The Top 40 Star Trek Games

[Tweed]

Best Star Trek game incoming:

[Norfleet]

BEST Star Trek Game:

[Classix]

I tried STO for about 4 hours a few years ago. Something else came up, probably work busyness and I think I had Avorion fired up so I never got around to trying it out more. Rolled a Gorn. The ship environment and hallways was 'cozy' I guess you could say. I like me a space game but hard to find one to stick with outside of Avorion right now with my brother. I hate 4x's and colony builders or whatever you call them.
Anyone else played it extensively? New player wise how was it?

► Show Spoiler

STO_gorn_ehhitwas_okay.png

[Norfleet]

STO? STO is ****. I've been in maintenance mode there for years and believe me, you don't want to play it. The story is a mess ever since they began ripping chunks out of it wholesale, the new storylines are hackneyed and lame much like all nu-Trek, and actual gameplay is banal, ****, boring, with the most effective way to advance and profit being to play as little of the game as possible. We used to have a guild back on the Codex, but the survivorship is currently zero. No one's left alive anymore. Don't play this game.

[rusty_shackleford]

(Nobody should take Norfleet's advice for anything)

[Norfleet]

(Nobody should take Norfleet's advice for anything)

YOU used to play, and I remind you that you all quit. Blaine played it also, he promptly ragequit in short order also. DO NOT PLAY.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Anyone else played it extensively?

I preordered the game from target and got the sniper rifle that beams bullets into you from DS9, though it doesn't actually oneshot people ingame and gets quickly powercrept. I played the game for a few months before uninstalling.

As Norfleet said, the game is mediocre. The most obvious issue is how clunky and unfun the moment to moment movement and combat is. It feels very sluggish. Space combat is okay but that is only half of the game. The other major issue is that it is a story heavy game, but the presentation is pretty bad with you either looking at floating heads in UI menus, or something is happening in the game world with janky animations and your camera is zoomed out so you can't read anyone's emotions. The voice acting is often mediocre. I didn't care for any of the original STO characters or storylines. The game uses TV show characters people are already invested in as a crutch. I wound up only really enjoying it for the character customization and the space combat, but there are other games out there that provide a similar level of character customization but with better gameplay and better story presentation. The handling of the factions is very disappointing, as Romulans are not their own faction. Past the tutorial arc you get forced to join either the Feddies or the Klingons and hang out at Earth Spacedock or Qo'nos. I believe the same thing happened when the Dominion were added.

[rusty_shackleford]

I had fun with it

[Classix]

Anyone else played it extensively?

I preordered the game from target and got the sniper rifle that beams bullets into you from DS9, though it doesn't actually oneshot people ingame and gets quickly powercrept. I played the game for a few months before uninstalling.

As Norfleet said, the game is mediocre. The most obvious issue is how clunky and unfun the moment to moment movement and combat is. It feels very sluggish. Space combat is okay but that is only half of the game. The other major issue is that it is a story heavy game, but the presentation is pretty bad with you either looking at floating heads in UI menus, or something is happening in the game world with janky animations and your camera is zoomed out so you can't read anyone's emotions. The voice acting is often mediocre. I didn't care for any of the original STO characters or storylines. The game uses TV show characters people are already invested in as a crutch. I wound up only really enjoying it for the character customization and the space combat, but there are other games out there that provide a similar level of character customization but with better gameplay and better story presentation. The handling of the factions is very disappointing, as Romulans are not their own faction. Past the tutorial arc you get forced to join either the Feddies or the Klingons and hang out at Earth Spacedock or Qo'nos. I believe the same thing happened when the Dominion were added.

I appreciate the response and reviews you give on stuff man. I read all your JRPG things even if I have no interest in the game. I have the first Trails game but never got around to finishing it as something always comes up but I'll try at some point lol. Very dedicated. Thank you sir. My search for a good Space sim outside of Avorion continues. Cheers brother.

val_trails1.png

[Norfleet]

I appreciate the response and reviews you give on stuff man. I read all your JRPG things even if I have no interest in the game. I have the first Trails game but never got around to finishing it as something always comes up but I'll try at some point lol. Very dedicated. Thank you sir. My search for a good Space sim outside of Avorion continues. Cheers brother.

STO cannot be considered a "Space Sim", in any sense. It's a superhero game where you occasionally wear a spaceship skin. That's what it derived from as an engine, and it really makes no pretense at simulating any kind of "Space System". Your "ship" is just a bunch of slots for sticking gear and Star-Trekky Superhero Powers in, with no clear sense that you are flying anything other than a skinned box of generic powers that varies only slightly and arbitrarily. If you knew anything about Star Trek, none of that applies. If you don't know anything about Star Trek, then it's just a **** game that doesn't even fill any nostalgia niche.

Also, the best way to play the game is not to actually do much of anything. The most successful players of the game probably have barely left spacedock in a decade.

[rusty_shackleford]

What's the best way to play Elite Forces 1 & 2?

[Canondorf]

What's the best way to play Elite Forces 1 & 2?

I used the GOG.com re-releases most recently, and they worked well.

People have been petitioning GOG to get more classics, especially Klingon Academy, for years, and they released a few of the easier Activision published titles about a couple of years back.

[fork]

Star Trek Armada mod for Sins of a Solar Empire is pretty good iirc.

[Thaddaeus]

Despite liking Trek since the 1990s, there are only a few Star Trek games I've ever gotten into.

Star Trek: Armada. RTS with four distinct factions. Played this online a LOT in the 2000s and have the GOG version which I play from time to time against bots.
Star Trek: Elite Force, a first-person shooter that I also played online a lot in the 2000s. Enjoyed its story and characters, though the final stage was repetitive as hell. Enter room, kill monsters, get on elevator, go down/up, kill monsters, repeat ad nauseum.
Star Trek: Away Team. This one I'm alone in liking: it was a Commandos-esque game with an interesting story. I liked the different team members the player could choose, and used to write fan fiction about the crew when I was in high school because I was a dork with a LOT of time on his hands. (I'm still a dork, but don't have the time I used to. Seems like as soon as I get off work and have dinner, it's bedtime.)

Star Trek Armada 2 was okay, but it ruined the balance of the factions for me and the sound design was terrible. Didn't get to play Elite Force 2 back in the day.

I also played a Gameboy game back in the day called ST The Next Generation. I remember enjoying it.

[Oyster Sauce]

Looks kinda cool. Has a demo.

[rusty_shackleford]

Looks kinda cool. Has a demo.

demo is 6.5gb

[rusty_shackleford]

devs now using UE5 to make what is essentially a mobile game, fantastic

[Oyster Sauce]

Looks kinda cool. Has a demo.

demo is 6.5gb

that's a lot of content

[Tangerine]

devs now using UE5 to make what is essentially a mobile game, fantastic

It's so they don't have to learn a new engine. Because they're lazy.

[rusty_shackleford]

Looks kinda cool. Has a demo.

seems ok, I'll wait until release

[Rienen]

I played the demo a bit last night and was "whelmed".

I can certainly see where the "mobile game" accusations come from, with the "fix the ship by waiting X amount of 'cycles'" alongside the "choose your own adventure" style decision-making gameplay. I hadn't gotten to the combat portion of the demo yet, so I can't really speak to that. Although the reception for it seems to be almost all negative.

Aside from some horrible mouse lag and UI/tooltip issues, I didn't really have any issues.

That said, we get so few actual Trek games, I fully admit to most likely giving certain aspects a pass for the sake of the IP.

[rusty_shackleford]

[gerey]

Why Voyager, though?

And yes, I'm aware it's because the woman behind the wheel crashed them into the Delta Quadrant, but why not do what Bridge Commander did and let you play as an OC ship?

[Tweed]

Why Voyager, though?

And yes, I'm aware it's because the woman behind the wheel crashed them into the Delta Quadrant, but why not do what Bridge Commander did and let you play as an OC ship?

So that Seven of Nine can make out with Kes.

[Xenich]

I remember Armada being an utterly forgettable RTS.

Tactical Assault had the directional and multilayered shields, as well as torpedoes and phase banks over with limited firing arcs, so the gameplay was about rotating your ship trying to get a shot off while also trying to make sure incoming enemy shots don't hit an area with no shields. That was interesting. That got transplanted to Star Trek Online's spaceship combat, but you only have four directional shields.

The main issue with Star Trek Online (besides the plasticky looking characters) is that the engine movement feels very sluggish and janky. It just does not feel good to be controlling a character on foot. Another issue is that it became P2W circa the Delta Quandrant expansion, as the expac introduced a brand new tier of spaceships that you had to pay for and the expac's content was tuned around using those spaceships. STO also had a faction setup where you could pick between playing as Starfleet or as the Klingon Empire, which was neat if you did not want to play as goody-two-shoes heroes, though the faction oriented setup went away soon after launch as everyone goes down the same universal storylines. A Romulan "faction" was introduced halfheartedly, basically after the intro questline you go join either Starfleet or the Klingons. Sadly a Cardassian/Dominion faction was never added at all, again Jem'Hadar players just join Starfleet or Klingons.

I think OP was a bit unfair to STO, if you just play it for the singleplayer content it's actually pretty great. Definitely non-canon and not trying to be, but it has a lot of good solo story content that isn't in traditional MMO quest format.

The space combat and ship development was very nice, but the ground game sucked when I played it at release (and when I returned several years later). The monetization was stupid, but then that goes without saying and became the standard... so I can't really judge it by that.

[Bertram_Tung]

[Valter]

40!?

[Bertram_Tung]

40!?

Voyager came out 31 years ago, not 40.

[Rienen]

40!?

Voyager came out 31 years ago, not 40.

I believe he was referring to the price of the base game. There's apparently also Day 1 DLC, which adds "new missions, new recruitable heroes, and powerful technologies drawn from pivotal alien encounters in the Delta Quadrant."

In a game based around story, cutting out missions to resell them seems pretty crappy. So, that's disappointing.

After what I played in the demo, I'm not spending $40, let alone $45 for a deluxe edition that contains content removed specifically to sell back to people.

[rusty_shackleford]

Top 10 Star Trek Games