In the role of Ensign Sovok, you join Captain Picard and Data on an expedition to the Ba'Ku planet. While carrying out some boring research tasks Picard stumbles upon a discovery that could reveal some important history of the Ba'Ku. Unfortunately the Romulans have their sticky fingers everywhere and plan to steal the technology deep within the Ba'Ku planet.

The rest of the title leads the player on an adventure through ancient structures, research laboratories, and even the Enterprise. The plot itself is constructed much like a Star Trek episode. There is the fair share of plot advancement but very little mystery aside from the unknown technology deep within the planet. This story structure is actually very compatible with the play style of this title.

Sovok has a the standard fare of Star Trek doodads to help him through the game. The coolest item has to be the tricorder. As a person who admittedly watched Star Trek, I spent a good fifteen minutes just walking around scanning rooms with my tricorder to see what I could find. Items like hyposprays, phasers, disrupters, as well as ancient artifacts found along the way are also at the players disposal.

The gameplay challenges can be a little rough. One of the hardest parts of the title for me was right at the beginning. Ensign Sovok is required to sneak up on a holographic Romulan and apply the old Vulcan Nerve Pinch. This ended up being very difficult since the keyboard controls are just not precise enough to really get a handle on the situation.

Other challenges include some relatively simple puzzles, which in no way can compare to the puzzles found in Star Trek 25th Anniversary. Most are really easy to pick up on almost right away. Even with the exception of a select few that present a real challenge, they aren't really structured in a comfortable rising degree of difficulty.

As far as the presentation of the environment and the characters within, I really can't complain too much. The player and all NPCs are composed of polygons while the backgrounds are all beautifully pre-rendered backdrops. Some of the nicest ones are in the ruins under the surface of the Ba'Ku planet. The puzzles and items are laid out in these environments pretty well too, and a player can usually pick things out from the background. Unfortunately the main problem that has always been with most pre-rendered backgrounds is still present here. With everything so static, the inflexibility of the situation or task at hand can sometimes be maddening. Pre-rendered backgrounds are usually acceptable under turn-based battle situations or just for pure exploration. All the battles in Star Trek: Hidden Evil take place in real-time, which leaves the player trying to run for cover in a beautiful backdrop with poorly defined barriers.

What this means is during a lot of the battles Ensign Sovok is running in place against the outer boundary of the area trying to find the proper path to the exit or escape route. This poor battle environment is compensated for with a decent auto-aim system for ensign Sovok's phaser. Since most of the battle encounters unfortunately don't require too much thought on what to kill first, and where to hit it, the perspective doesn't at all interfere with selective aiming. In short, the battles become shoot-fests that lack any real strategy other than the avoidance of a disrupter blast through the skull.

Being an adventure game, it shouldn't require huge amounts of well thought out action sequences, right? Well for the most part, adventure games have never been really dependant on the action, since they usually depended on plot and mystery. Star Trek Hidden Evil makes an attempt at sincere action sequences though, and since they are pulled off in a sort of half-thought out manner, they tend to really fill the game with weak spots.