it seems we need a ‘best star trek video games’ ranking thread
(has there ever been a good one?)
(other than star trek online which i am sure @iguferon could discuss at length though at this point seems sort of beyond evaluation as ‘good’ or ‘bad’)
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do you really want me to get into it because i can
like there have been more good (in the sense that they are fun and/or interesting) trek games than bad, even. I can at least describe the quality level of pretty much every one that’s ever come out on pc, not sure about some of the console ones but I think a lot of those tended to be weird little space combat games besides the snes/genesis adventure games and the Star Trek 2009 game which is Kane & Lynch with Kirk & Spock
and yeah sto exists as a star trek themepark instead of a game, but sometimes we like going to the themepark
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“Best games released in 1985 or earlier” would probably be more interesting
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Star Trek Elite Force was really fun in multiplayer with player-created maps. There were a bunch that did “giant sized room in a house” that I recall especially vividly. A kitchen, a living room, a garden
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I do sort of want to know which ones you think are the best as games and which are the best as star trek things if that makes any sense. It almost feels like these would be mutually exclusive categories but I guess it could be possible. Is there a star trek game in the style of like lucasarts adventure games? It seems like the only genre that would really be appropriate to what star trek is usually like
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yes actually! one of the more important? well known? star trek games is star trek: 25th anniversary, which is a point and click game that got (i think) the whole cast of the original series together to record voices for it.
i tried it out years ago and it even had drm similar to lucasarts and other pc games at the time: you need to use a physical starchart that was included with the game to figure out where to warp to start your game, otherwise you end up warping into a fight you cannot win.
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also the game was structured like brand new episodes, like another season of the show
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yeah, 25th anniversary and judgment rites might as well be lucasarts adventure games
Cuba’s talking about the aforementioned Star Trek: Elite Force which is just quake 3 but voyager themed. The second one has a bit more going on because it’s by ritual entertainment so it gets into some slightly more interesting gameplay then just shooting people.
Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy are great FMV games, they basically contain a good two-parter along with letting you deal with the stuff around Star Trek VI. The acting performances are wonderful and they’re really fun precursors to Bridge Commander which is widely regarded as one of the best Star Trek games.
Most devs have never really tried to capture like, the non-combat part of Star Trek. I really would recommend the Interplay games here. Starfleet Academy is a bridge simulator but still bothers to have routine missions where you’re like just towing shit around. The adventure games are of course great. I really liked the microprose game Birth of the Federation because it’s essentially master of orion but tng themed. The TNG adventure game A Final Unity is notable because they give you like, too much control over everything so you can like pick the members of your away team, ask the entire command staff for advice, pick your exact warp speed, go all over space even though there’s nothing to do…it’s probably the most “you are the captain” one of the adventure games and has the full cast like the TOS games so worth a look for sure.
This doesn’t mean most trek games are bad though. They excel at space strategy. Armada is a very good RTS for the time, it’s really simple and fun but still has nice Star Trek touches like ships requiring crew, being able to transport crew onto disabled ships to capture them, each ship has its own subsystems which can be disabled etc. the Starfleet Command games are straight up an adaptation of the Starfleet Battles tabletop game and are essentially the best way to simulate how ship battles happen on the show.
There’s a squad tactics game called Away Team that’s essentially Commandos but Star Trek which is actually kind of interesting because you have to abide by Starfleet regs despite being a black ops team so you can’t just phaser everyone to death?
Maybe my favorite weird Trek game was STARSHIP CREATOR where you can make your own kitbash ships and crew them with all kinds of characters from the franchise, or import your own jpegs and make your own. It’s really fun if you’re a dweeb.
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We also got this from those Interplay games:
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Wasn’t there a Star Trek VR game that was pretty good?
It’s not a video game but I was fortunate enough to get to do the Star Trek Experience on two (!) separate occasions while it was at the Las Vegas Hilton. Basically it was a “fully immersive” ride thing where you and a group of strangers get teleported to the Enterprise and Riker comes on the main screen to tell you it’s because one of you is Picard’s ancestor.
There was also a cool museum area and a restaurant from Deep Space Nine with a bunch of actors dressed as Star Trek characters.
Apparently there was another version of the attraction featuring the Borg and it was based off of Voyager. The one I went to was pure Next Generation.
That seems like something that could be adapted to a good VR game.
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Bridge Crew. No one played it because you need 4 people with VR headsets. Eventually they removed the VR requirement but you still need 4 people. You can play it in single player with NPCs I think but you might as well play Bridge Commander at that point if you’re playing by yourself
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I used to love watching streams of abusive captains in bridge crew
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I forgot to mention that the last mission in Starfleet Academy is awesome because if you do it right there’s no combat and it mostly involves communicating with an alien by mimicking them and then slowly learning each other’s language through dialogue options. It’s one of my favorite Star Trek games.
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I will recommend star trek deep space nine the fallen, its so weird and I feel like its forgotten now. Unreal engine third person game with three unique character specific campaigns, where you will be using your tricorder and communicator more than your phaser
Really great to walk around an early 3d rendered concourse and talk to quark inbetween missions
Edit: the best thing about the phaser is that you will often have to scan targets with a tricorder and adjust your phaser modulation in order to make it effective, further distancing it from the shooter dynamics implied by being an early unreal engine game.
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Yeah, running around on DS9 and the Defiant is probably the best thing about it. Virtual Voyager was the best part of Elite Force, too.
It’s cool that it’s more of an action-adventure game but in practice this means you need to be prepared for the keycard hunts and it really tests how much you like Tomb Raider. The combat is also not super great, there’s a mechanic where you need to set your phaser to shielded enemies shield frequency which is theoretically cool but can get a little ridiculous when you’re fighting more than one guy.
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I like tomb raider so the fallen automatically ranks higher than the elite force games on that basis alone
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Elite Force is literally a bottom of the barrel star trek game because it’s a Quake 3 mod so you will not hear any argument from me there. The multiplayer’s fun and all but like the singleplayer is pretty mid outside of the expansion pack level where you get to play through a Captain Proton holonovel cuz at least that’s kind of cute and also like a clever use of the holodeck besides YOU CAN DO QUAKE 3 IN IT!!!
I wasn’t a huge tomb raider fan when I played the fallen and I was annoyed that everyone sounded right but Sisko but lol you know that’s like child videogame opinion stuff. The Fallen really really benefits from being a 2000 UE1 game because it is one of the best looking Star Trek games of the era. And it literally is a rare DS9 game, so you have to treasure that. The only other place you can really get most of the DS9 cast in a game is the Gamma Quadrant stuff in STO.
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Bottom of the barrel is that ds9 side scroller on the snes and the star trek v the final frontier video game, elite force and its sequel are merely mid
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I didn’t have any consoles capable of playing most star trek games growing up so I have no opinion on any of those
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okay I need both of you to play the NES port of 25th
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