KLINGON SOUND BYTES
A Review of Star Trek: Klingon
by Nathan Bruinooge
Star Trek: Klingon follows in the tradition of SSI's Star Trek Omnipedia and the ST:TNG Technical Manual. It provides information on the Klingon language and culture, with a strong emphasis on graphics and sound. Too much of an emphasis there, perhaps, at the expense of content. It comes in two parts: Immersion Studies and the Klingon Language Lab.
The Language Lab is the most interesting part of ST:K, and has much to offer for those interested in learning Klingon. It has all the trappings of real language labs--vocab lessons in eight different categories, with accompanying pictures, Klingon-English and English-Klingon quizzes, and a complete phoneme pronunciation guide. Each of the words is pronounced in Klingon, and in addition there's a "tutor" function where you can hear and see Gowron (the Head of the High Council himself!) pronounce the word for you. The "more" function will often give additional linguistic information about words, spoken by Marc Okrand, the inventor of the Klingon language.
The most ballyhooed function of the language lab is voice recognition, available for those with microphones. This allows for actual pronunciation practice of all the Klingon words supported in the database. Unfortunately, the program is extremely picky, and slight mispronunciations may not register with the Lab at all. Unless you pronounce a different Klingon word by accident, that is--in that case, a voice clarifies for you just where you missed, and helps you along toward that perfect guttural twang.
A broad name like "Star Trek: Klingon" and an impressive 3-CD set lead to some pretty high expectations, but there are two things that ST:K is definitely not. First, the Language Lab in no way provides for actual Klingon sentence construction and development, grammar, verb conjugation, etc. It is purely a morpheme-level vocabulary and pronunciation guide. Second, ST:K is _not_ an encyclopedia of Klingon knowledge and culture. Klingon historical events, customs, and operas are alluded to and discussed and demonstrated in brief, but nowhere are there detailed textual descriptions. Indeed, there are no paragraphs of text in ST:K at all.
Immersion Studies is an ambitious project. It's an entirely filmed, first-person holodeck walkthrough of events in the life of Pok (you), a young Klingon becoming a man and avenging the death of his father. It's an interactive movie, but just barely--at 30 or so junctions in the course of the story, you're called upon to make a choice. Failure takes you back a minute or so in the story, and you're allowed to choose again until you get it right. The plot is entirely linear. Fortunately, you can stop the story at any point and range the cursor over the screen, getting spoken information about the many objects and people in the room.
Immersion Studies is an ambitious project. It's an entirely filmed, first-person holodeck walkthrough of events in the life of Pok (you), a young Klingon becoming a man and avenging the death of his father. It's an interactive movie, but just barely--at 30 or so junctions in the course of the story, you're called upon to make a choice. Failure takes you back a minute or so in the story, and you're allowed to choose again until you get it right. The plot is entirely linear. Fortunately, you can stop the story at any point and range the cursor over the screen, getting spoken information about the many objects and people in the room.
All this would be far more encouraging, however, if ST:K's "System Requirements" weren't out-and-out lies. On my 486dx2/66 with 12 MB of RAM, graphics were slow and choppy, with the sound only marginally connected to the movement of people's mouths. When restoring from saved games, I'd often have to endure 30 seconds or more of screen blankness while the characters' voices continued obliviously along. The Pentium speed that SSI recommends should definitely be viewed as a requirement, and a high-end Pentium will be needed to utilize the "enhanced audio" version of Immersion Studies.
At the end of the day, for all its interest, Star Trek: Klingon is just another example of multimedia whistles and bells overtaking real content. Information on the Klingon Empire is out there, and, given SSI's close connections to Paramount for this project, readily at hand. A Klingon Encyclopedia probably would have been far more interesting to Klingon fans and wannabees, but this is not that. What we're left with is Klingon Sound Bytes--"immersion" amounts to tidbits of scattered information, gradually accumulated. Nothing that's new to anyone who's kept up with Star Trek in all its television manifestations. Die-hard Klingon fans will find ST:K an amusing romp through familiar territory, but anyone genuinely interested in learning the Klingon way will be better served elsewhere.
Gamer's Zone Scorecard
| Product: |
Star Trek: Klingon |
| Company: |
Simon & Schuster Interactive
|
| Cost: |
$69.99 |
System Requirements:
As listed: Windows 3.1, 30 MB HD space, SVGA,
Soundblaster 16-bit sound, 486/66 and 8 MB RAM. Actual requirements higher
(see review).
Breakdown:
Fun Factor 2
Graphics 4
Sound 4
Interface 2
Replayability 2
Overall Score:
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