Star Trek Legacy Review 242
Since late last month, I've been playing with the Xbox 360 title Star Trek Legacy. The fact that it is not a great game should be no surprise. Despite some entertaining plot elements, the title's gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. What is confusing, and troubling, is that this is just the latest in a long line of disappointing Trek games. Looking back on the history of Star Trek gaming, games like Elite Force or A Final Unity stand out from a disturbingly large field of titles that over-promise and under-deliver on the well-loved Trek universe. Why is it so hard to make a good Trek game? Why do developers keep trying and failing? Why is there a Vulcan leading the Borg? Read on for consideration of each of these questions, and a review of Star Trek Legacy to boot.
- Title: Star Trek Legacy
- Publisher: Mad Doc Software
- Developer: Bethesda Softworks
- System: 360 (PC)
As so often happens with a Trek title the premise, at least, is compelling. Commanding a task force of up to four ships, you follow a fairly coherent plot from the "Enterprise" era all the way through to the time of Jean-Luc Picard and Benjamin Sisko. You can choose between a number of ship classes to include in your fleet, and gameplay consists of real-time ship-to-ship battles. The actors who portrayed the captains in the various eras make a return, offering their vocal talents and a feel of authenticity to the proceedings.
What sounds like a can't-miss formula, though, inevitably flies past the target at full impulse. Ship and fleet control is the most notable failure, and results in individual combat moments requiring more effort than feels right. I found fleet combat most frustrating, as it is so variable how your actions are interpreted. When you begin a mission, all four of your ships are taking orders from you at the same time. Selecting a enemy for combat (by hitting the right shoulder button and cycling through the available options) is intuitive and quick. When all four ships are following your orders, this results in a focused barrage that effectively neutralizes targets. The problem comes when ships begin 'thinking' on their own.
It was never clear to me what prompted this, though I know that giving individual ships orders via the overhead tactical display (available via the 'select' button) always 'broke up' the fleet's command. This is problematic, as the 2D overhead display is the best way to keep track of the action on the sometimes dauntingly large 3D space maps Legacy uses. Indeed, the z-axis is used in the game (unlike in the show), making it hard to keep track of enemy ships on occasion. These are challenges, though, to be overcome: the frustration sets in when order-less ships choose to sit dead in space and absorb phaser hits without retaliating. That's some extremely poor decision-making on the part of the AI, and can mean the difference between success and failure in a large and frantic naval battle.
Another, subtle frustration is the pathing your friendly ships use when circling a target. While sometimes ships do 'the right thing' and orbit their prey at an appropriate range, trying to keep weapons locked on the target at all times, that's not always a given. Often, ships locked onto a target attempt something I can best refer to as a 'strafing run', where they move directly at a target, allowing firing on the enemy for a brief period of time, before overshooting and swinging around for another pass. Overshot on targets can sometimes be quite some distance, resulting in a long delay between assaults on enemy ships. This style of attack is particularly frustrating when attacking immobile targets like space stations and asteroids, as AI-controlled ships tend to fly right into their prey and sort of bounce off. Given the finicky targeting you're allowed to use, this greatly reduces an AI-controlled ship's effectiveness against such a target. In a pitched battle, which is almost all of them, it just becomes frustrating to have to keep so many balls in the air.
The plot that strings these combat elements together is all the Trek you can stand, and more, crammed into a disappointingly short timespan. There is time travel, Klingons, Romulans, Borg, and one very weird Vulcan. The plot itself is explained in detail in a comic included as an 'extra' on the game's main menu. To give you a horrible taste, it mentions V'ger, from the first Star Trek movie, in connection with the Borg's origin. Looking back on the whole story from the last mission gives you an 'ohhh' moment, but it's not that great a payoff for the amount of time you spend in the dark. Just the same, overall the story is coherently told and entertainingly written. The dialogue written for the captains is especially entertaining; even the stuff written for Shatner (who, predictably, gets the most 'screen time') is enjoyable in a scenery-chewing kind of way. Getting to hear Avery Brooks intone new lines as Benjamin Sisko was especially enjoyable, and the role DS9 gets to play near the game's end allowed me to forgive a lot of smaller oversights.
Visually, Legacy is a competent 360 title. It's certainly not Gears-pretty, but the ships are all well modeled, and it's hard to make space look ugly nowadays. Ships and stations explode nicely, though larger objects tend to look a little odd when breaking apart. Audio effects use official FX from the show, and the score consists of forgettable Trekesque tracks that back the game's sometimes-tense moments adequately.
This leaves us with the question I posed above, though: Why is it so hard to make a good Star Trek game? It could be the difficulty of making licensed games satisfying to players outside of the 'fan' population ... but Star Wars titles like Knights of the Old Republic and Jedi Academy transcend fandom as truly great gaming experiences. Heck, even Spider-Man 2 is a better game than any Trek game I've played, and Spidey's history with gaming is a lot shorter than Star Trek's. Given the dialogue and narration-heavy storytelling that Star Trek uses, it is possible that the Trek universe just isn't a good fit for videogames? What does the lackluster performance of these latest Bethesda titles mean for future trek games? Star Trek Online, specifically, seems to have a Herculean task before it. How do you bring a license that's never seemed to be quite right for gaming to one of the most finicky of all genres, the MMOG?
What do you think? What would it take to make a great Trek game? Are there any Trek games that you think have really succeeded? What will Star Trek Online need to include in order to satisfy you?
Kirk (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I apologize for this post.
Re: (Score:2)
And a potential love affair with Spock. ...
That requires the 'Hot Tranya [wikipedia.org]' mod.
Spokish (Score:3, Funny)
What's to apologize for? When TOS series was still on the air, everybody (audience, writers, critics) agreed that Spock/Nimoy was the #1 babe magnet for the show. Women found the whole supercool hyperlogical scientist schtik thoroughly sexy. And when they started do scripts where he had to battle his inner illogical human, it just got more intense.
Or maybe you're apologizing for the image of Kirk with the torn shirt. Well, most video games with benefit from a little honest homoeroticism...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Twenty bucks says the torn shirt takes him.
KFG
Re: (Score:2)
Obligatory (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And on off-days, it also sells breakfast cereals! ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The best part of that game was that most missions had a special way to get the redshirt killed -- quite amusing. In one mission, you assign the redshirt to futz with the control panel of a door to get into a cave or some such. He fails, s
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Succeeded? (Score:2)
There's only one I can think of: Star Trek [klov.com]... Courtesy Sega.
Starfleet Command series (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The only real success I can think of in the Star Trek gaming world would be the Starfleet Command series. It's only slightly less complex than flying a 747, but it's as close to operating a real starship in combat as anyone will ever get.
Agreed -- they were pretty good. The third one toned down the complexity quite a bit (alas, this was not a good thing.)
As for `as close to operating a real starship in combat', well, a starship in the Star Trek universe, maybe. Beyond that, we shall see.
The Elite Forces games were pretty run-of-the-mill FPS games -- not bad, but not great.
Actually, I sort of liked Star Trek Armada -- it was your basic RTS -- in space -- but it was fun.
Bridge Commander was sort of fun. Not great, but not
Re:Starfleet Command series (Score:4, Interesting)
Possibly the closest attempt at 'operating a real starship in combat' - while still remaining playable - is Attack Vector. Designed by one of the guys who was heavily involved in SFB (even worked for them for a while). Although, it too is a board game :(
Based on Newtonian movement and real physics. Even got a favourable review from the editor of SciAm.
Plays pretty fast, though not on the level of SFC :)
What, no Netrek? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or if you are nuts, buy your own machine [westnet.com]. (No, it is NOT for sale.)
Interplay Succeeded. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Succeeded? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe I'm weird, but I thought Birth of the Federation [wikipedia.org] was a reasonably good turn-based strategy game.
Why is it so hard to make a good Star Trek game (Score:5, Insightful)
It also has to be delivered on-time and on-budget.
Re:Why is it so hard to make a good Star Trek game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I beg to differ. I think that strong vocal performances and talent are no longer dispensable if you want the "total experience" of the best "modern" RPGs, adventures, strategy games, and first-person shooters, genres which are becoming difficult to distinguish.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is it so hard to make a good Star Trek game (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So you're saying we should play Star Trek games, but only the even-numbered ones?
Re: (Score:2)
-matthew
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, keen insight there...
I think the OP was trying to get at why it seems to be harder to make good Trek games than say, good Star Wars games. They're both games, so by your logic they should be equally different to make. But there are quite a few good Star Wars games, bu
"Why is it so hard to make a good Trek game"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tension is created through plot devices and not physical violence.
And because Trek is about large (non-nimble) vessels.
Add fast action and its no longer "Trek".
Keep it "Trek" and it's just not that fun as a video game.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because Trek is ultimately about dialogue and not action.
You haven't been watching Trek since TNG have you?
Re:"Why is it so hard to make a good Trek game"? (Score:5, Funny)
Them's fightin words, son.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see how "dialog" exists in the Voyager or Enterprise world. DS9 had dialog but it also had a much heavier emphasis on action then TNG so it's a wash at best.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since none exists after TNG, I'd say you have that correct.
Actually, in fairness, DS9 lasted another five years after TNG, but started a year before TNG ended, so gets a pass.
But you make a good good point, if accidentally - Voyager and Enterprise both threw away everything that made the franchise great, and they managed to all but ruin Star Trek for a generation. Analogously, most games try to make Trek into something more like the style of Voy
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, in fairness, DS9 lasted another five years after TNG, but started a year before TNG ended, so gets a pass.
I'm torn on DS9. It feels like Bab5 meets Star Trek. Obviously it has Star Trek themes (DS9 did some pretty cool stuff with the Klingons -- a nice build-out from the groundwork laid by TNG) and undertones but the overall story has quite a few similarities and one has to wonder how many of those you can write off to "coincidence".
Mark my words, when a new Star Trek series eventually come
Re: (Score:2)
But everything related to Dominion IMO sucked.
Re: (Score:2)
But everything related to Dominion IMO sucked.
Including quite possibly the biggest anti-climatic letdown of a story [memory-alpha.org] in television history.
"The Prophets made them disappear"
*sigh*
Re:"Why is it so hard to make a good Trek game"? (Score:4, Informative)
It then amused the heck out of me when I saw Nurse Chapel/Lwaxana Troi/the ship's voice/Gene Roddenberry's widow show up as the emperor's wido. She's just wonderful to watch, a majestic older woman, knows that she wants to work on really good projects, and isn't frightened of threats from a company htat exists because of Gene Roddenberry's legacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Star Trek has always been, and always will be a drama first, and sci-fi second. (We don't talk about Enterprise)
I'm sorry but I don't feel like it's been that way since TNG. DS9 might make an honorable mention and it still holds a special place in my heart because it was the first Trek I ever saw. But the more I watch and start to like Babylon 5 the more it feels like DS9 ripped it off.
Classical Trek for me ended when TNG ended. And I'm glad TNG ended when it did -- because certain Season 7 episodes
Re: (Score:2)
I think the adventure genre would disagree with you.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I think your basic thesis is wrong anyways. The two big dialogue games (Borg and Klingon) both didn't do very well when they were released back in the mid-90's. What makes a good Star Trek episode may not make a good Star Trek game.
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, nobody makes adventure games these days. Maybe they could take a cue from Sam and Max--if EVER a series cried out "episodic content" it's one where the original source was... episodic.
Re: (Score:2)
So don't do an action game. The Trekverse would be a good place to set an old-fashioned adventure game [rr.com].
Alas, CBS Paramount will never back such a game. Like all the big media companies, they have no faith in any entertainment that requires actual thinking by the audience to think.
dialogue games etc (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other people give honorable mention to Grim Fandango for the voice acting and plot in it.
The old DOS era adventures rocked (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Trek Gaming Formula (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe if they made a game based on Kirk banging green chicks, they would succeed.
"Hot Tea" scandal brewing (Score:2)
...Or did they? (Score:2)
i don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
What's odd is that it is possible to make a good, licensed game. Take KOTOR for xbox, as an example.
However, most studios seem to see a content license as a "get out of work free" card, and expect that the game will sell on name recognition alone, regardless of whether or not it's any good.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, it will sell well. What game publishers truly hope for, however, is the license to make the game play well on name recognition alone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Star Wars has a much more loosely defined universe, and consequently it's easier for game designers to be imaginative. Star Trek has an OCD fanbase who knows every single detail of every character, race, and ship that was ever referenced, even tangentially, in any Star Trek episode, ever, and they're going to be pissed if there are inconsistencies. There are a few of those people in the Star Wars camp as well, but there just isn't the same sort of detail for them to pore
Action & Adventure vs Philosophy (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, if you want a good Trek game they're going to need to switch game genres to match the show genre more closely.
Re:Action & Adventure vs Philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)
Galactic Civilizations has some cool elements, but it lacks the artistic style and coolness and, in some ways, the intelligence of BOTF.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence the mention of A Final Unity, which was basically a point-'n-click adventure game in the SCUMM mould. There was occasional ship-to-ship combat, but much of your time was spent flying from planet to planet and conducting away missions, while unlocking the mysteries of the ancient civilisation and their Unity Device. Like KO
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dialogue and narration heavy videogames (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the problem. As the submitter mentioned himself, although most Trek games are horrible, there were some winners, such as A Final Unity. It might, however, restrict it to some genres. You take the Star Trek universe, and make a game where you just take ships back and forth and shoot at each other, and you're eliminating 90% of what makes trekkies like Trek. I can say the same thing about making a shooter out of it, which is why I for one didn't like Elite Force.
The problem is that no one seems to like adventure games anymore. Why can't we have more games like Judgment Rites and Final Unity? Star Trek episodes, although they do contain some action which should not be ignored, are mostly about solving puzzles and making choices that influence the outcome of some event. That's what gamers do in adventure games, and that's why every trek gamer remembers A Final Unity as being so great.
Super Star Trek? (Score:2, Interesting)
God I loved that game from the moment I checked out the floppy from the local library...
dogfights in giant fighters (Score:2)
Oh
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that the Enterprise D could hit any target with phasers in almost a 360 sphere (they had those strips on the top and bottom of the saucer section that seemed to be some sort of really long phaser array). Visualizing it I can imagine there were a few angles that might be blind spots, though.
Thing that always bugged me was that aside from Star Trek 2 and 6, even in-universe the characters displayed "2-dimensional thinking" in regards to ship tactics (though saying that and thinking at the s
A game that succeeded (Score:5, Informative)
It was a PC game called 'Begin:Tactical Starship Combat'. It ran first in 80x20 text and later in EGA, but unlike most trek games of the time (which were variants of the old "You're in a 'sector' with 12 quadrants. Press P for phaser" theme from the PDP-11 days, this one put you in charge of a ship (or a fleet) with detailed systems, a need to excercise tactics (instead of just pounding on a 'Fire all' button), and clever (or at least difficult) AI.
You gave it commands using a quasi-english that you could shorten. "Pursue Krager at warp 6" could become "purs kr 6" for instance, as long as it was distinct enough.
Phasers, torpedos, warp engines that could overheat, especially when they had taken damage (limiting your performance or making you sacrifice repair times for temporary speed), power systems management, shield management, all sorts of details but you weren't FORCED to micromanage 'em.
Ship battles could be 1x1, or massive fleets. You can play hide & seek with a Romulan warbird, or escort a convoy and protect it against Orions.
I made a web page about it a couple years ago, and there's a Yahoo groups with a few hundred people that STILL play it today. Someone has even hacked together a multiplayer version with clever use of assembly and a debugger.
THIS is the kind of game that works with trek. It puts the player in the game as themselves, not as Kirk or Archer or Picard. The original Toy Story didn't have Barbie because Mattel was worried that Barbie on film wouldn't match the Barbie that kids have in their imagination. The same thing applies to Star Trek games. If the game doesn't let someone really feel like they're in control of things, or uses so many graphics that it gets into uncanny valley territory, then it'll disappoint at some level.
Keep it simple while keeping it flexible. Configurable complexity, less graphics, more monkey.
Here's a page I made about the game, with screenshots and downloads.
http://hallert.net/misc/begin/begin.html [hallert.net]
Re:A game that succeeded (Score:5, Informative)
Works nicely under dosbox.
Probably the most played trek game for me.
(Although the suckiness of 'Legacy has made me discover the ST Bridge Commander which is okay).
Re: (Score:2)
And Tribbles
Of course, it also has non-real-trek stuff, like the death ray or beaming the Enterprise to the nearest starbase.
Bridge Commander (Score:2)
Bridge Commander becomes a lot more than okay when you start adding free mods [filefront.com] that enhance the Quick Battle mode.
Start with NanoFX [filefront.com]--among other things, damage to warp engines now appear as plasma trails instead of "smoke in space."
Granted, many mods are visual improvments to stock ship models and effects, or add new ships. Some others though allow beaming to an allied ship, or separating saucer (and other, if available) sections during combat.
Actually, I have to confess I've never played the "normal"
They make you play Archer first... (Score:2)
Why it's so blasted hard (Score:2)
The gameplay side of it seems to stem from the fact that the designers love to put in all the bells and whistles of life on a starship, but they put in way too much. They make you micro-manage every
The best Trek game (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Give me BOTF with tons of side-missions (maybe patterned off of real Star Trek episodes like "The Chase"), and I'd be a happy camper.
I've read a couple of reviews... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
netrek for the win :) (Score:2, Insightful)
The background to this game (Score:5, Informative)
And that's the 360 version. The PC version is just appalling, and barely usable out of the box. At least wait for them to add configurable controls. Yes, you read that right.
Genres (Score:2)
My favorite space-sim game of all time was
Could a minor patch be the cure? (Score:2)
I understand th
Re: (Score:2)
But it sort of reminds me of that dad who put coal in his son's XBox 360 box for the expensive, audio equipment. Don't know if that patched the son's attitude, but it probably adjusted the brat's AI not to mess with dad again.
Re: (Score:2)
Birth of the Federation (Score:2)
One great star trek game (Score:3, Informative)
Trek ships are wrongly represented (Score:2, Interesting)
Can anyone name a good naval game where you controlled destroyers and battleships? There are next to none and what do exist are almost always bad.
What i think could do a good Trek game for naval combat would be to focus on the more "fighter"-types ships of the latest shows. We would have more fun maneuvering some kind of shuttle that can only fire in front of itself than maneuvering a huge and slow ship tha
Re: (Score:2)
>What i think could do a good Trek game for naval combat would be to focus on the more "fighter"-types ships of the latest shows. We would have more fun maneuvering some kind of shuttle that can only fire in front of itself than maneuvering a huge and slow ship that can fire anywhere it faces because the guns/phasers are mounted on turrets.
But that's not Star Trek. That kind of ship would be scrap metal as soon as it entered the firing range of the Enterprise. (except maybe once, as a terrorist strike, i
Go back to the roots: Netrek (Score:2)
IMO, that's what a lot o
There's are two major problems (Score:5, Insightful)
a) The single most overwhelming problem (which has also hamstrung *every* series and film after TOS) is the question of how much you should try and simply appeal to the established fanbase vs. how much you should try and do outreach to new audiences/go in new directions. Rick Berman's inability to balance this issue was, more than anything else, the single main thing which killed Voyager and Enterprise in the end. With Voyager to a large degree he simply ended up adopting an attitude of, "screw the base," and focused purely on trying to draw new audience, whereas with Enterprise he tried to appeal more to the base at times, but was still unable to balance the issue. I think also the problem is that a balance isn't really possible...you basically have a scenario where the earlier/more conventional series had a philosophical basis of fairly heavy pacifism on the one hand, but where there was a transition period during DS9 in particular where violence started being incorporated more and more as a regular part of the show, until you got to the level of around fifth to seventh season Voyager which regularly had episodes that played like low-budget versions of the Lethal Weapon movies in space. Elite Force in particular was able to use that to its' advantage, and that alone is probably the main reason why that's been one of the only two Trek games (the other having been A Final Unity) that could be called an unqualified success.
Looking at it now, I think the lesson is that because each series had such a fundamentally different approach to the issue of violence, in a game or movie you can't mix series. If you're going to do a Voyager game for instance, you can make an FPS and have it as violent as you want. A Voyager game also wants a heavily postmodern, gritty, and also fairly multi-ethnic feel, with adolescent sexual angst between Tom and BE'lanna, comic relief from the Doctor, Chakotay doing his stereotypical Red Man schtick, and lots of Janeway's trademark moral ambiguity and gleeful abuse of authority.
A TNG game on the other hand *has* to be something like A Final Unity; an almost entirely non-violent puzzle-solver. A TOS game could have some degree of violence, but it has to be 60s oriented and cowboyish in nature, which means unarmed fisticuffs for the most part. The Utopian/"universal peace" vibe doesn't have to be as strong for a TOS game as for TNG either, but a certain amount of it doesn't hurt. I thought Starfleet Academy got it right in terms of having an Andorian as one of the students, as well. That sort of unobtrusive in reference helps to keep the autistic geek base happy, and won't upset normal audiences *too* much if it isn't overdone. Of all of these, DS9 is probably the trickiest to get right, which probably also explains why it hasn't been done successfully in a game. A DS9 game could have a certain amount of violence, but it needs to be kept restrained a subtle way. (Odo's restrained use of martial arts with carefully and clearly performed hand strikes are a good example of what I'm talking about, here) The idea with DS9 is that of a society which has traditionally been pacifist, but which is in the process of discovering that violence is something of a necessity on the basis of self-defense. The seventh season episode, "The Siege of AR-558," is probably the best example of what I'm talking about, there.
b) I get the feeling that in some cases, game design houses possibly (if only subconsciously) had the attitude that because they were doing a Trek game, it probably wasn't going to achieve more than cult popularity anywayz, and so therefore there wasn't much point in making sure that it was a truly quality game. If you're going to do a strongly character/story oriented Trek game, then yes, there is a fairly strong possibility that you're not going to hold much appeal outside the base. Howe
Starfleet Battles (Score:2)
No love for DS9: The Fallen? (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, I was taken with the game from the moment I played the demo. Granted, I played the demo far after it had come out (as far as I can tell it wasn't nearly as well publicized as it could have been). But when I did! Even just the level of detail in the weather they had added (realistic snow falling, Sisko leaving footprints on the ground) was pretty impressive, especially for the time, and in general it had a solid and true-to-Trek feel to it in contrast to the glitchy, floaty and "mod tacked on to a game engine" nature of most licensed games. And there was a level editor! Yes, that's right, even the demo [startrek.com] includes the brilliant UnreadEd package for creating one's own levels. Naturally this has led to some rather impressive fan-made expansions to the game, Convergence [fusioncreativedesign.com] being perhaps the most notable. Alas, the oldskool UnrealEd 1 is a bit tricky to get working with newer versions of Windows, but I have it working just fine on my XP SP1 comp (the trick is compatibility mode combined with a working 98 install somewhere that you can copy missing
And hey, with everyone buying Macs nowadays it's worth noting that it was officially ported to the Mac long ago (from the official website, "OS 8 or higher (NOTE Runs in OS 9.1 emulation mode in OS X)"). And of course the game is old enough that running it under one form of emulation or another isn't too taxing on a system...in other words, yeah, I'd bet it'll run on Linux
I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed DS9, or just feels like playing a well-made Star Trek game, to at least give the demo a chance. It's free-as-in-beer, after all, and to a large degree the openness of UnrealEd and it's access to the scripting underneath the game makes it closer to free-as-in-speech than most games. And keep your eyes out in bargain bins, it shouldn't be too expensive if you find a copy! (I found my copy really cheap years ago already in an EB games store while I was visiting Monroe, Michigan.)
Ohhhh shit (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO, "ohhh" moments are the biggest reason Star Trek is unsalvagable. Too many people who write for the Trekverse think they have to explain some stupid little detail from TOS or the early movies. In fact, most of the issues that "need" resolving are there because the premise kept changing (remember the United Earth Space Probe Authority?) or because the writers didn't even understand the premise (the author of "Balance of Terror" obviously didn't know that the show was about interstellar travel, and probably didn't even understand the word "interstellar").
When they resurrected Star Trek back in 1979, they made the very logical decision to simply abandon the details of the Trekverse that were there for no compelling reason, such as making all the aliens look like humans in weird makup. But then literal-minded fans insisted on an "explanation" for the Klingon Head Ridge Mystery and other such bullshit.
Face it trekkies, Star Trek is dead — and you killed it.
Starfleet Academy (Score:2, Interesting)
just the latest in a long line of disappointing... (Score:2)
It seems like they are just mirroring the actual shows pretty damn well.
Stay away from the PC version (Score:2, Informative)
I played it (Score:2)
But... even though the difficulty is set at the CAPTAIN level, it's rather disappointingly easy, once you figure out where certain "snatch" points are in the game. There are parts of the game that do offer more difficulty, such as the mission where you must keep the Borg "busy" while a rescue operation commences to move transport ships off planets being taken over by the Borg.
However, the No. annoying thing in the game is the difficulty in torpe
Re: (Score:2)
Bad ideas need to be tossed (Score:2)
Massive CRPG combining:
1)The tactical comb
Seems Like All the Best Trek Games (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)