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First Great Star Trek PC Game? 153

Posted by Hemos from the probably-not dept.
Bones writes: "You know how all Star Trek games are so full of promise but then suck when they get released (unlike the Star Wars games). Well we must be up to game number 590,000 on the Star Trek license and I think we might for the first time have a good egg according to this review of Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. That Beatdown guy actually liked it, which means it must be good. Plus it uses the famed Quake III Arena engine. Yay!"
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First Great Star Trek PC Game?

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  • These guys are tough, expendable (they do wear red shirts you know) and are probably necessary on a ship lost in space and hounded by cosmic nastiness like the Borg.
    So lets see...

    Lots of cut scenes

    long load times

    less interactive than it seems

    predictable AI
    versus

    Species 8472

    mood & graphics of Trek:Voyager

    Quake III engine w/ multiplayer & deathmatch

    Sounds to me like a Quake III mod with maps and skins for the Trekkies is basically what your buying here. (Not that that wouldn't be worth it to many) I just hope they were able to get to use some of the 3D models (even if it was scaled down low poly) from the series.

  • Whose brainstorm was it to take the lowest-ranking Star Trek spinoff series without any hopes of having a movie deal and terrible, nonlinear storylines...

    Actually now that DS9 is over (after a less than stellar last season) and Voyager is the only Star Trek show in town (yeah, TNG reruns are boring, boring, boring after a while) I have somewhat started to like it. Whether if it's me lowering my standards or Voyager improving I am not sure but I would give them the benifit of the doubt and think it's the latter *wink*.
  • this game really rocks :) couldn't stop playin' for nearly 20 hours and this is really unnormal for me...
  • not much more to say than is in the subject. Deus Ex didn't ship with multiplayer and there were no plans for it to have it, though they did release development tools for single-player modifications of the game, which was pretty cool. I enjoyed Deus Ex a lot myself.... still working on beating it, actually, but the horrible spectre known as Diablo II has hooked me with its vile claws.
  • STVOY has definately got a lot better in the last two seasons.

    Although i may be biased, since i like it from the beginning, much more than DS9 and TNG, but is still seems to have improved, ever since 7of9 came aboard. And not just because of her.

    Anyway, this game is great. Best game i have played since Halflife and Opposing Force. It has a great story line, which really grabs you. And there are actually some bits where you dont shoot.

    I think the AI is a bit better han past games too, since the enemy will often try to hide, and bob up and down firing at you.

    Really, and excellent game
  • I'd like to know... since when is a FPS in *ANY* way to be considered a good Star Trek Game? If I recall, the theme of Star Trek is exploration, understanding, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.. The best Star Trek game I can recall would be Star Trek 25th anniversary. A bit of spaceship combat, followed by a happy adventure on the surface of a planet or space station, finding strange alien civilizations and solving strange puzzles... It had all the in-jokes, you interacted with the crew, you generally got points for doing the *star trek* thing... instead of just shooting everything in sight. *that's* a good Star Trek game... Now, star trek, it seems, is just some manner of action shooter? The borg a source of infinite drones for the crew to zap? Where's the surprise ending? Where's the strange alien puzzles? The life forms of strange and new varities? The crew interaction? It's resolved down into nothing more than another quakefest? Blah... If that's how things go, then the best response I can think of is a bumper sticker I saw: Scotty, Beam me up. There's no signs of intelligent life on this planet.
  • It was Super Stellar Trek on the Apple ][+. I remember going over to a friend's place who worked for Computer Innovations, and he had an Apple at home. I was told if I could figure out how to run it, I could use it...I did, and I did! It was a challenging game of the standard Star Trek variety, complete with mining for Delithium Xtals, and whenever you beamed down a landing party, it would be three of the principal charactors, like Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and then some random Ensign (probably wearing a red shirt)...who would be lost to some mishap on the planet, like Hostile Natives, an Alien Fungus, etc.

    It was also my first adventure in Hacking, too.

    At one point, the program crashed...and spewed BASIC at me. I couldn't get past that point, so I went in with the Apple Basic manual, looked at where the code was crashing, and fixed it. (Oh, No! I just realized I admited I programmed in BASIC!). I then adjusted some of the ships to make the game easier to win...

    And Thank you Paul Davidson (Rabbit) for that chance to play with your Apple!

    ttyl
    Farrell

  • what about Star Trek: Armada? Wasn't that proclaimed as the first Trek game that didnt suck? The AI was a little disappointing but is anything more fun than being the Borg and assimilating Star Fleet ships? hehe

  • Ok first of all there are not "VAX PDP11s" they were two different computers although the vax was the replacement for the pdp11, second they are not mainframes the are mini computers, third trek kicked ass :)
  • The best ST game, IMO, wasn't even an "official" Star Trek game. It was a Mac-only (hey, I was in college then ;-) ) game known as Rescue. Basic Premise: You control the Enterprise. You have to rescue colonists on some farflung colonies, return them to starbases safely, and defend the universe from various enemies. It was very detailed and allowed for many custom missions.

    Of course, Paramount got word of this and shut them down. You can still find it around if you search hard enough though. And using a Mac emulator (see http://www.emaculation.com/) you can run it no matter what platform you're using.
  • The Q3 engine is not about how much of a processor you got in your machine, but what videocard. I have running it here on a PII-266/128Mb with a TNT2 card with everything on max at 640x480, runs at a nice framerate. At the other hand, at my university there PII-550/256Mb machines wich cant run the Q3 engine that well, in fact the performance is even crappier than the PII-266, why? Because it has a crappy videocard. The Q3 engine will be at his best with a TNT2 or GeForce, no matter what platform you are running it on.
  • Well, this actually averts the need to fall much into the ethics and such of star trek by falling nicely into a niche. They like it because it's a star trek game that lets you kill kill kill, the way that most gaming is these days.

    Well, it does have a pretty nice single player story line - which does have more to it than kill kill kill - but the multiplayer experience definitely is QuakeIII with Star Trek models and WITHOUT blood.
  • What a surprise another Star Trek meets Quake.

    It looks like a cool game but falls into the two types of current sucessfull star trek license the Quake clone or the Star trek stragety game.

    If they are just going to release endless Quake meets Star Trek clones it a bit of a shame.

    What I'd love to see is a true role playing game using all this 3d technology based on the original Star Trek or NG. Surely all the stories and plotlines in those series are enough for a decent roleplayinggame.

    Someone out there must be able to produce an intelligent Star Trek license ?

  • This is such an obvious trollish piece of flamebait that I should just ignore it, but better I respond first than a Trekk(er || ie). Star Trek is fiction, and its fans know that. Christians really think that all that shit happened. That's the difference. If Christians would accept the Bible as a poorly-written dark comedy, we'd be a lot better off.

    (Now that's flamebait!)

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Because in Star Trek, the techies are all considered heroes.

    No, the truth is, that nobody claims that Star Trek is real. We know warp drive is as as feasable as the infinite improbability drive, but it doesn't matter. Given a choice between realism and a story, I'll go with a story and apply the appropriate technobabble filters to all the tech.

    Of course it all gets a bit silly from time to time. Especially when we get those daft temporal and spacial anomolies, and I tend to get irritated when they try to extrapolate real physics into Star Trek physics (tachyons pushing you past the speed of light? puleeze!) But its just a TV show.
  • Quake is about fraggin'. Star trek adds a dose of reality and eliminates the suspension of disbelief. Unless you get spawned like Spock on the regrowth planet the Borg will defeat you before you even start.
  • Did you read the rest of my comment before you hit the "Reply to This" link?

    I E-mailed them asking for a port to Linux (it's based on Quake III and all), but I never got a reply. However, several FAQs state that ports to Linux and MacOS are dependant on how the retail Windows version does in sales. A Linux port looks promising.

    I already read what you posted, but thanks anyway.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • I would have to say that Starfleet Acadamy was the best Star Trek game ever. It was great for its time and is still nice now. But I grabbed the Elite Force demo, and man, I'm torn between the two. On one hand, Starfleet Acadamny had kick butt ship battles. With Elite Force, you could be The Doctor and blow away Neelix's sorry behind. I just don't know.

    Oh yeah, PCGamer loved it also.
    -TriviaMan
  • Hey, head to head with the Borg, what could be better?
  • Yes, but Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing Versus TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance make up for all of those. Pod Racer was amusing, if a little too simplistic, and the PSX fighting game Masters Of Teras Kasi was fun as hell.

    But you're right about those games you mentioned. They really did suck... On the whole, though, I'd argue that Lucasfilm is batting a little better than Paramount.
  • Hemos probably didn't even look at any screenshots, and he says that he hates it (just look at the department). If he got off of his lazy duff, used his T3 to download the 120MB demo, and played it, then maybe he could form an educated opinion, instead of this bigotry he calls his insight.

    Prejudice seems to be prevalent here on Slashdot. If the bible thumpers took a closer look at what Microsoft does, they'd like the code, but hate the corporate entity itself. Instead, they say "Windows 2000 5UX0RS!" without even investigating a working Win2K system. Personally, I think that Win2K is the perfect compromise for someone who wants Windows functionality without the constant BSOD.

  • JOY! it's on the Quake III engine. That means my computer will not even come close to running it.

    Aren't the requirements to Quake III like a PIII 750, No Life, and Morbid Obesity?
  • StarTrek is owned by Paramount, which owns Paramount Records, which is a member of the RIAA. Part of each bit of StarTrek merchandise you buy goes to taking away your mp3s.
  • I played the demo and this game bites big time, despite all the wonderful reviews I had read. While there are some neat weapons, the game sux0rs.

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • You negleted too mention the Dr. Laura Connection with Paramont. www.stopdrlaura.com I'm a Star Trek Addict! There is now way I'm taking that monkey off my back!.
  • Cheers for answering.

    Q3 seems to have a very lightweight engine but something about it's movement (like Q1) just doesn't feel right. Anyway, on with it.

    I hereby knight you, Sir Elabourate! ;)

    Rise Sir Elabourate!

  • Well, not really. But here comes something:

    Whose brainstorm was it to take the lowest-ranking Star Trek spinoff series without any hopes of having a movie deal and terrible, nonlinear storylines, and putting it into an engine that takes a serious amount of bandwidth to play tight online anyways, so that only those who have something better than a standard dialup can play it as it was meant to be played?

    Don't get me wrong, about time there was a good Star Trek anything since "First Contact", and game since... well, whenever. But still, why Voyager? Why a 3D adventure/action game (as it seems to be from the pictures)?

    I guess we'll all have to wait and see when it arrives. I'd rather Alice over this, however. Not because I like those books better than Star Trek, but because I think there's more of a storyline and environment than ST:V has ever had.

    *rant off* Okay, thanks for that soapbox.

    Dragon Magic [dragonmagic.net]
  • In general, the larger number of weapon fire modes you have, the less variety you have in skilled deathmatching. Think about this for example. Lets say I have a Q3A map where the only weapons are gauntlet (duh), machinegun (duh), shotgun, and Grenades. Assuming the map has enough hallways, then all 4 of those weapons will be useful on that level. Even gauntlet and grenades will be worth playing (in the hallways, around corners). Now lets say I add a rocket launcher to that map. All of a sudden, Gauntlet is worthless because people have a good short range weapon. Machine Gun is also bad because it's mainly good at medium to long range. But with a rocket launcher on the board, you can just charge people and finish them off with the shotgun if necessary. Grenades also decrease in usefulness as there are more explosives on the level.

    One of the great things about Q3A weapons is that they're tweaked so that every weapon could still be useful in a variety of situations, no matter how many weapons are on the map. The exception is the BFG, of course, which dominates every map you find it on. This just shows that "more weapons" does not mean "more variety".

    To me, this is the fatal flaw of Unreal Tournament. There are something like 18 different fire modes total in the game, but only 5 are really playable in a combat situation: Plasma Fire mode 2, Flack 1, Flack 2 (occasionally), Shock Rifle combo (1 and 2), and Rockets. So you end up with at most 35% of your weapon fire modes being used.

    In contrast, on Quake Maps I find that over 80% of the weapons are useful when playing. So Unreal Tournament encourages people to find one of the 5 good weapons are fire away while Quake 3 encourages people to find the best weapon in a combat situation.

    The conclusion is that adding more weapon fire modes increases the glitz factor of the game like Unreal Tournament, but you lose long term game replayability. So don't expect ST:EF to last long as a deathmatch game.

    Incidently, this explains why Unreal Tournament was prefered over Q3A when UT was first release, by about 60% to 40%. But as people play the games more, Q3A has the lead by roughly 55% to 45%. Q3A just has more replayability. You can grab these statistics from the gamespy stats page [gamespy.com]. Of course, Halflife's user base trumps all of the other games combined. That's because Halflife has counterstrike, which appeals to people who don't like traditional first person shooters (ie. need "realistic weapons" that are almost completely identical because they're all instant hit weapons. ;)

    -Ted

  • Overheard at a recent demonstration.... (Score:3)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @10:13PM (#736639) Homepage

    "Set phasers to B.F.G.!"

    "I dunno how long I keep keep the nailguns working, cappin."

    "Holy, crap! Isn't that Tasha Yar?"

    "I am Biggus Dickus of Borg. You will be ventilated."

  • i hope the game includes a scene where you get to see some unfamiliar crew member getting ripped to shreds by a mean-ass klingon.

    just to keep to the real star trek genre.


    ---
  • Ok I <?PHP if ( $series != 'voyager' ) { echo 'love'; } else { echo 'dislike'; }; ?> Star Trek as much as the next "geek", who happened to be harassed in high school by double digit IQ jocks who thought slamming into each other at full speed was a better idea than revelling in the latest technology, and who now makes more than triple the entire income of the family of the harasser, no no bitterness here muahahaha, but what I want to know is when will the <A href="http://www.lucasarts.com/static/pr/star_wars _online.htm">said</A> Star Wars MMORPG be launched? www.lucasarts.com is my frickin' start page I'm so eagerly awaiting it. Can you say unf? Of course you can, say it with me, "Star Wars MMORPG."

    Regards
  • Quick everyone, set phasers on "Troll" before we realize Star Trek is _made up_!
  • Having never found anyting to interest me in FPS games prior to this, I'd like to point out that I love this game. This has at least as much to do with the fact that I enjoy Voyager, as the quality of the game itself.

    Given that I'm not an FPS gamer, I can't compare and contrast with any other games, but I found this to be a very playable game, with a great atmostphere and enough puzzle solving to keep a strategy gamer, like myself(1), happy.

    I think you've got to like Trek to enjoy this game, there's simply not the blood and guts there to keep fans of that sort of game happy, and, yes, it does take quite a while to load levels, but I can live with that.

    Judging from the fact that it's still number 3 in the Amazon.co.uk video games sales charts, I reckon that there are quite a lot of people buying this game, so it can't be all bad. ;-)

    (1) The other two games I play with any degree of regularity are Civilization (II or CTP) and Railroad Tycoon II

  • Amen. Gamers O/Cing their CPUs should be instead concentrating on a decent video card and RAM. Can never have enough RAM, boys. I'd rather have a 300MHz Celeron with 256MB RAM and a TNT2 than a 1GHz Athlon with 64MB and a Voodoo 2. :-)

    Good bang-for-the-buck gamer's setup is a 500MHz P3 with 128MB RAM and a TNT2 Ultra or Voodoo 3. To take it to the next level, add another 128MB RAM and get SCSI-anything disks. Unless you're cracking DES or crunching SETI, a >500MHz CPU isn't what you need.

    And a decent video card will speed everything up, not just games. Schweet.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • What are the odds that the only playable part of this game will turn out to be the 'Captain Proton' easter egg?
  • I played the demo and it was boring. Sure the graphics were OK (thank you John Carmack) but the gameplay was boring. Basically you had to shoot your way through whole armies of nearly identical monsters. In between the levels are some videos that tell the story. If you can bear watching a single star trek episode more than once, you'll probably enjoy replaying the game. However, for most of us the video's get boring after you've seen them once. Also the information in the videos is not very relevant to the game anyway.

    The wow factor of the graphics doesn't last very long, and after that you're left with a pretty average first person shooter.
  • You know how all Star Trek games are so full of promise but then suck when they get released (unlike the Star Wars games).

    Unlike Star Wars games, eh?

    -Jedi Power Battles
    -Star Wars Super Bombad racing
    -Star Wars: The Battle for Naboo
    -Star Wars Demolition
    -Force Commander
    -Episode I

    Does anyone remember when LucasArts used to made good Star Wars games?

    ps: You can also go to lucasarts.com and vote for your favorite screen resolution. No kidding.

  • The first decent Star Trek game !?!?!?

    You people have short memories, or else just don't know a great game when you see it.

    M 5,5,5,5

    There are 2 Klingons in this sector

    P

    Amount to fire at ship #1:550

    Klingon destoyed!

    Amount to fire at ship #2:550

    Klingon destroyed!

    M 2,2,5,5

    Not enough energy to move!

    M 4,6,5,5

    M 7,2

    D

    ...

    Now that was a great game! Not that any of you tetesterone crazed hyperactive 1st person shooter fans would recognize that...

  • was that the top down one where you rotated the screen and the ship stayed still so your bullets curved away from you as you auto-fired
    Yep, that's the one. This pack/screenshot [easynet.co.uk] should bring those memories flooding back

    (Taken from this large list [easynet.co.uk] of Acornsoft games)

    --
    Jonathan Hunt
  • Thank you!

    I get a little steamed when I keep seeing things like "First great Star Trek PC Game?". I worked on SFC, played the rest of the Interplay Trek games, played the majority of the other Trek titles and I think it's utter rubbish.

    Great Trek games:
    Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
    Star Trek: Judgment Rites
    Star Trek: Starfleet Command

    All of these were critical and sales successes. The first two are adventure games that captured the feel of the Original Series _perfectly_.

    I often hear Final Unity praised.

    And Elite Force certainly stands up to the challenge, as well.

    Yes, there have been some stinkers (Ewww, Pinball, ewww!). But like all heavily used licenses, some are stinkers, some are good, most are average. The Star Trek curse -- isn't.

    pax,
    -Chris

  • Bug... (Score:1)

    by buysse ( 5473 )
    As far as I could tell, if you killed one of the turrets(on the right, I believe), the AI mistakenly marked it as friendly (even as it's blasting away trying to vape your ass). If one of your team members smokes it, they're happy (probably dead, since they stand there and look at it as it perforates their starfleet-trained red-shirted asses).

    FWIW

  • trek has got to be one of the most ported program. (The first is obviously "Hello World"). Certainly it's shown up on a lot of computers an a lot of different forms.

    When internet technologies were first debuted to the public at some convention in '79 or '80, there were two programs that were enormously popular. One was a simple chat program, the other was Trek.

  • From the article:

    ...entire cast of Voyager is available to talk to and each is voiced by the show's actor, except hold-out Jerri Ryan (Seven of Nine) who is impersonated well.

    Let's look at who buys the most videogames: Males between the ages of 18 and 24. What do they want? Breasts. And they're not even going to have the real titty chick doing her voice acting? You may say she's impersonated well, but we will know the difference! We will not settle for fake breasts!

    Or at least, the actress behind them has to be real.

  • Re:Nice looking shots ... even better gameplay (Score:3)

    by Unfallen ( 114859 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @11:22PM (#736654) Homepage
    Bought this at Live 2000 in London last weekend after playing a few deathmatches there. DM wise, it's standard fare with some cool weapons that are perhaps more balanced than Q3, and that place the game somewhere between Q3 and UT in terms of rampaging death.

    Where the game really comes into itself, and where it really shows that it's not just a cool Q3 mod, is the single player game. As if to counterbalance the onslaught of multiplayer-only games, the Elite Force team have come up with a (great) plot, involving a decent variety of locations/enemies/puzzle things, along with some *usable* AI for your accompanying team mates (they don't get stuck anywhere but, hmm, they have been known to shoot me to death for letting them get shot by the enemy a few times...)

    I think it's fair to say that this has drawn me in even more than Half-Life did. Only gripes are that it has a quick save, but no quick load function and loading takes far too long, especially when the level being loaded is already in memory.

  • Now, having said that, GeForce2 cards stink for 2D , next to what you pay for them. Budget-conscious folks who game upon occasion would do well with a Matrox G400.
  • BotF is a great game! Or is the story only referring to FPS games?
  • Really, Voyager is about 50 times better than Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and even (gasp) the original.
  • Somewhere between UT and Q3... does that mean you think Q3 is better, or what?
  • The first startrek game I played back in '76 was (at least for its time) a very good game. The version I used was written in Basic and was available on the university's interactive computer system.
  • I anybody wants a really cool game, try Deus Ex.
    Its futuristical (but not in space) and has all kinds of nifty weapons (10mm pistols, 30.06 rifles, submachineguns, and gas grenades, aswell as plasma rifles and rocket launchers). The game engine is extremly detailed (you can shoot a hooker, and then look up her dress, not that I do that) and its extremly hard (I've been playing for about 15 hours and I'm only and the 3rd level, out of 5). Sorry its only for windows, maybe if we petition Loki :-)
    Only thing is, its only for windows.
  • Oops, maybe I'm getting my pathetic spinoff series confused. Whichever series has the female captain who sounds like she was kicked in the nuts... that's the one I hate.

    That's right, feel the love, Janeway.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Wide Brush Alert!

    NewsFlash! Any game worth playing sucks on a standard dial up!!

    Oh, I dunno about that. Chess seems to do ok. Fairly low-bandwidth...with postcards, even.

    I might re-phrase that to "Any game worth playing that involves running around complex 3-d environments blasting the crap out of everything that moves sucks on a standard dialup". I know it's hard to believe but there were games before Doom ;-)
  • I can assure you, I wasn't impressed any by this game either. I think it was the fact that I beat it in one night (at a LAN party) that did it.

    My friends and I compared it to the average Voyager episode: Fun, but lacking. The fact that the final boss was just some big Foozle that didn't even move wasn't very helpful either.

    I will give it credit for being a decent recreation of the Voyager atmosphere. The Borg excursions were most interesting, even if that strangely-numbered-Species were far too easy to kill. And like Malor said, the puzzles are braindead-dumb and the battles get horribly repetitive.
  • This part of the review describes the things that made the game unplayable for me: "What is contrived is the in game Quake III rendered cinematics which feature
    • the most stilted looking characters since Daikatana hit the scene.
    Luckily, the voice acting is better than average, unluckily
    • there are a lot of cutscenes and it's rough to watch the action grind to a halt each time one loads.
    Which leads to another sticking point; the load times in this game are long. The game certainly gives the illusion of more interactivity than it actually offers. There are Half-Life-esque moments where you can influence the action but for the most part it's just a corridor crawl against predictable AI. They shoot at you and they run at you but that's all they do. There are no surprises outside of the plotline." yeesh!
  • Hey, head to head with the Borg, what could be better?

    Face to Face with Seven of Nine, perhaps...

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • One of the great things about Q3A weapons is that they're tweaked so that every weapon could still be useful in a variety of situations

    I disagree with you here. I agree with the review [checkout.com]Checkout [checkout.com]:

    With the useless Machine Gun, slow Shotgun and Railgun, you're left with only two choices: Rocket Launcher and Plasma Cannon. Everything else seems like a last resort.

    Actually, I wouldn't call the Railgun useless, although it is tricky to use, but the Machine Gun is pretty darn useless.

    To me, this is the fatal flaw of Unreal Tournament. There are something like 18 different fire modes total in the game, but only 5 are really playable in a combat situation: Plasma Fire mode 2, Flack 1, Flack 2 (occasionally), Shock Rifle combo (1 and 2), and Rockets. So you end up with at most 35% of your weapon fire modes being used.

    Total nonsense. The best thing about UT deathmatch is that you can score a kill with any of the weapons. Some are definitely better than others, but you have at least a chance with anything.

    Impact hammer: best used when lying in wait. If you can predict that the other guy is going to come around a certain corner, you can score major damage and a probable frag by lying in wait with the hammer charged up.

    Enforcer pistol: use rapid-fire (mode 2) and get another if you can. Especially with two, you can do some damage. Aim at the guy's head; that seems to help. (The other day I used a single pistol to frag a guy with a rocket launcher! It won't always work but at least there is a chance.)

    GES Bio-rifle: you can frag in seconds with this one, especially if the other guy doesn't have any armor. And you can use it to lay traps.

    Shock Rifle: Not my favorite, but has its uses. Its main fire mode does have "shock" value, so sometimes you can bounce the other guy and make him fall to his doom. But the coolest thing is to shoot the energy ball with mode 2 and then detonate it with mode 1 fire; you can score an instant frag, or multiple frags even. It's tricky enough to do that when you pull it off you feel you have done something cool.

    Pulse Gun: As noted above, mode 2 is best (does the most damage). But I use mode 1 as well, because mode 2 requires you to aim more accurately; mode 1 scatters the fire a bit, making it much tougher to evade. I believe mode 1 also has some splash effect; mode 2 is straight line fire only.

    Ripper: Quite useful. You can quickly fire off a stream of the spinning saw blades, and since they bounce all around you can fill a hall with death without having to expose yourself to enemy fire. This is particulary useful in team play since you don't hurt your allies. And mode 2 is also useful, mainly because of the shock effect; I use this to make the other guy fall to his doom.

    Minigun machine gun: you can kill in seconds with the mode 2 fire. Mode 2 fires bullets quickly, but it takes a moment to spin up to speed, so I usually start firing just before making contact with the enemy. Ideally used from behind, of course. On levels with armor and rocket launchers, this isn't your first choice because it can be a bit slow to kill the other guy and you have to be exposed to use it.

    Flak Cannon: my personal favorite. Great in both modes. Mode 1 can bounce flak around corners; mode 2 does a whole lot of damage and has a shock bounce besides.

    Rocket Launcher: obviously a favorite. Mode 1 fires from 1 to 6 rockets; mode 2 fires 1 to 6 grenades. But on some small levels it can be hard to use without killing yourself too.

    Sniper Rifle: very underrated. Sniping at long range only works in certain situations, but in team play those situations are common. And you can run around using it as a rapid-fire weapon with some success, especially if you "walk" your fire up until you hit the guy's head.

    Redeemer: The explosive force of the Redeemer makes for instant kills, even instant multiple kills, but it has weaknesses too. It flies slow enough that with a head start, a person can outrun it! And if you shoot a redeemer missile in flight, it will explode, so you have a chance to save yourself if one is headed your way. And the explosion doesn't go around corners, so you can actually dive for cover.

    In short, I have used all of the above successfully in UT, and none is a total waste of time. It's true that once I have a Flak Cannon I usually use that in preference to anything else, but you always have some sort of favorite in any game.

    steveha

  • oh yeah.. oops... brain not turned on that's why...
    ---
    dd if=/dev/random of=~/.ssh/authorized_keys bs=1 count=1024
  • That's his style. He's a twelve year old script kiddie trapped in a webmaster's body who does all kinds of funny things. He runs a hardware review site and writes articles all in that style. It's hilarious.

    http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk

  • i'll give in on the morbid obesity and no life, but i've had it running alright on my ppro200 with a voodoo2 and a good old millenium 1.

    its fine until you get a level with lots of bots, at which point bad things happen, but it ran at a fairly decent speed, in a resolution high enough for me to rail people across an open space.

  • It's a shame as well, since I have no hope of getting broadband anything until at least 2002. What's a real bitch is the LPBs also tend to be the dedicated players who would be damn good even over a slow dialup, which tends to lead to me dying a lot.

    There's a thought, was the concept of dying a lot thought about much before video games? After all, I can't imagine people saying "damn, I died again" in the 60s, unless they were experimenting with drugs, which I guess most people were ;)

  • Re:The only problem i have with it is.... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Err. Those pictures you're referring to "between" the levels are screen captures. They are the last frame drawn from the previous level. The reason the look funny is because the've had a 'filter' applied to them so they look like they're displayed on a TV (a kinda of scanline effect). They look good and provide you with a visual clue that everything is paused and something is loading. So I can't even fathom what your complaining about. It's better than having a generic "loading" screen. And if you're actually talking about the ingame CG cinematics then you're even stranger than I thought. The CG is quite nicely done.

  • While the QIII engine is brilliant, the gaming industry seems to be getting into a rut - the rut of duplicating games to the point that they're all really dialects of the same language.

    Certainly there are big names in the Industry that have made progress in their fields: Carmack, Woston, etc...but should there really be this kind of duplication in the industry? Surely this is not a healthy situation.

    I'm not saying write your own 3D engine - because that will be similar to reinventing the language itself - still copying, duplication - in essence. Create new gaming paradigms!

    To me, the ideal game would be multi-paradigmed. With an option to switch between 1st person, 3rd person, 3D-quest (ala Sierra games of the late 90s)...and strategy...(ala Civilization). You should be able to switch between these in real-time. Thanks in advance.
  • Amen, I couldn't agree more. I played through the game (an excellent game btw) in a weekend. I thought I had completed 'episode 1' or something when I had in fact killed the final boss. I was surprised when the names of the developers started scrolling across the screen.

    The game should have been at least three times longer.

    Deus Ex - now that's a large game.

  • There was a B5 starfury sim in development a couple of years back, but it got canned when Sierra got rid of the development staff (see here [slashdot.org]).

    Speaking of space sims, I've been playing a lot of Invasion, the new Trek game for the PSX, which is also officially nifty...going up against Borg Cubes and Warbirds in a ship that can strafe, cloak, and go into warp backwards...plus you get Worf and Picard for your money, very nice...

  • There is a 7/9 character (many, look at the polygons on THAT one! :D), but Jeri Ryan was the only actor from the series not to voice in the game. Apparently, prior commitments were a problem (the voice recording was done while ST:V was on vacation from filming).

  • I really got pissed off with that 'we hate you, you let us get shot, so we'll kill you' behaviour of the Team members. It just plain sucks. They don't even warn you. I could understand it if _you_ were the one shooting them. But not enemies. The US Marines don't kill their CO when the enemy takes down one of the enlisted. If you ask me it is a bug in the AI. I've only experienced it on one level though. The one with the wall mounted turrents inside the alien "gun ship".

    Other than that I think the game rocks. I bought it on the strength of the demo and I've been very pleased with my purchase. I'm nearing the end I think. I've just entered the "Forge". I've only had the game for a couple of days though. I picked the default difficulty setting which was perhaps too low for my skill level as I am a big first person shooter fan. The last FPS I bought was Soldier of Fortune (by Raven funnily enough) and enjoyed that a lot too. I think STV: EF is a better game than SOF though. Mainly because everything in STV: EF is just that little bit better. The story. The graphics (though my P3-450 and GeForce tend to get stretched a bit at 800x600). The scripted sequences. Everything is better, except maybe the DM portion of the game. SOF DM is frenetic. On the hole STV: EF is a very cool single player experience. Sometimes you feel like your "inside" a real STV episode. I'm actually surprised at how much I enjoy that feeling seeing as I don't watch Star Trek Voyager on TV.

    For anyone who likes First Person Shooters I highly recommend STV: EF. However if you _hate_ Star Trek then you'll probably hate the game.

    And to all those who mention Deus Ex... Yes Deus Ex is a good game too. More RPG elements though. STV: EF is quite linear with basic puzzles. But the same can be said of pretty much all other First Person Shooters.

    Lets all just hope that Loki get to port STV: EF to Linux. Then everyone with a decent PC, XFree 4.x and a decent video card should GO BUY IT.

  • i know, but i'm still proud of getting my little pc to run it. nobody ever listens to me boast...
  • I played that game for hours. Possibly my favourite beeb game :)

    It was a "star control" style top-down shoot em up and you got a new ship to fly at the end of every wave. Pure class.

    +++++
  • What a surprise another Star Trek meets Quake.

    What I'd love to see is a true role playing game using all this 3d technology based on the original Star Trek or NG. Surely all the stories and plotlines in those series are enough for a decent roleplayinggame.

    Why, so we can have a bland Star Trek meets Diablo game?

  • So what is it with this Jeff K guy? Why does he write like that?
  • No, not the G400, unless youre talking about a linux card. The ATI Radeon is a great 2d card. But, alas, I am stuck with a oc'd voodoo 3 and a p3 450. I still get ok framerates in high res/normal detail and low res/highdetail. I alternate depending on how im feeling. I think UT is better than Q3a acutally...
  • That's likely because those with broadband are likely to play more and get better, since they are likely frustrated less. Dialups take one look at their 300 ping and being abused by the LPBs, they give up.

    It's what I did, I started out on Counterstrike with a 350 ping and I would get absolutely battered on every server. So I gave up. I started college in August, and we have an oncampus Counterstrike server, so I tend to play there a lot. I ping at 30-40 most of the time. When I started playing, I still sucked really bad. But I would get an occasional kill by sheer virtue of my ping. So I had a little motivation to continue playing. I've been playing for a little over two months, and now I mostly place within the top two of my team, often doubling my kills to my deaths. Which is rather good in Counterstrike.

    I started with the same level of skill with both connections, but the fast connections are more likely to develop good playing skills.

    I'll shut up now.
  • He's also not a real person, but a creation of the REAL webmaster of Something Awful, Lowtax.

    Most people don't even bother to look at the main Something Awful page, they always stumble upon a link to a JeffK page... Something Awful is a humor site devoted mostly to games, but also to the net in general. Lowtax is f-ing hilarious most of the time, but lately the JeffK content has been slacking.

    For some classic JeffK, check out the "Wacky Fun Computar Comic Jokes" at
    http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk/computarfunnys /index.htm


  • I just played this on the LAN 5 minutes ago with about 8 other people. Pretty cool but the wepons and other stuff are not as rich. You cannot differentiate the difference in power of the weapons either.

    I miss the days of Half-Life. You pull the trigger on something and you could really feel it. That proggie was the best.

    KidSock

  • Erg...what surprises me here is that most of the people commenting on this stuff haven't ever played it...I thought all this 3rd Party commentary only happened when there were posts that involved laws and stuff.

    Anyway, here's my review [epinions.com] of the game: Personally, the no head-bob makes me a bit ill, the ending is kind of forumlaic and yet unrewarding, and for those of you who think you go around fighting the Borg, they actually don't come into play for most of the game...short as it is.

    However, it is kind of fun...best described as a 2-hour special episode of Voyager on steroids. One thing I thought was really weird (besides the bad modeling) is that all the ST:V cast members do their own voices...except for 7 of 9...it's this obvious knock-off...What happened there?
  • Personally, I think Netrek has been the best Star Trek game ever... considering it's been around for more than decade, it's practically the longest lasting also. But okay, I guess people these days worry about the pretty graphics first, and then the strategic value of a game...

    Have a spiffy day,
    Anthony
  • http://www.rubybay.com/users/drbeeb/

    i found it :)

    now to make it into 300baud so i can play it from my sound card into my bbc
    .oO0Oo.
  • Ok - it was a DEC PDP11/70 running VAX VMS (which version I forget....) either way - a PDP 11/xx and a VAX are BOTH made by digital.... sheesh... and you're very correct: trek kicked serious ass!!!
  • We used to play that for hours...

    Might have been based on the older one. Had a small map on the screen.

    Anyone know if it was ever ported to anything else?

  • I just hope they were able to get to use some of the 3D models (even if it was scaled down low poly) from the series.

    According to the Firingsquad review, Seven of Nine at least is rendered nicely. *cough*
  • What about Starfleet Command? It rocks! Well, okay, it's pretty good. It plays a great deal like Star Fleet Battles and is based on the SFB rules. Starfleet Command 2 is coming out soon, and it looks pretty good.

    Now if somebody would only take and make a ST game based on the Diablo 2 engine. Then we would have something.
  • Sorry its only for windows
    Wrong, I've been playing it on the Mac for over a month now, on and off. And you're right, it's totally friggin cool.

    Oh, try this: pick up a body, then switch to your inventory screen.
    Select an item and drop it.
    Exit the inventory and go back to the game.
    Pick up the item you just dropped and equip any weapon.
    Hey! Where did the body go?!

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • There's a thought, was the concept of dying a lot thought about much before video games?

    Ask a stand-up comedian... Some of them died every night....

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • It all went downhill after the origional Quake...

    --
  • Oh yeah? There was TI-TREK for the TI-994/A and it even had speech! Of course, the game sucked royally. imagine the photon torpedo slowly going by on the grid.
  • Back before the retail version was released, I went to Raven Software's website, and I downloaded the Demo.

    I was quite impressed.

    I E-mailed them asking for a port to Linux (it's based on Quake III and all), but I never got a reply. However, several FAQs state that ports to Linux and MacOS are dependant on how the retail Windows version does in sales. A Linux port looks promising. I also told them that I was so impressed with the game, as soon as I saw it on the shelf, I would buy it - no second thoughts. And that's exactly what I did, and I don't regret it at all.

    [ SPOILERS AHEAD ]

    The game plays out like an episode of Voyager. Basically, the ship responds to a distress call that turns out to be bogus, and Voyager is transported to a sort of "Starship Graveyard." There is a group of enemies that scavenge off of other ships for supplies.

    One of the more impressive levels was a recreation of a Kirk-era ship, from the Original Series episode "Mirror Mirror." It comes complete with the Imperial logo, maniacal crew and all. (No bearded Spock, tho.) This is part of a level where many different types of ships are cobbled together to form a sort of base. Original series sound effects are present (ala the Door Swoosh), and that brings me to my next point. This game is true to Trek in lots of aspects, and the sound is no exception.

    Weapons are cool, one of my favorites being the standard issue hand phaser. (COOL STUFF) Some of the more impressive weapons include a Personal Photon Torpedo Launcher, an Arc Welder, etc. Cool stuff to play with. Plus, you get to run around on the Holodeck trying out these toys in settings like 'Camelot' or 'Wild West'.

    I am not disappointed in this game at all, and that's just the Single player. Multiplayer is fun, too.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Re:Next Generation: A Final Unity (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @03:24AM (#736705)
    I'm an avid Trekkie, so I've sampled most of the Trek games.

    Final Unity was okay, but 'Star Trek: Borg' was an absolutely *incredible* game. The entire game was Fullscreen, Full motion video, and played out EXACTLY like an episode of the Next Generation. Except you got to choose the plot twists.

    And while it's not a Game, the 'Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual' was another great release. Walking around different decks of the ship, now that was just cool. (By todays standards, and looking at the 3D recreation of Voyager's bridge in Elite Force, the Technical Manual would be terrible. However, when it came out, it was incredible.) I bought the actual Technical Manual in print, and seeing those pages come to life on that CDROM was very cool.

    'Star Trek: Bridge Commander' looks promising, too. It looks to be a full 3D recreation of a Galaxy Class ship (ala The Enterprise D), including the bridge, and full operation. You get to command a starship! Whee! I'm looking forward to that.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Well, this actually averts the need to fall much into the ethics and such of star trek by falling nicely into a niche. They like it because it's a star trek game that lets you kill kill kill, the way that most gaming is these days.

    On a side note, Raven actually does to well with their titles and sticking to the plot, however, the way that they got the plot to work this time is matching a plot to the game that they had planned, I'm not saying that this is bad, I am saying, it should be pretty blatantly obvious that this is your standard 3D shooter, with star trek folks in it and a story line to catch it.

    All that said, I like all of the above, you can be sure that I'll pirate, er uh, buy it.

  • To quote the inimitable Jeff K... (Score:4)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @10:16PM (#736709)

    SO how coem ther si 10000000 gaems about STAR TRACK comineing out evary day?!?

    do we needs thes many STAR TRACK gaems?

    Quote torn from the JEFF K. interview with Jake Simpson [somethingawful.com]. Just like with every Jeff K. article, I laughed so hard I had a brain hemorrhage and now I'm dead. (You bastards had better appreciate that I'm using my final words to bring you this bit of humor.)

  • Star Trek Shoot em up?

    Man, thats old, I played that in 1982, and it was called "Space Invaders", but you probably never heard of it.

    :)
    -

  • Next Generation: A Final Unity (Score:5)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @10:21PM (#736713)
    Star Trek Next Generation: A Final Unity was an amusing one (#349004 of the Star Trek games if I believe).

    It had all the voice actors from the show including Reading Rainbow's Levar Burton, along with all kinds of fun and interesting ways to disarm your opponents (having the doctor kill enemies with the medical reader was highly enjoyable).

    Sadly, the game suffered from too many flaws: it only ran in DOS (don't even try to run in it Win95/98), Captain Picard's voice was extremely repetitive (if I had to hear "Make it so, number one" one more time I'd shoot myself) and there was a number of strange graphic blunders, the funniest being the way number one continually turned and stared at Picard's butt whilst on the bridge. No joke.

    Nothing I found more funny then having Picard issue the order "Make it so, number one" and have number one stare at his ass right afterwards. He kind of had this look on his face that said "Captain? Right now?"

  • Funny, Quake 3 works fine on my 500, with a TNT...

    Works great on my friend's dual 300 (note that dual 300 does not mean 500), with a GeForce under linux, and we were in damned good resolution, with awesome effects, on the net, while pounding the shit out of his net connection and that computer working on our CS project at the same time...

    So, I'm not sure from whence you come... Unless you were trying to run it on a pentium with no acceleration.

    Oh yeah, moderators, read the parent post for a change, eh? My karma doesn't change, and it's still annoying.

  • Finally I get to frag Capt Kirk. I've wanted to blast that SOB ever since he sold out to those Priceline folks. Do you think the Federation pulled his commission.

    He's just so ... annoying dog.
  • Star Trek Shoot em up?

    Man, thats old, I played that in 1982, and it was called "Space Invaders", but you probably never heard of it.

    Actually, the best Star Stek game ever made was a shoot-em up -- "Starship Command", released by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro. It wasn't an official Star Trek license, but there were enough references that it was pretty obvious. Great game, that brings back many happy memories of my childhood. I really must try and get hold of a decent (i.e., not just Mode 7) Beeb emulator for Linux...

  • I bought and finished ST:EF this weekend. Yes, one day .. part of this was that the gameplay was very immersive, making you want to play it out, the other was that the challenges were on the easy side, and it was TOO SHORT in terms of number of levels. There was a recent Penny Arcade strip that reflected on this.

    Now, otoh, the multiplayer looks promising. Q3A default suffers from 'poor' weapons -- you either have to by a vhpb, snipe from a distance with the rail, or have quad damage and rush ahead with nearly any other weapon. The weapons in ST:EF are sufficiently different (and with secondary modes) to make the number of ways to frag an opponent much larger, supporting a larger variety of play styles. I'm waiting eagerly to see what mods get made/ported for it, particular things like TeamFortress and Counterstrike (that is an 'if', as I'm just offering suggestions). And there's something satisfying running around as Neelix and kicking butt, as well... :D

  • I've actually enjoyed some of the older adventure-games. That is the one based on Next Generation, perhaps someone remembers the name.
    And what is great about 7/10?
    The review specifically states that the thing that saves this game is multiplayer, and that seems like Quake3 with Star Trek skins and weapons.
    How original is that? Huh?

    I just don't get it. Star Trek is way cool, I love the series, especially the Next Generation.
    Why can't they make good games, every one of the episodes of the series seem to have a better story, and Star Trek: First Contact was good.

    It seems like they just want to rip of all trekkie-fans, some which sadly are to blind to know it.
    But! Not all Star Wars games are that good either.
    I personally only like the X-wing and Tie Fighter series.

  • I'm not all THAT impressed with it... (Score:5)

    by Malor ( 3658 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @10:31PM (#736741) Journal
    There are definitely good points to it, but the character interaction is weak and the 'puzzles' are really stupid -- they mostly consist of finding the right switch panel and pressing it. Oooh, that took brainpower. And most of the battles have been pretty repetitive.

    I am presently in a level that has a really massive, huge fight, and it's fun but frustrating. If you're into lots of Star-Trek style shooting of bad guys, you might like this one.

    On the whole I thought Deus Ex was a much, much better game. Star Trek is flashy. Deus Ex uses sort of a creaky engine that isn't nearly as fast and doesn't look as good, but the story is vastly better and the situations and puzzles a lot more interesting.

    I think all of Star Trek has gotten that way -- most of it is plastic and cardboard, with very little substance to it. "Quick, hand me the spanning phase-inductance tool, the transmudiating resistance coil is out of alignment!"

    Blech.

    Oh, one caveat: I have played both games only single-player. I haven't done multiplayer with either.
  • let that Jeri Lyan Ryan woman be involved. Though it be to the detriment of my life.
  • I'll give Raven points for the quality of the graphics and the detail with which they emulated the various environments of the different species that inhabit the Star Trek universe.

    However, the single player game play is awful. The game is terribly repetitive. Primarily, you have an objective -- reaching it involves kill aliens, move to next room, kill aliens, repeat, ad inf. until end of level. Pretty disappointing really.

    I can see how the reviewer might've been terribly impressed with the game -- if he only played it for all of twenty minutes. The "Gee Whiz" factor wouldn't have worn off by then. However, after about 4 hours of the afforementioned tedium, it grows old fast.

  • Re:The only problem i have with it is.... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They look like they were done by an 8 yr old in MS Paint.

    Sounds like Carmack to me.

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