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2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
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To Boldly Play: The Best and Worst Star TrekVideogames
Perhaps today is a good day to goonline
Resistance is futile ... well, with some of these games, maybe not
With this month's arrival of Star Trek Online the veryfirst MMORPG (or roleplaying game of any kind) basedon Star Trek fans are now able to command theirown starship and spend hours in a world they havecome to love through decades of television series,movies, and novels. But STO is just the latest in a longseries of games based on the enduring scifi franchise.
Incredibly, the very first Star Trek videogameadaptation was developed nearly 40 years ago. Theensuing years have seen the release of over fourdozen additional titles, on virtually every platformimaginable, from the Amiga to the Apple II to SuperNintendo to the Wii.
The Ferengi's 54th rule of acquisition states that a wise man doesn't waste latinum on alousy Star Trek game, and, unfortunately for fans, the "Star Trek" name printed on avideogame box has only rarely indicated a quality product. Let's take a warpspeed tourthrough the best and worst titles in the franchise, starting with games for the PC.
Star Trek Games for the PC
Game Genre YearMetascore Critic
GradesUser
Score
1 Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force FPS 2000 86 25,0,0 9.3
2 Star Trek: Bridge Commander Simulation 2002 82 20,4,0 8.1
3 Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen 3D Shooter 2000 81 18,5,0 8.5
4 Star Trek: Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates Strategy 2001 78 7,2,0 7.5
Star Trek: Starfleet Command III RTS/Simulation 2002 78 11,7,0 9.2
Star Trek Elite Force II FPS 2003 78 21,7,0 7.4
7 Star Trek: Starfleet Command Volume IIEmpiresat War
RTS/Simulation 2000 77 9,7,0 9.3
8 Star Trek: Klingon Academy Action/Sim 2000 74 5,9,0 10.0
9 Star Trek: Armada II RTS 2001 65 4,7,2 8.0
10 Star Trek: Away Team RTS 2001 64 3,16,3 8.5
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars RTS 2001 64 1,4,0 6.2
12 Star Trek: ConQuest Online Strategy 2000 63 2,6,2 n/a
Star Trek Online MMORPG 2010 63 4,6,1 6.4
14 Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force Expansion Pack Action 2001 62 2,6,2 8.6
15 Star Trek: Legacy Action/RTS 2006 56 1,20,4 4.0
16 Star Trek: New Worlds RTS 2000 52 4,9,10 8.1
17 Star Trek: DAC Action 2009 50 4,19,0 4.1
Older PC games not in Metacritic's database *:
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2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/bestandworststartrekvideogames 2/7
Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force (2000)
Older PC games not in Metacritic's database *:
Star Trek (aka Super Star Trek) Text/Strategy 1971 N/A n/a
Begin: A Tactical Starship Simulation Simulation 1981 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative Text/Adventure 1985 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Promethean Prophecy Text/Adventure 1986 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Rebel UniverseAction
Adventure1988 N/A n/a
Star Trek: First Contact Adventure 1988 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation: The TransiniumChallenge
Adventure 1989 N/A n/a
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Action 1989 N/A n/a
Begin 2 Simulation 1991 N/A n/a
Star Trek: 25th AnniversaryAction
Adventure1992 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Judgment Rites Adventure 1993 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation A Final Unity Adventure 1995 N/A n/a
Star Trek: KlingonInteractiveMovie
1995 N/A n/a
Star Trek: BorgInteractiveMovie
1996 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Harbinger Adventure 1996 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Simulation 1997 N/A n/a
Star Trek Generations FPS/Strategy 1997 N/A n/a
Star Trek Pinball Pinball 1997 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Klingon HonorGuard
FPS 1998 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Starship Creator Simulation 1998 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Birth of theFederation
Strategy 1999 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Starfleet Command RTS/Simulation 1999 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Hidden Evil TPS/Action 1999 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Armada RTS 2000 N/A n/a
The Metascore is a weighted average of scores from top professional critics, on a scale from 0 (bad) to 100 (good). The piechart for critic grades represents the percentages of individual critic scores falling into the categories Good (positivelyreviewedgames with a Metascore of 75 or higher), SoSo (mixed or average reviews, 5074), and Bad (negativelyreviewed games, 049).The User Score is an average of scores submitted by Metacritic users, on a scale from 0 (bad) to 10 (good). The scores for StarTrek Online are from February 18, 2010.* Only titles for Windows, IBM PC, and/or MSDOS are listed. There were several other Star Trek games released for othercomputers in the 1970s and '80s, including games for the Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Apple II.
Despite the fact that it was released a decade ago and basedon arguably the worst television series in the Star Trekfranchise (okay, okay, the secondworst) Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force 86 is still the gold standard against which all otherStar Trek videogames are compared. The bestreviewed of allStar Trek game titles (PC or console), Elite Force is also one ofthe few firstperson shooters in the series. Many critics hailed itas not just a great Trek game, but a great game in general with terrific graphics and gameplay and it spawned a slightlylessacclaimed 2003 sequel set on board the Enterprise (StarTrek Elite Force II 78 ).
Virtually all of the other Star Trek game titles released for the PC over the years fall into theadventure, strategy, or simulation genres (or some combination thereof), including secondplace title Star Trek: Bridge Commander. This 2002 release offered a fun, immersive andinnovative starship simulation, and captured the Star Trek flavor better than many of the titlesthat have followed. Bridge Commander was released at the tail end of the Star Trek gamecraze; the number and quality of releases has dropped since then, much as the Star Trekbrand itself slumped over a large portion of the past decade.
Though it is still early any MMO title will evolve and potentially improve over time the
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2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/bestandworststartrekvideogames 3/7
Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative(1985)
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992)
Though it is still early any MMO title will evolve and potentially improve over time thenewest entry, Star Trek Online, also falls toward the lower end of the quality spectrum, withcritics labeling the game repetitive, incomplete and unworthy of anything other than a quicklook. The new game, at least, is true to the standard Star Trek canon (it's set after the eventsin Star Trek Nemesis); to date, only Star Trek: DAC is based on the J.J. Abramscreatedalternate timeline established in the 2009 film.
At least STO bests the only two other Star Trek PC games released in the last five years.Those games the frustrating ship combat strategy title Star Trek: Legacy and the dullarcadestyle shooter DAC were ports of lousy console games. 2000's Star Trek: NewWorlds, on the other hand, takes the crown as the worstreviewed Star Trek PC exclusive.That realtime strategy title was pegged by critics as "horrible" and "verging on unplayable"and was partially saved only by some nice graphics and the Star Trek tiein. (Although weprobably shouldn't use the word "save," since New Worlds notoriously failed to include a midmission gamesave feature, driving players crazy.)
As for those preMetacritic titles, take a look at therelease year for the very first Star Trek game: 1971.Written in BASIC shortly after the series originally aired,the first Star Trek game inspired a number of knockoffs,and became better known later in the 1970s when itwas included (as Super Star Trek) in a book of BASICprograms.
A few more textbased Star Trek games emergedduring the PC boom of the 1980s, and in 1988, the firstfully graphical Star Trek title, Star Trek: The RebelUniverse, was released for MSDOS and theCommodore 64 (an Atari ST version was released the
previous year). Rebel Universe puts players on the bridge of the Enterprise on a mission toinvestigate a new Klingon weapon that is causing other Federation crews to mutiny, andfeatured a universe with thousands of planets that could be investigated.
Out of all the early Star Trek computer games, the onewidely considered the best is Star Trek: 25thAnniversary, released in 1992 to commemorate thebirth of the original television series in 1966, a mere uh 26 years earlier. Combining a combat flightsimulator with an adventure game over the course ofseven distinct missions (or "episodes"), the anniversarytitle was the first Star Trek game to score with thepublic. A CD version of the game added dialoguevoiced by the original cast, and the game was sosuccessful that it spawned a 1993 sequel, Star Trek:Judgment Rites.
The remaining years in the decade brought a sharp increase in the number of Star Trektitles, including the wellreceived Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity (featuringhundreds of hours of new dialogue voiced by the entire Next Generation cast), Star Trek:Starfleet Academy (a 3D simulation allowing players to complete missions as a Starfleetcadet), Star Trek: The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard (perhaps the best of the smallnumber of titles allowing gameplay as a Klingon), and the hugely successful Star Trek:Starfleet Command (a simulation based on the classic 1979 board game Star Fleet Battles).
Star Trek Games for Consoles
Game / Platform Genre YearMetascore Critic
GradesUser
Score
1 Star Trek: Invasion PSOne
Action 2000 76 7,5,0 9.0
2 Star Trek: Legacy 360
RTS/Action 2006 64 8,29,4 5.5
Star Trek: DAC PS3
Action 2009 64 0,4,0 6.0
2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/bestandworststartrekvideogames 4/7
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Vectrex,1982)
4 Star Trek: Conquest PS2
Action/Strategy 2007 54 2,10,3 8.8
5 Star Trek: DAC 360
Action 2009 53 3,14,9 7.8
6 Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force PS2
Action 2001 52 2,6,4 8.0
7 Star Trek: Encounters PS2
Shooter 2006 51 2,7,8 8.7
8 Star Trek: Conquest Wii
Action/Strategy 2007 49 1,9,8 5.1
9 Star Trek: Shattered Universe PS2
Action/Shooter 2004 42 0,9,10 8.9
10 Star Trek: Shattered Universe Xbox
Action/Shooter 2004 41 0,9,12 3.7
Older console games not in Metacritic's database:
Star Trek: Phaser Strike Microvision
Shooter 1979 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Vectrex
Shooter 1982 N/A n/a
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary NES
ActionAdventure
1991 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Future's Past SNES
Adventure 1993 N/A n/a
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes fromthe Past Genesis
Adventure 1994 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Starship BridgeSimulator SNES/Genesis
Simulation 1994 N/A n/a
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Crossroads ofTimeSNES/Genesis
Platform 1995 N/A n/a
Yes, there is just one decent Star Trek console game from the past decade. Set in the NextGeneration universe but featuring mainly new characters, Invasion was among the betterPlaystation shooters at the time of its 2000 release, and came from the team behind the hit(nonStar Trek) game series Colony Wars. Still, it was far from perfect, and some critics feltthat the heavy emphasis on combat wasn't true to the spirit of Star Trek (a criticism thatechoes today in reviews of the new Star Trek Online).
However, that game is a masterpiece compared to a title like Star Trek: ShatteredUniverse, the 2004 shooter set in Star Trek's goateefilled mirror universe. While an edgier,darker version of Star Trek seems like a brilliant concept for a videogame, ShatteredUniverse instead turned out to be "as fun as watching a pet die," in the words of IGN. Othercritics lambasted the title as "glaringly ugly," "abysmal," and "a disgrace to the gamingindustry." Faring only moderately better was the Next Generationuniverse title Star Trek:Conquest, a toosimplistic and poorlyreviewed 2D strategy game for the PS2 that somehowemerged even worse when released for the Wii (sadly, it's still the lone Star Trek titleavailable on the latter console).
You've seen most of the other recent console gamesabove, in our section on PC releases. As for the earlierreleases, 1982's Star Trek: The Motion Picture wasbasically a slightly more advanced version of Asteroids,switching the action from third to firstperson. The title,released for the Vectrex Arcade System (a smallconsole with a builtin monitor), was also the first StarTrek game release to tie into a particular movie,although the game itself had nothing specifically to dowith the film (and what that flying sombrero has to dowith any element of Star Trek is beyond us). Ourfavorite part of the game: when you are hit by anenemy torpedo, your windshield cracks.
2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/bestandworststartrekvideogames 5/7
Note that Future's Past and Echoes from the Past are virtually the same game; the latter, forthe Sega Genesis, is considered superior. Both put players on board the EnterpriseD anddepict a number of Next Generation characters. Crossroads of Time is the first videogamefor any platform based on Deep Space Nine, and was reportedly created before that serieseven debuted.
Star Trek Games for Handhelds
Game / Platform Genre Year Metascore Critic Grades User Score
1 Star Trek: Tactical Assault PSP
RTS 2006 64 2,12,1 8.7
2 Star Trek: Tactical Assault DS
RTS 2006 63 4,9,2 7.3
Older handheld games not in Metacritic's database:
Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus Game Boy / Game Gear / Super Game Boy
Action/Puzzle 1994 N/A n/a
Despite coming from the same developer as the hit Starfleet Command, Star Trek: TacticalAssault still the lone handheld Star Trek title released for current generation platforms was mediocre at best. 1994's Beyond the Nexus, released on the biggest handheld platformsat the time (including in full color on Sega's Game Gear!), was one of several Star Trekgames based on the movie Star Trek Generations.
Engage
What are your favorite (or least favorite) Star Trek games? What would you like to see in afuture Trek game? What do you think of the new Star Trek Online? Let us know in thecomments section below.
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2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
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Can somebody assist me. Back in the early 80's, I was going to Control Data Institute where they hadcomputer terminals. And on them I found a game that was just great called "Empire"! It was based onStar Trek . It had a universe split into 4 sections. Federation, Romulan, Orion and can't remember the4th. But you had to conqure all for quad's by bombing the planets and dropping your armies on them!The best part was fighting other ships with fazers and torpedoes! Do anyone else besides meremember this game and is there anything similar online I can play? Please help an old foggie lol!!!
With "Klingon Academy", they should also have "Romulan Academy", or "Cardassian Academy". Toobad they only stopped at the Klingons.
Bridge Commander was one of the better Star Trek games. Elite Force also hit the mark despite beingset in the voyager 'verse. Voyager, cast, crew, writing, actors...WAS THE WORST! ..but the game wasgood. Funny how the original series was the best start and Enterprise (which stayed the most true to theoriginal series) was the best off shoot but was cancelled like the original series. The two best werecancelled while something like Voyager went on...and on....and oh for the love of pete...on and on.
After patches STO is great game. To fully enjoy game you need to play for some time.
i also liked the voyager game elite force and the series was quite good 2 but i hated the charicter neelixhe was what put me off that series
i havnt had that many games but my favourites hae always been the ones that are based around thenext generation and its adventures as for tar trek online i am yet to try it but when i can be bothered togo out and buy a coppy but will just hav 2 c i havnt got very high hopes
Why wont someone just make a star trek game with a free roaming prospect... where your not toldwhere to go and ur the adventurer but with landmark areas to get to to activate missions like sid mieerspirates as an example? with all the ships and some sort of ship upgrading, ranking and purchasingsystem. i played a flashtrek startrek game the other day that was quite good... poor graphics but thegameplay and the idea behind the game worked well..... simply putting someone in a ship and lettingthem travel around, fight , trade conquer planets and build fleets and it was more fun than any star trekgame ive come across and iv played alot of them!!!
You neglected to mention the Star Fleet Command series, which is easily the best ship combatsimulator out there.
Star Trek Online is the worst Trek game I've ever played, by far.
I am announcing a fan made star trek game project which is recreating all the original series episodesinto adventure game format the project can be found at www.startrekadventures.com/yearone the firstdemo is ready based off the episode of Arena
This article left out one of the greatest games in the "noncanon" trek games ever created: NETrek.
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2/27/2016 Best and Worst Star Trek Videogames Metacritic
http://www.metacritic.com/feature/bestandworststartrekvideogames 7/7
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