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First Great Star Trek PC Game?
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!"
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.
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?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
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.
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. 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
Got Rhinos?
What are the odds that the only playable part of this game will turn out to be the 'Captain Proton' easter egg?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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.
Jilles
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...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
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.
Face to Face with Seven of Nine, perhaps...
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
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.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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.
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
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!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
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?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
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.
Eh...
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. 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.)
Man, thats old, I played that in 1982, and it was called "Space Invaders", but you probably never heard of it.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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?"
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
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.
Eh...
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.
... annoying dog.
He's just so
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
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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.
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.
:wq
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.
Sounds like Carmack to me.