Hello everyone,
I think it’s a Tauntaun today … Trusty mount of the Rebels of Hoth. And leaving me with not a clue for the games to run alongside it today. So it’s off to Star Trek !
Three games that could probably sum up as The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. But first … something arrived in the post today (also card from the Mum <3).
It’s one of the Team Luminary cards from a lovely person who streams under the name of Tashnarr. (linky) And it arrived with a lovely message inside and a picture of a sleeping dragon which has resisted all attempts to take pictures of it so far (one had one of my out of control hairs on it, the other didn’t focus).
Anyway, Tashnarr. Chirpiest, bubbliest, chucklyist person I know on Twitch and a real pleasure to watch. She’s one of only two people who I’ll switch over to watch as soon as they come on. She’ll occasionally cover crafting but has had to walk away from streaming that due to issues that lead to painful hands. More often now seen streaming variety games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Sub-noot-noot-ica and joining in with chat with jigsaws on Tabletop Simulator and Rainbow Six Siege. Maybe on later.
Games ? Three today … Let’s start with the Bad.
Star Trek Birth of the Federation came out in 1999 and was another competitor for Master of Orion 2.
The premise of the game was one of empire building. To take the Federation, Ferengi, Klingons or Romulans from basic beginnings and build them up to dominate space. It was a nice idea too. Except … the execution was really poor. I can’t remember this being a crashy game, just that the mechanics of it were really, really bad. In that shot above, the first group to fire torpedoes would win the battle. And that was that for the combat.
The empire building wasn’t much better with the colony build up process being very flawed. There was a lot of lore in the game and it borrowed from sources from Star Trek Next Generation, although apparently due to licensing issues, that was it. Alas though, despite it looking pretty decent, it was a really bad game and a waste of whatever licensing they had managed to secure. Back to Moo2 again.
Next up is the Good, Star Trek Armada.
This was a rather decent Real Time Strategy variant game that came out in 2000. (Crikey, that long ago?) It was set just after Star Trek Insurrection, with the early missions picking up straight after that movie. The missions took you through Federation, Romulan, Borg and Klingon campaigns.
It felt pretty good as a game and I enjoyed the time I spent within it. The story was decent and you could rush through it and its varied missions.
There was a decent amount of variation here as well, which always makes for a good game for me, especially when the variation is balanced.
The last one for today is Starfleet Command II, which sits alongside another couple of games in the series as well as Star Trek Online which I think borrows and updates its gameplay. (And then there’s Battlefleet Gothic, which stole that gameplay).
This game was a computer port of the tabletop Starfleet Battles game. It didn’t look great, hence the Ugly. But it took what it had to work with and made a really good, pretty detailed game.
There were aspects and races within that you’ll have never heard of from Star Trek (Mirak with missiles) but were in the tabletop game. They did a great job including the detail of managing all those starship systems.
The game expanded its remit in Starfleet Command II, which was still set in the TOS era but also contained an online enabled Dynaverse mode. When you finished the campaign, you could join a Dynaverse server and find things to do there. Alas, this was still before when internet thingys really took off (SFC II released in 2000) so the online mode didn’t really go anywhere.
There was another followup released in 2002 called Starfleet Command III.
Again, not much of a looker. They’d simplified the mechanics somewhat as well, with a reduction to 4 shield facings from the original 6 which would have been a carry over from the tabletop game.
There was a decent campaign as well, which would see you steadily upgrade your ship from the humble Sabre frigate above, up to the big Galaxy and Sovereign classes by its finish.
Ugly … but a great game and another one I considerably enjoyed playing in its day.
And I think it inspired the space engine of Star Trek Online too, which carries over some of the mechanics from SFC III, upgrading it to be 3d space as well.
That’s it for games today ! Have a great evening everyone.
Be well, stay safe.