It's no surprise Unreal got a great following. While the original was not much more than a $40 technology demo, the offsprings tend to usually surpass the ancestors. I'm still amazed at what Raven did to Heretic. But... Klingon Honor Guard falls short, in my view, of surpassing its technology demo ancestor. The single-player play is uneventful to say the least, and the system requirements feel even higher than Unreal's. At least Unreal ran fine in some environments on my machine.

But to the point. The graphics in KHG are great. Which is to be expected - considering how much it's based on the Unreal engine - and Microprose is no Raven. I'm surprised some of the file names were renamed - otherwise I'd think this was a great level design strapped on to the original Unreal. Even the file extensions are the same. Even the directories are the same. What happened to innovation? But then again, I suppose the average stereotypical user (according to companies) thinks a CD tray is a cupholder, so he wouldn't go around looking for 'extensions' in files. They're all off in Explorer, anyway. But that's minor.

Where I'd really like to complain is in the speed department. At first, back in the original's days, I thought my computer was just way too obsolete to play the new, hit games. Then Shogo: MAD came out, and I realized it wasn't. In my humble view, the graphics in Shogo are better than Unreal (and KHG by extension) in many places. And they're not slower, either. The graphics in Shogo feel more refined, polished - some environments feel like AutoCAD models that were designed for a real building. There's a feeling of peace and quiet in them. Ying and yang, so to say. In KHG, everything feels raw. The lights don't give the scene a slight presence of a lighted object to direct the way shadows are projected. It's a *light*, and you better notice it. Oh, you didn't? Hey, here's another one, and this one is more like a floodlight - you can't really see anything around, just white, white and more white. (Or green, green and green - or any other color used, for that matter). Water? No, it's a scrolling, bump-mapped texture. Revere it. And so forth. Things have an unnatural, forced-on look on them - as to, well, demonstrate the fancy 3D accelerator technology. And in Shogo, enemies look like enemies - it helps that they had no TV show to stick to, of course. In KHG, Klingon faces are mapped onto the models, and... the results are horrifying. At far range, you can tell you're fighting a Klingon. At close range, some of their faces (I suppose it's the older, more mature Klingons) look like a bloody mess of hair, blood and black stuff. Pretty sad, really. I think they should've modeled the faces, too - it couldn't possibly have been any worse than this. And another argument to support the 'raw eyecandy' one... how is it so that when you fire an energy weapon at a wall the blast becomes a light source? Last time I checked, a phaser doesn't leave glowing goo on walls, and neither does a Romulan disrupter, nor a Klingon one.

The gameplay is okay. The enemies don't come running for you, they just sit in the corner and shoot you. If you move so that there's a corner of, say, a cliff between you and them, they'll shoot the cliff. Want another direct parallel with Unreal? There's a mine level, where you make your way through the mines, and the oppressed minority of the miners actually comes to your help sometimes - though pickaxes don't work well against disrupters, as they tend to find out fast.

And now that I'm at it... what's the story of this game? I mean, sure, we've all heard that Gowron's almost been assassinated, and so forth - but I won't believe all those levels you go through are infested with bloodthirsty traitor Klingons. There's something fishy about that. I mean, all you do is run around killing Klingons. And that ain't fun - there's only so much you can take. Oh yeah, and you're flicking switches, hunting for keycards and (now this is innovation - anyone thought of this?) digital palm imprints, which happen to be sitting on top of desks waiting to be picked up. And you thought writing passwords on Post-It notes and sticking them to the monitor was bad.

The weapon array is, unfortunately, more of the same. A welcome exception is the Daktagh, which is a dagger you can either swing, thrust, sweep or throw. Throwing Daktaghs is very cool, since usually an enemy can be taken out with a single thrown Daktagh - but at range, for some reason if thrown at close range, the enemy is usually just wounded. The other weapons are the pistol, flamethrower, trilithium rocket launcher, cannon, grenade launcher, rifle, disrupter and a Batleth. I'm not sure what they look like, though, since I was unable to cheat my way into seeing them, so I was forced to read the klingon.u file - and that's as much info as I could find in there. Hopefully the Flamethrower is fun. The Batleth sure is - check Cruze's description of it. And the pistol... the pistol is a 110% copy of the Unreal first weapon. It fires precisely the same way, recharges precisely the same way, and if that were not enough, it fires a secondary discharge that takes slightly more ammo but does more damage. Funny thing is, the Disrupter works precisely the same way - but seems to fire somewhat faster, and has more ammo. Up to the secondary discharge. Point? No idea. I suppose coming up with original weapon ideas is pretty hard these days. More kudos to Monolith, then.

Sound effects are, to say the least, cheesy. The likes of 'I am the hand of Kahless, I am Death!', 'This won't hurt... much.' and an evil-sounding 'Heh heh heh heh' plague your fun, endeavoring to uproot it and destroy it. Sure, they're said in the Klingon voices we so love and cherish, but couldn't they at least say it in tlhIngan Hol? At least most of us wouldn't understand how corny it sounds, and maybe appreciate it. Maybe even quote it, until someone knowledgeable in tlhIngan Hol ridicules us. Other sounds are 'usual' (am I using this word too much?). Weapon blasts, enemies growling, et cetera.

The fun in the game, in my view, anyhow, is limited to throwing the Daktagh around. The physics of it are pretty neat, and the way it ends up in the ceiling or under the stairs, or anywhere else where you can't find it is pretty neat - and completely believable, by the Chaos theory, that states that the most useful item will always displace itself so that it's furthest from its owner at any point in time. And some of the enemies are neat, too - case at point: the ones in the Ice level, that take stones and throw them at you, or the AI Klingons. That's very neat. I suppose I shouldn't ask, though, where they get the stones - looks like flat ground to me. But that's minor.

Usually, 3D shooters are infinitely more fun with friends than alone. Few exceptions - Jedi Knight and the ubiquitous Shogo, but not much else. The multiplayer in KHG isn't much different from Unreal's, or any other game, for that matter. Join a game/host a game, set up an arbitrary number of AI-controlled bots, get a few friends to join the fun, and watch the slideshow. Or, if you got the horsepower, enjoy the game. Some neat items make your travel through the Jeffries' tubes more fun - such as a stealth suit, an antigrav belt, or a special combat armor (though not sure what its use is).

Overall, KHG isn't a game you'd want to play like you may have wanted to play Jedi Knight. Or then again, perhaps this is precisely your kind of game - depends if you want a plot and a refined engine, or no plot, lots of 'Iw (blood) and fellow Klingons to annihilate - then suit yourself. I admit this might be infinitely more fun on a P2-450, with 128MB RAM and an SLI Voodoo2, since you could increase the resolution, texture detail, sound quality, and so forth - but that's insane. I was disappointed that Need For Speed 3 required a 12MB Vooodoo 2 to show a -dashboard- - please, I can't possibly recommend this game for anyone but the diehard Klingon fanatics, or people with the right hardware, or people that just must try all the latest in 3D shooters. It could've been a good effort, and it does have some neat and original features - but its faults haul it down.

"batlh biHeghjaj, HurDaq tu'HomIraHvetlh."

Highs: Interesting idea, some clever weapon choices, level design suits theme, is well-executed (in most places, anyway), the font throughout used throughout the game is really wicked;

Lows: Ludicrous system requirements, nonexistent storyline, AI is pretty unimaginative at times, some of the models look cheesy (like wolves... or dogs... or pigs?);

Bottom line: Okay game, with some weight to it, but not really worth playing unless you're an absolute diehard fan of the Klingon style.

Graphics: 15/20
Sound: 9/15
Gameplay: 18/30
Fun Factor: 13/20
Multi-Player: 5/5
Overall Impression: 6/10

Klingon Honor Guard is another title in the long list of 1st person shooters quickly saturating the PC entertainment market. The distinctly different playing environment of a Klingon homeworld is fairly detailed and the harsh locales of the Klingon landscape a nice change from the standard issue Quake and Unreal settings. Some of the unfortunate lows of the game include a non-existent storyline, and the cheesy 'only one way to get from here to there and you got to find the button' scenario. (More reminiscent of the Duke Nukem era) Very little in the way of exploration is available as you are led from one gatelock to the next on the path to your mission objectives.

Graphics: 16/20

At the risk of starting world war 3 over the age old Quake vs. Unreal engine controversy, I will say that I tend to lean towards the Unreal faction and appreciated the way it was used to generate a Klingon atmosphere in KHG. Distinctly different designs of structures, doors, lights etc... all go a long way in providing you with a true feeling for the harsh, servile environment of the Klingons.

To get the most out of the graphical engine, you must go to the advanced options section in the menu and choose display settings. Here you have a long list of various filtering and detail selections that will enable you to make full use of the features in the game. Set incorrectly, (or, as in my case, the default settings did not appreciate my 3Dfx setup and 2D video card) the entire game takes on a different feel as dark areas turn pitch black, details get pixelized and animations become blocky and unrealistic. All the standard forms of 2D, 3D and D3D are supported through the advanced options, but I highly recommend a 3Dfx card to take full advantage of the display engine.

Sound: 11/15

For some unknown reason, MicroProse really makes you work to get the best effects out of Honor Guard in both the video and the sound department. Once again, a trip to the advanced options menu is highly suggested to tweak out the sound settings for your particular audio card. Disappointing at first, I found with the addition of reverb and surround that it made a whole world of difference to effects in the game. Other selections include playback kHz, number of channels and various additional features.

Gameplay: 19/30

The objectives in Honor Guard are a throwback to the old Duke Nukem days. Run around, push the buttons, open a door to get to the next area, push the next button, etc. etc.. all the while avoiding the annoying hindrance of some trigger happy bad guy, soon to be a part of history, as he becomes the focus of your target practice. Controls in the KHG engine are not bad, mouse and keyboard work well together and all controls can be customized through the options menu. Unfortunately, one of the big downsides in the game is the complete lack of urgency as you walk about. No time constraints, little in the line of random patrols, that, coupled with the your immortality (in that invariably, after dying, you restart the level with all your previous equipment rather than just a blaster) don't make the player try very hard to stay alive.

Rather than having ultra-aggressive foes, Klingon Honor Guard is plagued by poor snipers (who fire like clockwork about every 6 seconds allowing good use of timed counter-fire) and either very brave or very stupid close range attackers with little regard for self preservation. Unless, of course, they are the run-away version of the AI, in which case, after being shot once, they will head for the nearest cover and politely wait for you to walk up and finish the job. That said, getting trapped by 3 angry guards will take every bit of side-stepping, trigger slapping brutality you can muster. You can't just rely on your blasters though, because ammunition in Honor Guard is scarce, and don't be surprised if you find yourself getting the majority of your kills with the dreaded D'Ktahg (dagger) a valuable and very powerful close range weapon that can also be thrown.

Your opponents in Honor Guard are somewhat limited. According to MicroProse, there are only 11 distinct types of foes for you to battle which can get somewhat tiresome. 8 different weapons are available for you to use in the game, covering a wide spectrum from the standard Klingon fare to some very unique and more interesting specimens. The Ding-Pach, for example, shoots a very large 3 bladed boomerang at an incredible speed that, when in a confined area, will make mincemeat out of even the toughest of foes.

Fun Factor: 14/20

For your average 'Trekkie', I can see an attraction to KHG as it very effectively drops you into life on the Klingon home world. For the average gamer, as an entertainment title, Klingon Honor Guard is stuck somewhere between Duke Nukem 3D and Unreal. Having to completely configure all the advanced options to match your hardware is a bother, and the lack of more than 1 solution to a level leaves the re-playability factor fairly low. Same creatures, same spots, same shots.

Multi-Player: 5/5

Done through the Unreal engine, Honor Guard supports all of the original Unreal multi options including join, host and dedicated server. Multiplayer is a great way to test out some of the more unique Klingon weapons and allows you to pit your fighting skills with those of your friends. Team play, co-op and deathmatch are all supported, as well as an interesting feature called botmatch which allows you to spawn computer controlled opponents with a far more superior AI than those in the game. These 'bots' wander through the ship killing both players and other bots alike. A great way to hone your multi skills offline.

Overall Impression: 7/10

Call it for what it is. KHG is MicroProse's shot at capitalizing on the Star Trek fanatics of the world. In that context, they haven't done so poorly, as the game does make use of actual Klingon actors' voices from ST-TNG. A good attempt at creating a Klingon world for our enjoyment, and some interesting weapons as well as exceptional lighting effects are the games highs, while poor plot development and a simplistic mission organization don't measure up to today's gaming requirements. If you are a Trekkie, and can overlook the need for some kind of plot, I expect you will find KHG most enjoyable.