rate all star trek games

posted on September 13th, 2012, 10:37 pm

what offical star trek games have you played? the whole thing or demos, and what did you think of them?
what games do you want to play that you havnt yet?
gonna rate them out of 5*****

iv played
armada 1**** good but the borg with shields didn't seem right
armada 2 ***an improvement but borg problem remained, campaign seemed disappointing. only played few skirmishes after the campaign and to be honest i wanted a copy so i could try out fleet ops
elite force 1 ****great, fun and engrossing
elite force 2 ***again i found the sequel abit dissapointing, despite improvements the missions seemed to lake the engrossing feeling the original had
star fleet academy**** i didnt finish it(got stuck trying to destroy a romulan ship that was cloaked or something iirc), but it was great fun
generations**maybe*** ok but the ground levels were a bit annoying where i couldn't seem to find where to go, never completed it which is a disappointment. enemy ships were impossible to win against in some cases

demos
hidden evil didn't like the fixed position camera but looking back id give it a try again
the fallen wasn't interested in it when i tried it but now id want to play it if i find a copy

want to try
above meantioned demos
legacy
up coming game for the new film


so yeah, rate the games you have played or want to play

posted on September 13th, 2012, 11:05 pm

No Klingon Honor Guard included?
AFAIK this was the first ST First person Shooter.

posted on September 13th, 2012, 11:15 pm

Klingon Academy: Tad buggy, and all those discs for the cinematics! but superb game. Never been bested in space combat simulator terms IMHO

Starfleet Command I, II and OP: Excellent, but a tad hard to get into as a beginner. OP also buggered the balance somewhat.

New Worlds: Great concept, poorly executed

Away Team: Interesting little game. Bit repetitive

Online: Again good concept. A bit muddled though (tries to be everything to everyone)

posted on September 13th, 2012, 11:18 pm

No Klingon Honor Guard included?
AFAIK this was the first ST First person Shooter.

i havnt played it, the idea of the thread being to rate what you have played so im assuming you have played that game was it good?

absolutely any star trek game can be mentioned.
rts
fps
3rd person,
adventure,
space sim

posted on September 13th, 2012, 11:47 pm

a1: 5/10, some good ideas, but poor implementation. story was poor.

a2: 7/10, good ideas, implementation better than a1, but not good enough, unpolished, again story was poor.

ef1 (and expansion pack): 8/10, for its time i think it was a great effort, also let down by story.

ef2@: 7/10, ok, not as much fun as ef1.

bc: 7/10, let down by bad pacing and sometimes repetitive stuff, it took forever to grind out the battles in the game. neat concept. graphics were acceptable for the time.

sfc3: 6/10, a disappointment really, graphics were middle of the road, but i think the game was a bit repetitive and unenjoyable, i didn't enjoy the basic gameplay concepts much.

legacy pc: 3/10, oh dear oh dear oh dear. where to begin, story was ridiculous, graphics could have been a lot better, bouncing off of planets was comical, pace was still too slow like bc, still repetitive like bc. then there's the fact that it was clearly a despicable zero effort port from console, none of the interface was changed, the radial menu makes no sense on a pc, and keyboard controls were painful to use, unintuitive and couldn't be mapped (seriously, they had keyboard mapping figured out in the 90s, no excuses). the game was buggy, showing that it was just poorly made. level designs were mediocre at their pinnacle. voice acting was rarely good, sisko's was dreadful, i'd have actually preferred if Brooks hadn't bothered, he obviously didn't give a shit. failed on so many levels. 3/10 is generous, if it didn't have the star trek name i wouldn't have played it.

away team: 5/10, i got bored so fast that i gave up. hard to judge.

hidden evil: 5/10, same as away team, i found this excruciatingly boring, i hate leaving unfinished games, but i did not want to finish the early levels.

ds9 the fallen: 5/10, this i actually finished, but i wish i hadn't. the pacing is so badly wrong that it takes many more hours than it deserved to complete the campaign. it gets repetitive so fast. graphics can't really complain about for the time. this game is boring, it relies on the cheap cliché of going to one end of a map to find a locked door, having to then go looking at the other end of the map for a keycard and then returning. and it takes so long to walk anywhere in the fallen. a cheap cheat to make the campaign last longer.

invasion (for playstation): 6/10, interesting, controls are a big let down. i've played the Colony Wars games by Psygnosis (RIP absolute bosses), a much better execution of that concept. invasion isn't up to the standard. but it does have the coolness factor of the fighters. limited graphics restricted games back then, colony wars still thrived under these limits, invasion didn't.

25th anniversary (NES version): 5/10, not sure how to rate it, i wasn't born at the time. tried playing it years later, didn't really enjoy it, probably due to the limitations of being a NES game.

The Neutral Zone 1 (by Caeteia): 6/10, quirky game, a harmless bit of fun, but still felt clunky at times, and not enough replayability.

klingon academy: 5/10, hard to rate, didn't finish it or enjoy it, the learning curve was too steep for little reward.

don't want to play: STO (don't like RPGs) or DAC (doesn't look any fun)

interested in playing: game based on jjtrek to be released in 2013.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 7:36 pm

I agree with Squire james that Startrek New Worlds was a great idea and the Exacution of game play Is shoddy at best.
It was WAY to scripted for my tastes. No ability to think out of the box.No exploration outside the set screen area .BUt have to add Startrek Starship Creator , Starship Creator Deluxe and Starship Creator Warp II are next on the list of foor playing. My main gripe was you could not print out the wireframe or the textures skinned vehicle . It would have been nice to do a 3 veiw printout of the ships.Thankfully , or sorrily depending you look at it , a lot of those games I cant get to run on my windows 7 machine . So shoddy gameplay is not a problem.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 7:42 pm

No Klingon Honor Guard included?
AFAIK this was the first ST First person Shooter.

i havnt played it, the idea of the thread being to rate what you have played so im assuming you have played that game was it good?

For the time it was quite good. Working on unreal engine. By today's standards the gfx may be antiquated, but gameplay was quite enjoyable. Something satisfying about skewering your opponents with your D'k tahg or Bat'leth

If you can get your hands on a copy i'd say play it. I'd rank it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 11:10 pm

Aye Klingon Academy did have a punishing learning curve. Even the first mission is impossible if you try and play it like X-Wing or Wing Commander. It's not a fighter, it's an Escort and as such you have to command it as one. Once you grasp the gameplay difference it's quite intuitive really.

I didn't really class Starship Creator (any of them) as a game. It's more of pre-scripted version of Photoshop for people who can't use photoshop, before using Google to cut and paste starship parts was widespread. There are flash/java versions of this principle out there now that are far better.

EF and EF2, hmm, I was undecided. I had hoped it would feel more like the combat scenes from First Contact. Creeping around a ship, knowing you only had a few shots. The first level was something like that, but it all got threw out the window and replaced with the rather overpowered I-Mod Phaser and a portable Photon Launcher, which pretty much defies all logic or reason. The levels onboard the Terran Constitution Class were fun though. Sadly the rest of it felt like a bad Half-Life or Quake mod.

I never thought Armada 1s story was poor, I thought it was probably one of the best Star Trek game storylines as a matter of fact. Could easily have been a film. The plot in A2 felt very forced though, basically trying to be Voyager and DS9 without directly being so. Then again, stories where the Earth is in peril, fighting for survival etc are always better anyway, tension and drama wise.

Now, Birth of the Federation, there's a game! Yes canonically didn't make much sense but apparently they could only use ships, characters and so forth that had appeared in TNG series and films. Ergo the Oberth and Miranda but no Conny, and the fact that despite being "Birth of the Federation" it starts firmly in TNG times. Loved the gameplay and concept though. Would love to see a remake made with the Galactic Civilsations Engine (with all periods of Trek naturally rather than just TNG stuff)

posted on September 14th, 2012, 11:13 pm

Klingon Academy is probably my all time favorite ST game although a heavily modded Bridge Commander surpasses but I am assuming we are just doing vanilla games here.

Armada 1 sucked Armada 2 was better but not by much.

I enjoyed both the Elite Force games very much and the tricorder mini missions were a nice touch. Klingon Honor Guard was fun as well but not as polished as Elite Force.

Dominion Wars was another game I actually enjoyed playing although I cannot figure it out. Sometimes I come across a game that has awful gameplay, graphics, techinical issues etc. and yet I still enjoy playing it alot.

Have no interest in playing STO since it was made by arguably the crappiest MMO developer..........EVER

Legacy was just utter crap even with mods.

posted on September 14th, 2012, 11:51 pm

Sadly the rest of it felt like a bad Half-Life or Quake mod.

it kinda was, they just used the engine from quake III arena (id tech 3). it felt very similar, just with star trek stuff. it didn't feel like they changed much really.

elite force 2 was actually just the same engine, with more effort put into modifying it to be better. and hence felt quite different

call of duty 1 used the same engine, also modified, so it's proven that modifying the engine is feasible. shows up ef1 as really low effort.

I never thought Armada 1s story was poor, I thought it was probably one of the best Star Trek game storylines as a matter of fact. Could easily have been a film.

really? i have to vehemently disagree.

lets look at the terrible writing:

- timeship, oh dear, bad start. also, screw the temporal prime directive, feds can't lose.

- random borg attack, but now they need fleets of cubes and still can't win. villain decay is worse than in voyager.

- sword of kahless comes back. oh god, why did they leave it intact in ds9? also they travel to the gamma quadrant, breaking the silence over the gamma quadrant we had from ds9. toral also now controls entire fleets from somewhere.

- omega, a really stupid plot device. it might as well be called macguffinium. it's ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as...

- the goddamn ferengi have it. wut. the mickey mouse mining company just find some macguffinium laying around and then don't blow themselves to shit. but then they either sell it for a small amount of dilithium, or get blown to shit by the romulans anyway. personally i always blew them up when i played that mission.

- sela comes back for no good reason. wasn't a fan of that character in the show. she turns on the benny hill theme and gets chased around by borg drones dressed as policemen that want the macguffinium.

- then the borg realise that of all the species they have assimilated, none knew anything about cloning humans. but for some reason, the dominion do know about cloning humans. so the borg go steal it to clone another silly character, locutus. i thought the idea of locutus was stupid the first time, i don't think the explanations given for his creation were particularly convincing. i let it slide because it was early (ish) tng.

- then there's the one bit i think was clever, the time travel of the enterprise to change the result of an earlier mission. that was cool.

- the dénouement: the borg now have the macguffinium powering their super awesome base in the DQ. picard then shamefully outwits the entire collective and locutus and manages to build and entire goddamn base right under the borg's noses (or olfactory implants). the macguffinium that everyone really wanted didn't even help the borg avoid the beatdown. the macguffinium was the central motivator of so much of this crazy story, and it turned out to not even work!

the story is something you'd see in badly written fanfiction, with shameful trottings out of characters from the show that shouldn't have reappeared. and ridiculous rehashes of weak plot devices from the show.

i wouldn't accept it as a star trek movie or tv episode.

yes it was one of the better trek game storylines, but sadly that's because trek games have nearly always had atrocious story telling, the others are just worse. games in general are only recently even realising that having good writing will please fans. and even then the big drama over mass effect 3's ending reminds us we're not there yet.

posted on September 15th, 2012, 7:43 am

I realize how hilarious the story for A1 is now that I've taken a look back on it a decade later without nostalgia goggles. Still, as you said it's a much better story then almost every Star Trek game (let alone almost every game made during that era). I personally think the only Star Trek game they really put effort into the story was the Academy games, especially Klingon Academy. The presentation and production values of KA was so obnoxiously grand (for a game at the time) that they really should have just made a movie instead. Considering they got quite a few actors from the TMP era in the game, a movie would not have been a far stretch.

Birth of the Federation still probably is the best ST game I've played. Legacy might hold the title of worst, although the disappointment that was SFC3 comes pretty close.

posted on September 15th, 2012, 11:06 am

i agree with you on legacy being the worst.

ds9 the fallen and hidden evil really bored me, but at least they tried, some effort was put in to fail miserably.

legacy reeked of a lack of effort. legacy is an embarrassment.

posted on September 15th, 2012, 12:06 pm

I think some of the complaints over the Armada 1 Storyline there were caused by the reality of gameplay rather than the story. For example, the game made Borg Cubes relatively weak; if it were a film it would be a single or a group of 2 or 3 cubes. It's the same with the base building and such, naturally that wouldn't occur in a film.

What I am saying is that perhaps the storyline wasn't the culprit, trying to bend it around the game mechanics was the cause.

Also, I knew the EF games were on the Quake III engine, but like you said, it really did feel like they just threw in a few Star Trek character models and such as you said, Call of Duty et all are all on a modified Quake III engine, but don't feel like it.

Dominion Wars, yes I'd forgotten about that one. Oddly I really can't think of what to say. I remember playing it but I can't remember if I enjoyed it, if it was good or bad, it's sort of just a "yep, that happened" memory. I am assuming therefore it couldn't have been particularly good if it was that forgettable!

posted on September 15th, 2012, 12:31 pm

Okay, let me list the games i have/I have actually played.


Birth of the Federation - 6/10
I never actually played the base game itself but only the Ultimate Dominion Mod with some of you guys from here. We need to get another game going btw. Some aspects of the game are really cool, but it's age shows and you just wish for a successor. I'm a turn-based-strategy fan

Klingon Academy
Couldn't get it working. Halp? Sounds soo great.

Armada I
Never played it. Made an image of a cd a friend had but couldn't install it for some reason. Any widely-known tips for this?

Armada II - 2/10
Hated it. Never even finished the federation story line because the gameplay was so dumb, but it did show some potential which is the reason we're here I guess.

Elite Force I - 3/10
I have the PS2-version of it but never finished the story since it was repetitive, the story quite bad and the game (or maybe just the controls for me) fairly hard.

Elite Force II - 8/10
I played this on computer and I actually liked it very much. It did have a nice feel to it and while there were nice trekky things placed in it the story was still not something you would find in star trek, yet it does fit the action shooter it is and is acceptable as such.

Legacy - -9001/10
This piece of... software was so bugged I shattered the CD and threw it in the thrash. It promised to be a cool game and was a complete and utter disappointment in every aspect imaginable.

Tactical Assault - 6/10
This is a game for DS and PSP, and I spent tons of time playing it on DS. It had like about 30 missions which were all not too far-fetched, but the gameplay was not very fun and quite boring after a while, so the missions kept you on it. I'd recommend it if you're a ST-fan and can get your hands on it for cheap.

Encounters - 7/10
A PS2 game I enjoyed and played with friends at times, the stories and missions weren't really good but the gameplay, while becoming repetitive and lacking after a while, is fun enough to warrant some fun. Wave defense mode was the best part.

Conquest - 8/10
A Wii game that is interesting for having a strategical turn-based main game that lets you carry out the actual battles in a real-time gamemode where you contol one ship or a small fleet yourself. Fun gameplay and the controls of the wii work good with it, but has no multiplayer and lacks a campaign and has no real replay-value once you conquered the universe with evey race on hard within 20 turns.


Now remember that there are tons of mods out there for these and other games and that we, the community, are what keeps this alive and continues to make and play the games, no matter what twisted things business turns it into.

posted on September 15th, 2012, 12:38 pm

Nobody else here played Klingon Honor Guard?