Star Trek Gaming
 

In a bid to stop the bots being the only ones posting on the site...

I am very excited.
There is a new Star Trek game due out, any second now, called 'Star Trek: Tactical Assault'. It's released on two platforms, the DS and the PSP. The PSP has some fantastic graphics, while the DS has the whole Touch-screen way of playing. Personally I'm plumping for the DS. The game seems to be set in Kirks era, i.e. Original series ships. There are two main stories to play. The first is the Starfleet campaign which is set in 2284 (before The Wrath of Khan) while the other story is a Klingon one, set after the Khitomer Massacre of 2346. The game also has the whole 'pick a ship and death match with other ships for no reason' bit too, also playable over WIFI! Although the release date seems to be later this month of many sites, it seems to have come out already, at least in the USA. Europe players need to import it.
There are a few other trek games due out soon too. Star Trek: Encounters, is an arcade style shoot-em-up game, and takes ships and characters from all 5 Star Trek series, and looks rather fun, if not too deep. It's on the PS2 due out this month.
But the big gun is Star Trek: Legacy. A sort of Bridge Commander meets dominion wars type game due out on the Xbox 360 and PC (Though I'm guessing you'll need a super computer to run it). It looks really rather amazing and will be the first video game to feature the voice talents of the five starring captains from all five series - nice idea methinks. It's set in 3 different eras. Enterprise time, TOS, and the Next Gen which includes DS9 and Voyager. The story seemed to be about the Iconians from "Contagion"(TNG). The Borg assimilate the Iconian technology and it requires every captain from every era together to defeat the 'Iconian-Borg abomination'. But it seems the story has been rewritten to be cleverer and tie ever era together. Seems to be out next month.

Of course, I'm still waiting for the 'Holy Grail' Star trek gaming......Star Trek Online.....

Ciao

My only modern gaming system is a DS, so the only modern ST game I can play is Tactical Assault, but it's already on my Xmas wishlist. It looks like it'll be pretty cool. I hope it is.

As for past Star Trek games, I've always enjoyed Star Trek: Armada. I never played Armada 2, but it looks like it'd be good too. I enjoyed the Star Trek 25th anniversary game too, which had great stories as well as fun starship combat. I remember an old CGA Trek game for the computer, but hardly anything else about it.

I've played the 25th Anniversary a little, but my favorite Trek game is Starfleet Academy. A Final Unity is okay, but can get dull at times.

Armada is alway fun. Armada two builds on it, adding more ships, weapons, races and warp speed, which is quite clever. But it does suffer from the feeling that there is too much going on.....a sort of 'Too many cooks' you might say. And I'm really not sure where they got the designs for the borg ships from....most of them look like a collection of pipes....Weird.
BUT! I am looking forward to Tactical Assault. Whist I love Bridge Commander to bits, it does have the tendency to crash... every five minutes.

I don't believe I've ever played any Trek games as such. About the closest I've come to that sort of game are Homeworld and Star Control 2, both of which are pretty great games in of themselves.

Armada's all right. I wish I could find my disc of it...lost it the last time we moved the computer desk.

I'd agree. I man Armada does have some honess to god, shocking acting moments. Some truly terrible graphics moments. And a 'liberal' approch to physics (I've yet to see a object in space that after it's engines are disabled, starts spining rapidly).
But, at it's core, it's a pretty solid game. And the later levels have some fun ideas. (Spoilers) Like you controling the borg invasion of earth, then replaying it, but as the federation...Clever.
I think I'm gonna go play it now.

Oh yeah, rub it in. Thanks a lot. (Kidding) (Kinda)

Starfleet Battles. All the complexity of a computer game lovingly reproduced on paper, with a rules booklet heavier than most university textbook. Takes an hour to figure out how to fire a phaser, and another hour to figure out if you hit.

That, my friends, is real *gaming*.

No, I've never played it. Why do you ask?

SFCI-III. Especially III. Unfortunately, my disc broke, and I can't find a replacement anywhere :(

Star Control 2 rocks! I love that game.

The only Trek game I've played extensively is Birth of the Federation, which was terrific. I've watched my brothers play Armada and that seemed cool too. It's impressive that the Trek game license managed to become something halfway respectable -- for a long time (till Elite Force, probably), it was a joke. There were lots of Trek games, but they were all garbage.

Of course, that's almost always the way with licensed games. Any license has a genre, and that genre has always been done better by a game actually designed as such. No Lord of the Rings game can be the equal of Zelda, for example.

I liked Birth of the Federation, too. I'd also recommend the two Armada games, though they do have (at least the first) some strange bits pointed out in the fiver (Sovereign equal to a Borg Cube?). I can't think of any others; I don't like the genre Elite Force is in, so I can't really say I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't feel qualified to evaluate it.

I'm with Zeke. Liscenced games are almost always pretty terrible. There are a few exceptions, of course -- Goldeneye64 played a tremendous role in shaping all console FPS games to come. But that is a rare example.

If the reviews are outstanding, I might get it. But if you want a good "tactical assault" game on DS, I think StarFox would certainly be your better choice.

I own both portable systems. I'll keep an eye on the reviews, but there are almost certainly a dozen games I'd rather have for either.

I'd have to agree about licenced games. But Star Trek (And Buffy) games have their own special rules with me; I'm a bit to much of a fan. It's the same as the TV shows, as some friends pointed out to me. I'm happy to watch anything - film 45 minutes of static and call it Star Trek; I'd still give probley it 6 out of 10.
There's not too many Star Trek games, even less on the Consoles ands less still ones that let you control the star ships (Which I really enjoy). So I pretty much give blessing for anything that comes along!
The Voyager game I felt was rather good, it had problems yes, but nicely done. Except the end I think. I can't recall any Voyager episodes where Janeway takes half the crew to a station to do battle with a alien overlord and phasers him into nothing.... Not really the Starfleet way, eh?
But I'd probley go for Bridge Commander as my fav. It's a little thin and slow, but dones a good job of making you feel you're on a ship.

I own A Final Unity, and that does about as good a job of exploration, etc. in a Trek game as anything else. I mean, the different officers actually have different abilities and tools that only they can use. There's a mixture of diplomacy, exploration, and defense. Of course it has it's problems, just like all games.

I also object to the "let's turn everything into a first-person shooter" fad. Sure, I love Goldeneye 007 as much as anyone else, but for every Goldeneye you have a SpyKids or Power Rangers game.

Whoa! Unintentional pun!

Fantastic. Didn't even notice it the first time.

Of course, they left Nintendo. And took Perfect Dark. They can burn!

I also got the pun. I've noticed that unintentional puns tend to be funnier than intentional ones. Reminds me of the time that I commented that the Pillsbury Dough Boy was someone's role/roll model. It was a complicated setup, okay?

Bonus Points for someone who (off the top of your head!) knows the REAL name of the Pillsbury Dough Boy? PDB is more like his title, not his name.

Anyone else wish that they'd gotten the licensing rights to have the All Bonds option on Goldeneye?

Pop 'n' Fresh.

I thought everybody knew that.

Hate to admit it, but I don't see the pun. What is it?

Yup. Absolutely worthless thing to know, but where are we supposed to get material for fiver jokes if not for worthless things?

Suddenly I'm reminded of old commercials. Did anyone else know that one of the oldest continually running commercial is the "Tootsie Roll owl" one?

To return to the topic of "Star Trek Gaming," are there any ideas that people think would make great premeses for a Trek game? Here's mine:

The Orion Syndicate has taken over a Risa-like planet where you are vacationing. Since the planet is outside the Federation, you are the only officer on the planet and your only resources are a runabout and a sporadic commlink with Starfleet Command (the runabout in orbit can send and recieve signals most of the time, but the planet is going through a batch of nebular gas and it is only sporadically that it clears up enough for you to beam up/down or communicate with anyone). Since you were on vacation, no one knows you're an officer. Can you find enough evidence to arrest the Syndicate members?

While examining an Iconian gateway your team is suddenly attacked by Romulans who want to claim it as their own. Your ship has been destroyed and they've set up signal scramblers. Being hopelessly outnumbered, you are forced to jump through the gateway and gather reinforcements. Where will you end up? Will you find allies or enemies? Consider it a riff on Sliders if you must.

Your team has been sent to Trelane's world to examine the equipment he used to create such realistic illusions. Too bad one of your colleagues is half-Deltan and as such is slightly telepathic. The equipment is just a little beyond your understanding, and you set off a pulse that drives the Deltan insane. Driven mad a la McCoy in The City on the Edge of Forever, he activates a program that sends all of you into a simulation of seventeenth-century Earth. You don't know how to get out, so you have to do the distasteful: think like Trelane. What kind of hoops would he design to get out of a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illusions? The insane crewman has the off switch, so you have to track him down to turn it off. What's worse that that, you can't access your ship because of Trelane's scrambler, so where are you going to get food if everythings an illusion? Who's going to get the little food and water that you have?

Rare was the studio who made GoldenEye64.

Also, who's on first.

I didn't see it, either. Not surprising. ;)

Nice idea.

One I was thinking on was an MMOG playing as the dark side of each faction. Pre/parellel to early DS9, you can choose to be a member of Section 31, the Tal Shi'ar, the Obsidian Order et al. You are given missions against one another etc etc. You can climb the ranks, but also be demoted for doing badly. Your ultimate goal is to get to the top of the game - if you're Federation, to take Sloan's place, and from their, manipulate galactic politics, for the good of your empire, or to benefit yourself...