The assumption that obsessed geeks will buy anything with Star Trek written on the box has caused some truly terrible releases. But then and again, in Kirk-like moments of brilliance, there are games that really shine through in this universe. In fact, there are so many offerings in general, that it’s a wonder how the Star Trek franchise hasn’t quite solidified its place in the video game industry. Warp speed ahead…
THE WORST
Star Trek Online
2010 | Cryptic Studios | PC Unfortunately, Star Trek Online wasn’t the unstoppable force of The Next Generation‘s Borg, but the brokenly product-shilling series of minor obstacles that was Voyager‘s Borg. A once impressive force reduced to a few pantomime-grade challenges. Fun space combat is constantly interrupted by boring people doing the same boring things over and over again. Instead of assimilating the lessons of everything that came before, Cryptic Studios painted by the numbers in a way that even Seven of Nine couldn’t save.
Star Trek: Shattered Universe
2004 | Starsphere Interactive | Xbox, PS2 Most Star Trek titles can at least recognize the importance of the starships. Shattered Universe can’t even manage that, loading the player into a range of single-pilot fighter ships – something the Star Trek universe doesn’t actually have (and a runabout wouldn’t be seen dead in this). The graphics were clunky even for the PS2, and while they managed to get Sulu and Chekov’s voices, they didn’t manage to capture their interest. You can almost hear them reminiscing about the days before they were typecast, as they grind out another paycheck. Or maybe they were just playing the game, and were as bored by the “Hold down the fire button and it doesn’t matter if you die” gameplay as everyone else.
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Star Trek: Legacy
2006 | Mad Doc Software | X360, PC This may be the first Star Trek computer program designed explicitly to prevent AI from becoming self-aware and attempting to kill the crew. By being too stupid to do anything. This is a starship tactical combat game with a single locked camera, unredefinable controls, a single save file, and allies so stupid they’d rather die than repair themselves. If this game was an alien, it would be the original Gorn: a shambling idiot only important for its nostalgia factor. Kirk defeated him by fashioning a crude gun out of bamboo and saltpeter, which would still have been more sophisticated than the starship combat in this game. And the way Kirk fired priceless diamonds just to hurt an idiotic enemy perfectly captures this game’s handling of the license.
Star Trek: D-A-C
2009 | Naked Sky Entertainment & Bad Robot Interactive | X360, PS3, PC D-A-C isn’t even Asteroids. It lacks the rigid plotting and escalating tension of Space Invaders. It approaches the theoretical limit of how few pixels you can bother to program in exchange for some sweet license money. The result isn’t a game so much as a simulation of how Q must see our universe: a bunch of ants insignificantly bouncing off each other, and he may as well poke them a bit to try to relieve the tedium. Except D-A-C doesn’t relieve any tedium. And even Q wouldn’t be bothered with it for a full forty-five minutes.
Star Trek
2013 | Digital Extremes | X360, PS3, PC The 2013 Star Trek game, aka the three millionth boring cover-based shooter with slightly different licensed likenesses. The game couldn’t even come up with a subtitle! Trust us, we’ve read through the entire history of Trek games for this article, and arriving without a subtitle is like arriving without pants. It’s far past mere laziness and contempt for those around you and into painful violations of basic decency.
THE BEST
Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity
1995 | Spectrum HoloByte | PC A Final Unity is the most Star Trek: The Next Generation game there has ever been. Adventuring through the galaxy, following tenuous clues, and standing around talking for far too long way more often than fighting. It’s also about as subtle in its morals, with one alien society divided between rich “Patricians” and worker “Plebeians.” Real actor voices made it feel like an interactive episode, which is all the fans ever wanted.
Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force
2000 | Raven Software | PC, PS2
Pinball Arcade: Star Trek The Next Generation Pinball
2012 | FarSight Studios | PC The Next Generation pinball machine was nerdy perfection. Everything from Worf’s assurance that table-tilters are “without honor” to a new Borg threat based entirely on multiballs was a perfect resonance between the franchise and fun. The table was more perfectly built Star Trek fun based on inevitable defeat than the Doomsday Machine. With Pinball Arcade’s release of a digitized table, it even counts as a video game. And is a better simulation of real items than the holodeck ever managed.
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
1983 | SEGA | Arcade Strategic Operations Simulator is a gloriously geeky retro orgy of TRON-Trek. The starting synthesized Star Trek theme bars are beauty in bass reverberation. The arcade machine captures the Enterprise in a mesh of energized straight lines more perfectly than the Tholians. The makers loved Star Trek so much, they worked out how to synthesize voice samples because back then there wasn’t enough memory to record them. And we can’t think of more perfect capture of the spirit of Star Trek than Spock being represented as a set of cunning equations. Luke McKinney is a freelance contributor.
