431st played so far
Genre: Action/Adventure
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1991
Developer: Interplay
Publisher: Interplay
The Star Trek TV series is a surprising resilient science fiction series – between tv series, movies and recent revivals it has been around for 49 years now (at the time of writing).
And as beloved as it is by geeks, one of the first video games (not listed, sadly) was indeed Star Trek-themed – the simply named Star Trek. Spread through listings in magazines, the game predates video game licensing and pitted you against Klingons in a turn based exploration game.
Today’s game is officially licensed, and the only Star Trek games on the list (unlike the multitude of Star Wars games we’ll be playing). A mix of adventure and a space shooter, I’ve been looking forward to trying this for quite some time.
Our Thoughts
When you’re a fan of a franchise, trying a new entry in it – a different medium or approach – can be daunting. It can be a cash-in, making money off a brand without caring much about quality, or it can be genuinely good and well. The former has certainly happened with Star Trek, but luckily this time, it worked out.
The game’s scenarios provide a bit of both. The space battles feel a bit more optional – I believe a few scenarios skip them. We’ll see more of it soon on Elite, but mostly the system is fairly straightforward. Most frustrating is finding your opponent – you move fairly sluggishly and the radar tries to project a 3D space onto a 2D grid, making it tricky to figure out the system.
In the end though, they felt like the more boring bit, adding some action to the game and (through attacks when you visit the wrong system) forcing you to stay on the path. The really fun parts of the game were the adventure segments. They follow the typical Star Trek formula – a landing party is gathered, you beam down and explore the scene. This is usually with the expected people – Kirk, Spock and Bones are commonly there, together with the nearly obligatory redshirt. You explore and try to solve whatever problems are ahead.
Somewhat different from other adventure games, there are a lot of optional steps you can take when resolving the missions. Some of them are just there for background material, but you also get graded on how well you do – how close do you stick to the show’s ethos, what injuries occur and what else happens. Although the show’s cast needs to survive, your redshirts can get shot, at a point penalty, adding more of a challenge when you try to get it right.
These sequences use voice acting by the original actors, which adds to the atmosphere. Beyond that, the graphics aren’t as great, but they’re good for the day and convey all the concepts very well. 3D models or more realistic graphics would probably not have worked, especially for the atmosphere the game is trying to convey.
Final Thoughts
The adventure parts of the game are a lot of fun, with the space battles being more of a frustrating exercise without a lot of practice – they’re too much of an interruption of the really good bits. As silly as it sounds, the focus on diplomacy and problem solving makes the game feel more like the tv show than any other Star Trek game I’ve played. That’s probably the best thing for a game like this – it seems to simply be the right thing.