Trek Computer Games

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-06-28 08:35pm

"Rites" and the old TNG SNES game rocked.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2003-06-29 12:23am

Elite force is good, as is Elite force 2.

Armarda is ok and A Final Unity was a great game however my personal preferences is Birth of the Federation, I always thought that was a great game especially in MP, I enjoyed playing my enemies off one another whilst he Federation border expanded in all directions (I used to fund a Klingon/Romulan war against the Ferengi, thus taking out my two main enemies - great fun

)

Equinox2003 · Post by **Equinox2003** » 2003-06-29 12:26am

Star Trek:Borg was good. The game is live action, with Q leading you
back in time to the battle of Wolf 359. You have several points at
which you have to decide what to do. Your choice determines what
will happen in the game.
Q, along the way offers you advice or taunts.
It can be challenging at times, and I thought it was good.
It comes with a bonus disc which includes "The Picard Dossier" which
is a report on the Borg.

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2003-06-29 12:44am

Macross wrote:I like the Starfleet Command series. Its based on the Starfleet Battles tabletop game. Its got a lot more depth then other Starship combat games.

Amen, brother.

SFCIII is so watered down from the other ones. JESUS! DAMN YOU ACTIVISION!

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2003-06-29 03:56am

Ascii Trek, was very mod able, I believe we had Orions, Klingons, Romulons, Tholians and ISD's running around by the end of the 1970's.

...........................
....*......e.............
*........................
..........................
..........^.........K...
.............R............

Victory Stardestroyer is hit for 5000 points of damage shields reduced .01%

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2003-06-29 04:45am

Does anyone know about the forthcoming game 'Shattered Universe' which takes place in the evil Mirror TOS timeline?

Embracer Of Darkness · Post by **Embracer Of Darkness** » 2003-06-29 10:58am

YT300000 wrote:Was ST: Borg any good?

HAHAHAHA!!! 'Star Trek: Borg' was exactly like 'Star Trek: Klingon' (as-in, just as awful). It's not really a game, but a movie where every so often you make a lame choice and continue the movie.

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-06-30 01:27am

SolidSnake wrote:
Macross wrote:I like the Starfleet Command series. Its based on the Starfleet Battles tabletop game. Its got a lot more depth then other Starship combat games.
Amen, brother.

SFCIII is so watered down from the other ones. JESUS! DAMN YOU ACTIVISION!

I'll third this.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-06-30 03:43am

SolidSnake wrote: SFCIII is so watered down from the other ones. JESUS! DAMN YOU ACTIVISION!

SFC was a fregging JOKE

I wanted turn based, but it all ended up being butchered
by real time, and was full of shit.

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2003-06-30 03:32pm

MKSheppard wrote:
SolidSnake wrote: SFCIII is so watered down from the other ones. JESUS! DAMN YOU ACTIVISION!
SFC was a fregging JOKE

I wanted turn based, but it all ended up being butchered
by real time, and was full of shit.

It's sorta turn based!

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-06-30 05:32pm

Klingon Academy, IMO, was a very well done game, in spite of the ridiculous demands that Interplay put on it. (they demanded they re-use the Starfleet Command engine, which introduced a lot of headaches) Frankly, I found it to have an excellent atmosphere (swooping down upon unsuspecting Federation starships has never felt better) as well as decent combat and control. (Wow, my port/starboard phaser banks actually fire on other ships ON THEIR OWN when I'm not directly controlling them!!!)

It's also MUCH more of a simulation than Bridge Commander will ever be... in KA, you can allocate more power to specific shields (port, starboard), to different systems (Port phasers are down... hmm, LETS STOP FEEDING THEM POWER!), as well as even an ECM component to battle.

Bridge Commander gives you a whopping four choices of "Engines" "Weapons" "Shields" and "Sensors". WOW. I AM SO IMPRESSED.

For an arcade-y feel, and for visual effects (some of the lighting effects are OVERdone, IMO), BC wins. But for something closer to a simulation, KA wins. And hell... I think KA still has prettier backgrounds and planets than the boring shit of BC.

There's other flaws and features in both games, but suffice to say that Totally Games fucked up in several areas (especially with regard to ship simulation... wtf was with having only 4 torpedos forward and only phasers on the saucer on the Galaxy?!?) that, frankly, they shouldn't have. Simply looking at what KA got right and got wrong should have allowed them to develop a superior game, but apparently they were too busy with making the phasers big and shiny (too big!) and incorporating ass-ugly damage modeling (voxels, ugh).

Starfleet Command is okay, although frankly I'd prefer a game that let you incorporate 3D manuevering.

There have been some really fun Star Trek games (Star Trek 25th Anniversary, among them IMO) but frankly, too many suffer from "creative interpretation". I don't want someone else's vision of Star Trek, I don't want shit "rebalanced" for my own damn good, I want to be able to reenact battles from the movies/series (among other things)!

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2003-06-30 05:38pm

Klingon Academy was pretty sweet. If only they'd redo Starfleet Academy. I'd buy it.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2003-06-30 07:03pm

25th Anniversary kicked ass, expecially when you get Spock high on Vulcan laughing gas.

HappyTarget · Post by **HappyTarget** » 2003-07-01 02:05am

For an arcade-y feel, and for visual effects (some of the lighting effects are OVERdone, IMO), BC wins. But for something closer to a simulation, KA wins. And hell... I think KA still has prettier backgrounds and planets than the boring shit of BC.

Out of the box, I agree with the background and planets being better in KA, and the simulation part of the game was much better in KA, but modded BC takes the cake as the absolute best visually game in the Trek franchise.

There's other flaws and features in both games, but suffice to say that Totally Games fucked up in several areas (especially with regard to ship simulation... wtf was with having only 4 torpedos forward and only phasers on the saucer on the Galaxy?!?) that, frankly, they shouldn't have. Simply looking at what KA got right and got wrong should have allowed them to develop a superior game, but apparently they were too busy with making the phasers big and shiny (too big!) and incorporating ass-ugly damage modeling (voxels, ugh).

Again, much of your gripes can be very easily fixed with a few downloads of mods. Damage modeling looks tons better if you grab one of the excellent modded damage skins.

http://www.bcfiles.com/screenshots/8/files2/7370_2.jpg

Galaxy is easily improved by getting a mod one:

http://www.bcfiles.com/file.info?ID=4104

Not only is she prettier than the stock one, her weapons fit is also far closer to canon, with every phaser array in place and active allong with her full photon capabilities.

While I agree that KA is a better game than BC, just going from the mods out there, BC never achieved it's real potential in the original release version. They dumbed it down to much rather than making it as close to canon as they could. And like you, I would have welcomed a more simulation feel than the arcade style gameplay we got, but we can always hope that that sort of thing gets incorperated in the sequel. Afterall, they have an engine now, just use it to make a better game in BC II.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-07-01 08:18pm

The visual potentials of BC are stunning, but the gameplay and mechanics are lacking.

I know about the mods. I've played with several of them, although frankly people need to start putting together packs of mods that one can install seamlessly and easily without worrying about some custom weapon that some mod thought would be h3llz l337 to incorporate. There needs to be more standardization a push to make it more welcoming to the fresh newbie.

Besides, that's another issue I had with Bridge Commander! It almost seemed at times as though the developers had decided "We don't need to do something they can mod in later". Like with the truly abysmal number of ships that come with the original game. Klingon Academy had dozens of ships, despite a damage modelling system that was supposedly a great deal harder to incorporate. (yet, frankly, looked a lot more compelling to me, unless you'd care to put some comparison screenies up)

I'm not complaining about the game so much as I'm complaining about the developers. SO MANY issues could have been avoided if Totally Games had looked at what made Klingon Academy work, and EVERY issue surrounding the fucked-up ship balancing could have been resolved by hiring some pasty white four-eyes who would have gladly worked for free as "tech advisor" regarding the specs of the ships in question.

It's not about "what the engine can do"; frankly, IMO the devs wasted too much time on making a pretty engine and not enough time on making the engine simulate the little (YET IMPORTANT) details, let alone on the actual content.

And frankly, I hope they DON'T reuse the engine (if they ever work on it again; see "Activision v. Viacom"), because it's too far from a simulation. I still can't laterally move (like Kirk descending through the nebula in ST2), I can't have certain phasers automatically targeting and firing on other ships, the torpedoes are all sorts of fucked up (beyond the mere quantity issue) and the power management is NONEXISTENT. Sorry, four categories doesn't cut it, I at LEAST want to be able to manage power between individual weapons and shield arcs, let alone tractors and sensors.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2003-07-03 01:40am

The visual potentials of BC are stunning, but the gameplay and mechanics are lacking.

I agree. Had the graphics capabilities of Bridgecommander been combined with decent gameplay we could have had the ultimate star trek game in our hands.

Bridgecommander has excellent graphics but poor gameplay. The game contains only a handful starships. And they are all misbalanced. The Klingon Bird of Prey has stronger shields than a Romulan Warbird, the Vorcha attack cruiser has more than twice the forward shielding of a Galaxy, Ferengi Maruders are powerful enough to disable a Galaxy class starship. This are all against what we have seen in Star Trek.

The combat depicted in the game is also wrong. Phasers need to fire forever to bring down shields on even the smallest scout ship like a Bird of Prey. The Phaser arc system is closer to actual Star Trek but unfortunately we can not manage power to individual arrays like they do in the TV show.

Torpedoes work welll but the number of launchers are wrong.

The game could have used a dynamic universe like Freelancer combined with the dynamic campaign system of the Starfleet Command series. Instead the game stuck with a linear single player campaign and a boring arcade style multiplayer.

Star Trek Armada in comparision is a much game. Armada II is even better. The best thing about Armada is there are a lot of mods out there. Some of them like the Dominion mod and St vs Sw are so much fun to play. FYI there is even a naval armada mod that transforms armada into sea warfare game, there you command either the US or Soviet fleet in a realistic naval warfare.

Starfleet command series is probobly the one of the most accurate Star Trek games. The only problem is there no height involved in combat. Combat is more like a 2d game.

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2003-07-08 05:21pm

TheDarkling wrote:Elite force is good, as is Elite force 2.

Armarda is ok and A Final Unity was a great game however my personal preferences is Birth of the Federation, I always thought that was a great game especially in MP, I enjoyed playing my enemies off one another whilst he Federation border expanded in all directions (I used to fund a Klingon/Romulan war against the Ferengi, thus taking out my two main enemies - great fun )

I thought BOTF was incredibly disappointing. Not only was it incredibly slow, and blessed with a lame combat engine, I could never get more than about 20 ships before running out of maintenance points, now unless it's because I sucked at the game, that's pretty cack.

And the victory sequence was the biggest let down going.,

I really thought that game was gonna rock as well when I got it. I was a Trek fan and a MOO2 fan, it should have been ideal for me, but it didn't work out at all.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2003-07-08 05:44pm

My favourite is "Star Trek: Judgment Rites"

Okay, it is old (only VGA graphics and SB-Sound). But the game itself was a lot of fun and the ST-feeling was really strong. Here the strong points:
-great stroy
-true St-feeling (maxed through the dividion of the game in episodes)
-the dialoge is great. (Even the sometimes a litte dry humor is there!)
-TOS rules! And here, we are shown, that the TOS federation isn't as primitive as some say.
-Starfleet rates your performance, so be better good and diplomatic. Setting the phaser to kill doesn't really help your career.
-A classical adventure with lots of logical puzzles and a very easy to learn interface.

I really hope, that the game wil lbe remade someday.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-07-08 06:17pm

Sadly, you can't vaporize Spock or Bones, or other key characters in the game.

But you can fly into Romulan/Klingon neutral zone and FIGHT!

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2003-07-08 06:38pm

Macross wrote:I like the Starfleet Command series. Its based on the Starfleet Battles tabletop game. Its got a lot more depth then other Starship combat games.

The Starfleet Command Games(AT LEAST 1 & 2 AND THEIR EXPANTIONS) were very good translations of the Star Fleet Battles board game into a computer game. The fact that they automate the power allocation system of the board game saves it alot of headache for the player allowing him/her to concetrate on killing the opponet!

Natorgator · Post by **Natorgator** » 2003-07-08 08:04pm

Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Sadly, you can't vaporize Spock or Bones, or other key characters in the game.

But you can fly into Romulan/Klingon neutral zone and FIGHT!

Oh man, I totally forgot about that game...I used to do that all the time! They do need to remake it, it really was a good game.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-07-08 09:07pm

The original Star Trek 25th Aniversary game freaking rocked. Interesting puzzles, compelling story, and damned fun and well done combat. Hell, you could just randomly fly around the Galaxy blowing shit up for fun (provided you could live long enough to survive the encounter).

As to "modern" Trek games that play on current windows bassed systems.

The best Trek games are the following.

Starfleet Command 1&2 along with respective add-on packs. These games were all about what we like, combat. They had tons of stuff that you could do and tactics were very important. Even then they had a somewhat compeling plot and let you play it out how you wanted.

Elite Force 1&2 along with respective add-on packs. Sure it doesn't really follow what is "True" trek, but its fun none the less. You get decent combat with fairly well done stories and a well ballanced system. Whats not to like about these games?

Now, there are some games out there that are not great but still fun, or they have modding potential.

Armada 1&2. These games aren't all that spectacular, but they are still quite fun to play and have a variety of options and ship types. One of their stronger points is the modding comunity that continues to change the games into something incredible.

Starfleet Command 3. Some would say this is the failed child of the first two. I would say it was a corporate screw up. That said, modding the game can fix some of the problems (is that actualy possible?) and make multiplayer better.

Bridge Commander. We were promised a game that would be faithfully realistic and instead got a steaming pile of shit. The only saving grace is the apparent ease in which the game is modded. If someone gets their act together and puts together a good mod pack, this game would be markedly improved.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2003-07-08 09:23pm

Alyeska wrote: Elite Force 1&2 along with respective add-on packs. Sure it doesn't really follow what is "True" trek, but its fun none the less. You get decent combat with fairly well done stories and a well ballanced system. Whats not to like about these games?

Elite Force 1 with add-on shall forever be great, for you can not only murder Neelix, Janeway and the whole bridge crew, but you can blow the ship!

As for Old Games, Judgement Rites, and the two SNES Trek games (SF academy and TNG)

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-07-09 01:43am

MKSheppard wrote:
SolidSnake wrote: SFCIII is so watered down from the other ones. JESUS! DAMN YOU ACTIVISION!
SFC was a fregging JOKE

I wanted turn based, but it all ended up being butchered
by real time, and was full of shit.

You might as well go SFBOnline then...At least you would get a live oponent.