Star Trek: Hidden Evil

We were always going to be a bit wary of a game that took its inspiration from the latest Star Trek film. Insurrection disappointed all but the most indiscriminate fans, the ones who'd have been just as happy if the whole crew had farted and burped a selection of Rod Stewart songs for 90 minutes. Exactly the same ones who would enjoy Hidden Evil. The game pretends to be some kind of action/adventure in which you play an ensign at the orders of Picard, the only character from the series in it besides Data. Sadly, the pseudo - Resident Evil action is pathetic and the puzzles belong in a My First CD-ROM children series. The whole thing has been programmed in a half-arsed kind of way (no mouse support - even in the menu - you can't bypass dialogue, there are no options of any kind, and you can forget about changing the resolution) and the plot is just plain boring.

Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner read their lines with the desperation of actors about to fire their agents, so they must have been only too glad to discover how mercifully short it all is. There are nine missions, where you basically act as the captain's dog: go fetch this, go find that. If you try to communicate with him he barks back: "You have your orders", and if there's anything worth telling him, the game does it automatically. At one stage he's going to send you on an exciting space shuttle mission, only for Data to butt in and decide he'd be the best one to do it, leaving you searching for seeds with your tricorder.

Thankfully, this year will also see the release of the most promising Trek game ever, and probably one of the games of the year - Voyager: Elite Force. This, on the other hand, is pure evil, and does absolutely nothing to hide it.