Star Trek Games: Past, Present & Future. Part 2

Star Trek: Hidden Evil was also released by Activision in 1999 and the title was certainly evil (and quite hidden as it pretty much bombed!). The game was in the Next Generation setting with voice acting by Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner, with the plot picking up after the events of the movie Star Trek: Insurrection. The gameplay was pretty much a Resident Evil wannabe, with 3d characters moving around 2d backdrops, with different camera angles for each scene change, simple puzzles and simple combat. This was a truly poor effort, was bug ridden, had poor graphics and presentation and quite frankly wasn’t much fun to play at all.

Star Trek Voyager received it’s first computer game treatment with the release in 2000 of Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force. I was never really a big fan of the Voyager series for a number of reasons, but I actually quite liked this game. Essentially, the title was a by-the-numbers first person shooter, but the production values were high and the gameplay was fun. The game was built using the Quake III Arena engine and offered a very good multiplayer game as well as a single player story. The only real let down was the generic “boss-battles” that for me kind of destroyed the illusion of being in the Star Trek universe, as “boss” enemies are a tried and tested cliché of arcade and console based action games. A year later, Activision released an expansion pack and in 2002 they released Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force II, which was more of the same with a new storyline.

The new millennium also saw the release of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Fallen in 2000. I really like this game and it really succeeded where the likes of Hidden Evil had failed so miserably. At its heart, the game was a third-person action/adventure with the player controlling either Sisko, Major Kira or Worf on a variety of missions, facing off against the Dominion. I won’t spoil the story here for those that haven’t played the game, but suffice to say that it’s a well crafted tale that fits in with the action and adventure elements. The game also looked very nice and played well, thanks to the excellent use of the Unreal Tournament engine under the hood.

For me, 2002 was an important year for Trek computer games as the eagerly awaited Star Trek: Bridge Commander was finally released. At the time I knew this was going to be something special as it was developed by the famous Larry Holland and Totally Games, who gave us the excellent X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance games. Larry and his team were masters of the space combat genre, so they were the obvious choice as developer for this title and they certainly didn’t disappoint, as I still regard this as the finest Trek game released so far. The set-up is that you are the captain of a Starfleet vessel, having been a first-officer and promoted after your captain is killed in the opening sequence. You look through the eyes of your alter ego, and the bridge is in full 3d, with fully animated bridge crew that talk to you, and you can issue orders to them, etc. You can also take direct control over engineering, weapons, helm or just give orders to the crew. For me, this is what a Trek game should be about, as Bridge Commander perfectly captured the essence of being a Starfleet captain. The story was engaging, the missions varied and the space combat was excellent. The only real criticisms that I had were that the game was very linear and you could only save in-between missions, which are both minor points considering the excellent quality of the game. The rather strange and puzzling fact is that this title was never re-released as a budget title and is now rare and valuable in its original release as a result.

Bethesda Softworks did their take on Trek in 2006 with Star Trek Legacy, released simultaneously on P.C and X360. The game was basically third person starship combat, set in three eras of Trek: Enterprise, Original Series and TNG/DS9/Voyager. You also had the actual voices from all 5 actors who played the 5 captains from all of the T.V shows. On paper, the title certainly looked impressive, but unfortunately the game turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. The visuals and audio were certainly impressive, but the overall gameplay felt a bit too simplistic and I could not help the feeling that this was really a cut down version of the excellent Starfleet Command. The actual combat was fun, but there were no ship system upgrades, crew upgrades and that sort of stuff in between missions (although you could buy new ships). The whole thing felt not much more than a space shooter set in the Trek universe.
One thing I love about P.C games is the whole “mod” community and there have been several released, that improve the quality of Legacy by a significant amount. In particular, the Ultimate Universe mod, which adds things like ship upgrades and the like and turns what was an average Trek game into a pretty decent Trek game!

The final part of this article will be posted on Friday.