Star Trek Game To Launch Alongside New Movie

Paramount announced yesterday that Star Trek D-A-C will be available for download for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC when the movie is released on May 8th. The acronym in the title stands for different types of gameplay: Deathmatch, Assault, and Conquest. It's an arcade-style game, with a solo mode as well as multiplayer modes that handle up to 12 players. According to Joystiq, "It's a top-down 3D space shooter that doesn't require a lot of hardcore gameplay experience to jump into, but it features a large amount of strategic gameplay that'll please hardcore gamers." Several screenshots have been released.

Comments

They Just Don't Get It...

[hal2814]

Maybe this movie will deviate from the norm but very rarely does Star Trek devote a ton of time to space battles. Why the hell are so many Star Trek games based on space battle? This would sorta make sense for a BSG game but for Star Trek, space exploration and exploring strange new worlds make up the bulk of the plot lines. I think that's why those who played 25th Anniversary love it so much. A Star Trek game actually felt like a game version of the show instead of some space sim with Star Trek intellectual property pasted on top of it. Can we please get another real Star Trek game?!

Re:They Just Don't Get It...

[Akido37]

Star Trek: A Final Unity was probably the best Star Trek game ever released.

Minimal combat, which could be avoided based on your actions, and many missions and away teams, just like on the show.

I hope the new Star Trek Online does it justice.

Re:They Just Don't Get It...

[TheRaven64]

A Final Unity and the 25th Anniversary game were both good. You had a bit of space combat (with a horrible interface) in the 25th Anniversary game, but mostly it was away teams and exploring. I also quite enjoyed Birth of the Federation, which was a Civilisation-style game. Quite a bit of space combat there, but only if you chose to play that way. Playing as the Federation or Ferengi it was discouraged, but if you played as the Romulans or Klingons it was encouraged.

Re:They Just Don't Get It...

[Shakrai]

Playing as the Federation or Ferengi it was discouraged

Actually it was kind of encouraged as the Federation. You got small morale boosts for winning space battles but took a huge morale hit if you tried to land troops and conquer planets to actually win the war. As a result you'd usually wind up in an endless war where'd you destroy their ships as soon as they built them but couldn't actually end the war without alienating the civilian population. Remind you of the present day United States where the public will cheer on air campaigns with minimal American loss of life but go apeshit we land ground forces and start suffering a larger number of casualties?

To add more irony to the mix, the game actually encouraged genocide when playing as the Federation. You'd take less of a morale hit by engaging in orbital bombardments until everybody was dead than you would by invading and conquering the place. About the only time you could get away with ground invasions as the Federation was when you liberated conquered races from the other major powers. Those were actually kind of fun because you'd get a HUGE morale boost and liberated race would usually want to join the Federation within a turn or two.

The Romulans were their own PITA with morale too. Believe it or not the Romulan population was almost as picky as the Federation was, just in different ways. The Cardassians could almost get away with ignoring morale. Bad morale == good excuse to build forced labor camps! I never played as the Klingon's or Ferengi. Keep meaning to load that game back up one day but it doesn't seem to like my new computer for some reason -- which is strange because I've had it working on XP before without issue.

Badly exploited franchise

[Shrike82]

I always felt disappointed with the majority of Star Trek games. Sure there were some half decent first person shooters, and a few point-and-click adventures back in the day that were fun and engrossing. Then I think of Birth of the Federation, which wasn't awful, but as 4X space games go it was no Master of Orion 2. Ditto two fly-around-a-solar-system shooters that were completely underwhelming (the names escape me).

I'm sure loads of people would disagree, but I always thought Star Trek games had the potential to be awesome, but were consistently mediocre.

Tribbles

[belloc1]

I heard the second level is called "The Trouble With Tribbles"

Screenshot:

[Culture20]

YOU MUST DESTROY 16 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 4 STARBASES
               +++
                         STARDATE  2100
    *                    CONDITION GREEN
         >!<<*>          QUADRANT  2,2
          *              SECTOR    5,4
                   *     ENERGY    3000
                         SHIELDS   0
*                       PHOTON TORPEDOES 10
COMMAND

(Modified due to lameness filter. Really? Too many "Junk Characters" for a "Code" post?)

Top-down?

[TheRaven64]

Seriously? They're releasing a top-down space combat game? Is it 1990 again and nobody told me? If you're going to create a strategic space combat game, why not license the engine from a game that did it well (e.g. Homeworld) and use that.