This ... isn't true. You can invade planets using Troop Transports to conquer them.
Yeah, I've found this out since playing the game - there's a lot of stuff in the game that isn't easy to find.
Star Trek (Game Boy Color)
- Original Release: N/A (Demo pitched in 1999)
- Developer: Aqua Pacific
- Publisher: N/A
- Original Platform: Game Boy Color
This demo was probably just a pitch for a Star Trek game, submitted to CBS/Paramount but never approved for development. It’s a vertical scrolling shooter where you pilot a Klingon Bird of Prey and alternate between shooting asteroids and what looks like Romulan Scout Ships.
The playable prototype is clearly very early, as while you can blow things up, you suffer no damage from anything. I can see the people in charge of the Star Trek license at the time wanting something a bit more substantial.
Star Trek: Armada
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: Activision
- Publisher: Activision
- Platform: PC
A real time strategy game set after the Dominion war. The story starts with the Enterprise E dealing with Dominion stragglers that refuse to accept that the war is over when a ship from the future comes and warns Picard that the Borg are about to launch a large scale invasion led by Locutus. At the same time, infighting starts out with the Klingons and Romulans – if this doesn’t stop, the alpha quadrant is doomed.
Armada is a fairly basic RTS game. Each playable faction -the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Borg – plays almost identically as they all have the same stations and types of ships, they just look different and have slightly different abilities. Building your forces is the same for all of them, although it does make them more balanced against each other, even if it means a Borg Cube is on par with a Sovereign class ship.
The main unique element of Armada is crew. Each ship has its own crew, and the number drops down in battles and become less effective. You can also transport your crew to other ships. Derelict ships can be scattered around to take over, and you can even gain control of enemy ships. It’s a really nice mechanic, even if everyone breeds at an alarming rate.
The missions in the story mode have thought out some interesting scenarios to play, which keeps things varied. Some are about defending, some are building up forces to attack, while some have more unique objectives. There’s one where you start off with just a Defiant class ship and need to navigate a maze of asteroid while being chased by far more powerful ships, using derelict ships as cannon fodder to reach the end of the maze.
The game looks very nice, and there are some interesting cutscenes throughout the campaign. It makes things less realistic to make the game much more fun to play – like the layouts of the maps, which manage to remain interesting even though they’re in space. While basic, it’s a lot of fun.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: The Collective
- Publisher: Simon and Schuster
- Platform: PC
A third person shooter set sometime in season 6 of Deep Space Nine. Most of the main characters are involved, with three playable: Sisko, Kira and Worf. Unfortunately, not all the cast is here, with Avery Brooks and Colm Meaney not returning. The voice actor for Sisko isn’t too bad (although still noticeable), while O’Brien is someone doing a very bad Irish accent.
That said, the story is really good. The new alien race, the Grigari are introduced in a spooky manner. They have shielding that needs scanning so you can modulate your phaser to the right frequency, and there’s some nice locations that you visit. The ploy revolves around Pah-Wraith orbs after some Cardassian bodies from a failed experiment are discovered.
While the gameplay is mainly shooting, the tricorder is used well for scanning enemies, looking for hazards and solving puzzles. It help keeps the game feeling like it belongs in Star Trek. The shooting mechanics and weapons are quite fun too, and the game plays really well mapped to a controller (using external software). There’s also some rudimentary platforming, which works well enough. It’s a very fun game.
My favourite mission involves investigating a crashed Miranda class starship. Even with the old graphics, climbing up a cliff and seeing the ship is a wonderful sight, and you even get to fight on top of it and explore inside. You also get to explore parts of the Defiant and between each mission, explore parts of Deep Space Nine, talking to the main cast and some recurring characters, including Garak. That said, some character’s faces are really not done well – I thought Jazdia Dax was Odo when I first saw her. Worf and the Cardassians look much better than the humans in this game.
You can also play through the game as Kira and Worf. Kira has a unique mission on Bajor, but misses out on the crashed Miranda ship. You play though the same levels, but take different routes and have different objectives (although some sections are still completely the same). Kira plays the same as Sisko, while Worf lacks a phaser (which also means no forcefields to bypass) so if you don’t have ammo, you need to get up close and personal with a Bat’leth.
Deep Space Nine: The Fallen is a really fun game, I definitely recommend this one.
Star Trek: ConQuest Online
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: Genetic Anomalies
- Publisher: Activision
- Platform: PC
Unfortunately, I can’t get the full experience of this game as it’s an online focused game and the servers are down. That said, you can still play the tutorial and battle against an AI, just without the full features of the game, so I can at least get a taste of what the game is.
ConQuest is some kind of digital board game where you play as a Q battling other Q using pieces from the galaxy. Each turn goes through phases where you plan your actions, which then occur at the same time as your opponent. The deploy phase is where you bring in more pieces from your collection: these can be personnel, ships or items that can be attached to them.
The next phase is combat. If you have ships/people in the same place at others, you can fight. However, any attacking ships can not defend. The last phase is the movement phase, where you use the actions of your pieces, which is mainly beaming people to/from planets and ships, the planets being key to victory. The map will have your planet, the opponent’s planet and then 1 or 3 planets in the “Neutral Zone”. You need influence to control these planets, which generate control points to spend on bringing new pieces into the game. The overall objective is to trap the enemy Q on a planet you control for one turn.
There’s also a more advanced game which adds some more steps and changes the objective. The first new step is the auction phase, which is where events come into play. For good events, you take turns bidding. For negative events, you both bid in secret. There’s also a “Special” phase where you use the bonus abilities of characters – the Borg Queen, for example can assimilate opponent pieces. You can also generate more control points to spend next turn or generate Q points. These Q points are the path to victory in the advanced game.
ConQuest Online is a well thought out strategy game and it’s a shame that the game is server dependant and doesn’t allow for setting up your own matches. It also means that you are stuck with just using the starter Federation pieces when playing against the AI – you can’t get more pieces or the packs from the other factions.
Star Trek: Klingon Academy
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: 14 Degrees East
- Publisher: Interplay
- Platform: PC
Unfortunately, I couldn’t fully enjoy the full extinct of this game due to my colourblindness. The interface colours, while fitting in with the Klingon style, makes it almost impossible for me to read any of the words in the HUD. Even lowering the resolution to make the HUD appear larger didn’t help, so I had to refer to the manual for the list of button presses I needed for the interface system in order to play.
Klingon Academy a follow on from Starfleet Academy, with similar gameplay. The bridge view is removed, instead offering a first person or third person view of the ship. While it was nice to look at, it was better playing in the first person view anyway. Klingon Academy introduces a “Verbal Orders System”, which uses all the number keys to give a large list of commands, requiring 3 or 4 button presses. It’s not very easy to do while in the middle of combat using a joystick to fly around. You can order your helm officer to fly, but they’ll crash the ship.
It’s a shame as there’s a lot of advanced tactics buried deep in this system. You can send marines to capture enemy ships overload shields and weapons for a short boost but risking damage and subsystem targeting – this feature would be better refined in Bridge Commanded, aided by your officers not being awful at piloting the ship.
The piloting issues also extend to the enemy. While Klingons are known for ramming as a last resort, the Federation (well, simulated Federation) in this seem to love it, with collisions running a lot of missions. You have even more options available to you by using nearby phenomena such as gas giants and planetary rings to your advantage. It’s a shame that there’s so much depth, yet most battles end up slowly pummelling each other while circling close with you trying to avoid getting rammed.
Throughout the game you’ll be treated to a ton of live action clips starring Christopher Plummer and David Warner as Chang and Gorkon, who do a wonderful job and the game gives a great insight into Klingons, as well as serving as a prequel to The Undiscovered Country. There’s a lot to like about Klingon Academy, it’s just a shame about the interface and enemy AI.
Star Trek: New Worlds
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: 14 Degrees East
- Publisher: Interplay
- Platform: PC
A few months after Star Trek Armada came out, we got another real time strategy game set in the Star Trek universe. This is a more traditional ground based one similar to Command & Conquer. Star Trek isn’t exactly known for large scale ground combat, so this takes a lot of liberties.
It’s set in a new solar system thar suddenly appeared after a Romulan’s weapons test went wrong. As the location happens to be on an intersection of Federation, Klingon and Romulan territory, it’s a good opportunity for them to colonise this new world and kill each other for its resources. You eventually encounter a race that already lives on the planet, so you kill them, too. With all these random ground vehicles, recognisable Star Trek elements and designs are few and far between.
The best thing about this game is the camera. There’s a lot of options for moving the camera around and looking at the fully 3D landscape. It seems odd to praise a camera, but I’m having a hard time thinking of other good things to say about this game, other than the opening and ending FMV cutscenes.
The gameplay is extremely tedious. One major RTS element this game throws out is the fog of war system. You can see the landscape of the whole area, but can only see objects near your units. This means that you have absolutely no idea which parts of the map you have previously explored. Units are also very slow at responding and it can take minutes for them to travel where they need to go. This game really needed speed options due to how long everything takes.
To make matters worse, these very long missions have to be completed in one go, as there’s no save feature at all – only which missions you’ve unlocked. There are also six different resources to manage, as well as moving officers to locations to complete objectives.
Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II
- Original Release: 2000
- Developer: Imergy
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Platform: PC
This is an updated version of the first Starship Creator. It includes some of the ships from the first game with only one new addition: a Klingon Bird of Prey. In this version, you can set your 5 digit prefix code. That’s pretty much it for the ship creator side of things.
This version does come with a lot more missions to complete, along with a way to create your own missions. Although this is the most boring part of the game and is only there to run in the background to slowly get more credits to spend on ship part and crew.