Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Overview
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary is a DOS game that adapts the characters and aesthetic of the 1960s television series. Its structure is episodic, presenting a sequence of distinct missions that begin with the Enterprise being dispatched to investigate a planetary disturbance.
Gameplay is divided between starship operations and planetary exploration. On the bridge, the player controls Captain Kirk and issues orders to specialized crew members for functions like navigation, scanning, and ship systems management. Space combat involves direct manual piloting of the Enterprise in three dimensions, utilizing phasers and limited torpedoes.
The core adventure experience occurs during landing party missions. After beaming down, Kirk explores environments in a side scrolling perspective, using a context sensitive interface to look, speak, and interact with objects and crew. He carries an inventory and tools like a phaser and communicator. Puzzles often require utilizing the unique skills of different crew members, and the game encourages and rates players on non violent solutions and thorough exploration.
While the Enterprise's role is primarily exploratory, combat is a possible outcome in both the ship simulator and adventure sections. The game was released somewhat after the actual anniversary it references, but faithfully incorporates the series' setting and characters into its hybrid design of point and click adventure and first person space simulation.
