I am by no means a Trekkie, but I like Star Trek, specifically the Next Generation. Over the years, I have acquired an appreciation for the original series, but not for anything after the Next Generation. I look forward to Trek games, but I have been disappointed more times than I can count. So I bought Tactical Assault fearing the worst. Fortunately, the game is not at all bad. I think it represents an aspect of the franchise very well, and it is a very fun game.

This is a primarily arcade game, so the name is a bit misleading for people looking for a tactically deep game. The tactics in this game boil down to how you turn your ship with regards to the brightly colored shield segments, so it is more akin to a casual game in which you align objects to score points - in this case you align your strongest shield segment to the enemy's weakest, and you win.

Not that it is a bad thing. The 2D combat nicely focuses the action to the shield calisthenics and does not burden the player with the intricacies of 3D combat in space. I read in other reviews how having the combat 2D diminishes the experience - I could not disagree more. I think that was a good decision as it streamlines the controls of the ship and makes the combat be about what it is designed to be: out-shielding your opponent.

I thought the mission and story structure was good enough to propel you through the game, although I was disappointed when the Federation campaign ended after the 15th mission- just as I had upgraded my crew sufficiently. I did not feel like starting anew with an "inexperienced" Klingon crew when the Klingon campaign unlocked. For me, upgrading the crew was a major motivator to advance in the game, and arriving at a point where I felt I had the best crew and running out of missions to use them on was really cheesy.

After the last mission, you are free to visit any other mission that you already completed and keep upgrading your crew, but you are forced to use whatever ship you played the mission with originally, which is also rather disappointing - you don't want to go back to a lesser ship once you have commanded a dual-layer shield protected heavy cruiser.

I cannot understand why they didn't make at least twice more missions for this game, as it requires no level art (c'mon, its basically a few rocks and the occasional sphere), and no complicated scripting maneuvers. I really felt like I did not get what I paid for in this game.

You will read about branching storylines, diplomacy, changing the outcome by saying the right thing at the right time, but don't believe it. There is some attempt at making the game more interesting by introducing dialog in a few spots, but 99% of the cases you can only say one thing, or the choices don't matter. The storyline dynamic is pretty flat, and on missions you can feel the triggered events and you can learn which action from you triggers what: For example, in one mission scanning the system triggers a Romulan attack. You can fly to the place where the Romulan ship appears before you trigger the scan, and the ship will always dutifully appear there, right after your scan. 

You can hail vessels and scan areas, but these are completely underused in the game. You can only hail people to greet them, or read some important story development. Forget about hailing a vessel that you are about to destroy and asking it to surrender- I wanted to do that a couple of times, especially in the mission where you are asked to destroy an outlawed federation captain. Also you cannot hail people to attempt diplomacy- the cornerstone of the Star Trek universe. Overall, this feature is basically a medium to drive the story forward.

Scanning is even more useless, as you never use it in a non-trivial way in a mission. It would have been cool to have a mission in which you are misled to believe a Starbase is safe and you have to discover that it isn't by scanning it at the right time. Also, I expected that scanning systems in which you have combat missions would give you some hints on how to gain an upper hand against your adversary- like grabbing momentum by performing a slingshot around a planet, or luring an enemy near an unstable asteroid and then detonating it with a torpedo. 

The enemy challenge was good and there was a variety of enemies to fight against. There is no better feeling than flying past a Warbird and releasing a photon torpedo at just the right time to deliver the killing blow. The introduction of the Romulans halfway into the campaign was timed well and really paid off.

Overall, this game was interesting for me, but short and with a lot of missed chances for greatness. The problem with Trek games in general is that they focus on the wrong things about the Trek universe- the ship-to-ship combat, the hand-to-hand combat, or the adventure of being in an episode in which something happens. Trek was always about human relationships, social commentary and moral values - with space and Space Cruisers being just a backdrop.