Klingon Honor Guard

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Review: Klingon Honor Guard

Some old-hand Trek fans remember fondly the original Klingons-the likes of Kang and Kor. They were proud, brave, and quite devious in their pursuit of empire. The single-minded preoccupation with honor and one-dimensional strategizing came later when The Next Generation (TNG) series started to build out the Worf character. Klingon Honor Guard is a child of that latter-day Empire.

A largely successful assassination attempt has been perpetrated on the Klingon High Council. Chancellor Gowron has barely survived. An elite division of warriors known as the Honor Guard are tasked with protecting him and seeking out the perpetrators. Players come into the game as initiates to the guard, who are then ordered into a cat-and-mouse succession of missions-uncovering information and suspects, as well as slaughtering countless accomplices.

This plot is thematically true to the Klingon Civil War cliffhanger episodes that were a highlight of TNG. The Honor Guard itself is a new creation for the purposes of the game.

While the cut-scene intro quite nicely embellishes Klingon tradition and history, there is little to involve players in the concept of being a Klingon once the game starts. Sure, there is an evil-laugh sound-bite that plays when a D'k Tahg knife is selected; and throwaway one-liners that'd make Schwarzenegger proud abound. But KHG is just a slightly different take on a first-person shooter, with little to set it apart from the rest.

The Unreal engine powers KHG, but little of what you see will make you ooh and ahh. In fact, quite a few maps are overly straightedged and angular without the unique level design that saved Jedi Knight. The same goes for NPC models. Many seem too simple and unarticulated compared to what we saw was possible in Unreal.

Some things are done very well: prison levels that throw you into a chaotic melee and force you to run from one ward to the next hacking and slicing Klingons, Andorians, and Nausicans; warriors running to the bodies of dead comrades and letting out a funeral howl; the spirit of a dead Klingon rushing past you moments after you've killed him; the emphasis on melee weapons; and the enemy AI that circles you in-close effectively and makes it damn hard to get a kill.

But play it for a while and what you come away with is a feeling that this game needed more time. Often the AI is stupid. Far off adversaries never close the distance once you start plinking them from afar. Guard Beasts (dogs) make every effort to attack you, deep canyons or deathly frigid rivers notwithstanding. Targs look like supremely ludicrous hog dogs. Sound was muddy on high-end Cambridge SoundWorks and standard Altec Lansing speaker systems. Preanimated cut-scenes just as often crash your 450MHz Pentium II as run at all. There's no joystick toggle in the options list. The manual says all direct-input compatible sticks will work, but KHG failed to recognize both a SideWinder 3D Pro and a Gamestick 14, let alone support FP Gaming's Assassin 3D trackball-all of which are supported in Unreal.

KHG provides some good moments, and multiplayer games over LANs can be a lot of fun Bat'telh to Bat'telh (let's not go near Unreal's wonky Internet code, which wasn't changed a bit for KHG)-but this game won't fully satisfy either TNG fans or first-person shooter fans. There's just not enough personality or unique gameplay to make it the winner it could've been with more time.-- George Chronis / GamePro