functional and don't detract from the scenery.

The largest problem with "Hidden Evil" is, sadly, the gameplay itself. Adventure games typically have puzzles in addition to the basics of "go there, do that." The puzzles, which are really confined to making alien transporters work, are on the level of a 3-year-old. A child's toy of pushing pegs of the right size into appropriate holes is just as challenging and very similar to the actual "puzzles."

The entire game is extremely easy, provided you can get past the action scenes -- which aren't all that difficult either with the medical aids you find scattered around. It's hard to get lost wandering around the corridors, and while on the Enterprise the tricorder works as a map. Even in the final mission, the use of a certain tool make destroying the "Hidden Evil" itself a breeze.

Given that there are no difficulty levels, there's no replayability after you finish the game -- which can easily be done in less than 5 hours. It will just take up shelf space after that.

It's almost fitting that the game takes place after the "Insurrection" movie, and uses the same world. That movie was criticized as seeming too much like just a two-hour TV episode. Unfortunately, you won't spend much more time with this game.

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