Star Trek: Infinite Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Boldly going where no one has gone before in video games has always felt more like a mild walk instead of a trek. Other Star Trek games have not been terrible, but they’ve not exactly set the world on fire either. Star Trek: Infinite looks to give Trekkies what they’ve always wanted – a true Star Trek video game, catering to all fans of the pre-2000s TV series.

Nimble Giant Entertainment has taken Paradox Interactive’s self-developed 4X game Stellaris and given it a coating of Star Trek goodness, with sterling results. Addressing the elephant in the room, yes, Star Trek: Infinite is in many ways a reskin on Stellaris, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Stellaris has built and grown from its own humble beginnings into something quite wonderful, and now that greatness is expanded upon in a different way in Infinite.

It’s not all the same, however. There’s no creating your species. Instead you can pick from four set factions, each with their own style of play which will be immediately recognisable to fans. Of course, you have the do-gooder The United Federation of Planets, their mission, to explore strange new worlds… to seek out new life; new civilisations… sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Then there’s the Klingon Empire, essentially a feudal race who love the glory of battle. The final two major powers are the sneaky and secretive Romulans and the cultured yet oppressive Cardassians.

The aim of the game is to either achieve victory by Galactic Hegemony or a Triumph of Diplomacy. Your economic strength, technology level, military power, number of systems, number of colonies and number of populations are all combined into a score and whoever has the highest score by the year 2646 is the winner by Galactic Hegemony. Pretty