doubleofive

sean wookie said:

What if I told you even badly reviewed games can be enjoyable?

Alright, here is what I pulled from "Star Trek: The Game", plot-wise. It's not very detailed, but there are spoilers for the game I guess:

The plot is fairly standard. A Vulcan research station on the edge of a sun is sabotaged, Kirk & Spock meet a Vulcan scientist named T'Mar who takes them to "New Vulcan" (Which is strangly identical to Original Vulcan). She reveals that the Vulcans have been working on a Macguffin that is so powerful that it can rip holes in space. Of course, something immediately came through. That something is the Gorn, who then steal this Macguffin, kidnap T'Mar's father, and escape. The Enterprise then goes to a nearby space station, where Evil Commodore Daniels is mean for some reason. The station is attacked by a Gorn fleet, T'Mar is kidnapped, and a Gorn makes it onto the ship. He is stopped, but a mind meld reveals that the Gorn are from another galaxy which they have completely enslaved, and with the Macguffin they will be able to go from galaxy to galaxy to enslave everything. Kirk takes the Enterprise through the hole in space to the Gorn planet where they are keeping the MacGuffin, eventually destroying it, fixing the Enterprise, and going back through the rip in space just before it closes. In a captain's log to end it, Kirk mentions that they are being sent to the planet where Into Darkness starts.

Here are the things I want to point out:

These Gorn are from another galaxy and can infect non-Gorn into zombies. None of this happens in the Prime Universe, so I'd like to think that parallel evolution allowed another Gorn race to do this in another galaxy, but the Rubber Suit Hissing Gorn still exists in the JJ-verse, they just haven't been discovered.

Kirk and Spock are captured at one point, and forced to fight ("Amok Time") in an arena ("Arena"), while aliens watch ("Gamesters of Triskellion").

The Enterprise interiors are rendered fairly accurately, thought everything is way too close to each other (Spock's quarters are about 20 feet from the bridge), and some places are named oddly. "Take the turbolift to Warpcore" was an objective my wife and I were laughing about, closely followed by being sent to "Medbay" to talk to Bones (we both started shouting about "SICKbay", then called it things like "SickMed"). At one point you get to see "Warpcore", and it is a lot more traditional Engineering-looking, though you do pass through the brewery set to get there. The shuttlebay is just as massive as it is in the movie, making the inside of the ship very TARDIS-like.

The transporters never seem to work (unless its the really clever level where you have to beam each other from platform to platform), so there's a lot of jumping and flying from ship to ship or base jumping from one area to another. Which admittedly is more fun, but its still odd. I mean, you do it a lot (though they did do it in 2009 and looks like they do it again in ID).

You can get "commendations" in the game for playing "like a true starfleet officer". These are mostly "don't alert any Gorn by sneaking" or "don't kill any infected crew members". But most of the time you're just shooting Gorn. Dead or alive, they're going down.

The biggest issue I have is the game ending with the crew being sent to the planet to start the next movie. The ship has huge chunks missing, there are still loose Gorn onboard I'm sure, parts of the interior were on fire... I'm sure none of that will be mentioned in the movie. Also, the writer worked with Kurtzman and Orci so this is "canon" in the JJverse. The problem with that is that the "Countdown to Darkness" comics which are also "canon" end with the crew being sent to the planet to start the next movie. Both can't be "canon". They were doing so well keeping things straight, they had maybe 30 comics & one movie, all of it was working out pretty well. Then they sign off on contradictory lead ins to the second movie. Oh well. I'm pretty sure the comics are more "canon" in that they are about Kirk questioning the Prime Directive and don't end with the Enterprise in several pieces. But they could have had the game lead into the comic instead of creating this contradiction with the very few things they could contradict with.

Hal 9000 said:

From the Spoiler thread: Leonard Nimoy flies down and saves Spock from the volcano planet. 

I'm sure there are people over here cheering that karma is a bitch.

Harmy doesn't live or go to school in Prague, so he's ok.

I hate to play "everyone outside of my country lives in the same place", but Harmy, you ok?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/29/world/europe/czech-republic-explosion/?hpt=hp_c2

Since Jedi is basically a "Best Of" the first two movies, I can see what you'd like about it. ;-)

But seriously, I would never rank it anywhere close to the prequels. It has some flaws, but what movies don't?

Thank you greenie. I agree, the music is incredible.

As for the poor reviews, these reviewers are people who play games for a living. They've played the Gears of Wars and Uncharted that Star Trek takes most of the gameplay from, and I'm sure those games do it better. My wife and I haven't. We only play one or two games a year, and you know what, we enjoyed this a heck of a lot more than Halo 4. Running around shooting Gorn, scanning doors with tricorders, trying to find the best path to the next area, all of it much more fun then when Halo 4 devolved to "SHOOT YOUR WAY OVER HERE. NOW SHOOT YOUR WAY OVER HERE. NOW BACK OVER HERE AGAIN."

Yes, there are some bugs, none of them game-breaking (except that splitscreen on the Xbox is seriously messed up for the bottom screen when the character is underwater). The character animations are hilariously bad, but the voice acting is great (except for another bug we noticed, that whenever Kirk knelt to give Spock a boost, Kirk would say "give me a boost" and Spock would do the same if he knelt). The AI isn't very good, I can't imagine playing without a human partner. Maybe that's the moral of the story, friends are better than computers.

I'll get into plot details in the Star Trek thread, but game wise, it was a lot of fun. Will we ever play it again? No, but I don't think we'll be playing through Halo 4 again either. At least we only rented Star Trek.

And I'm sure if you go through frame-by-frame and do this, Ady would be glad to have your help. ;-)

Rented Star Trek: The Game this weekend, been playing it through with Mrs. O'Five. It is not as terrible as all of the reviews lead you to believe. It's not perfect, but it's worth a rental. Sure it rips off other games' mechanics, but it does it decently (except for the shooting the Enterprise phasers). The voice acting is good, though the character animations need help.

We haven't beaten it yet, but there are some plot elements I can go into later if you want to hear about them.

Played through most of Star Trek: The Game yesterday with Mrs. O'Five. It's not bad at all. Plays fast and loose with the canon, and sure it apes other game genres, but for us who honestly have never played those other games, it fits together pretty well. We both really like the Tricorder element, allowing you to scan ahead to see through walls and where you're headed.

That's two not-bad episodes in a row. Might they be ramping up to something?

And apparently I'm still in the wrong mindset, I still get upset when the reset button is pushed on a show centered around a bright blue reset box.

AT-ST shots have been replaced.

I believe we've had the number question before. They are staying.

As for the other hundred suggestions, it's a bit late in the game for them. The Battle of Hoth is going to be epic, no worries.

Couldn't make it to this one. I am saddened.

TV's Frink said:

doubleofive said:
I had a dream last night that Harmy released a clip of an all-new Cantina entrance. It had depth and a camera move, but the Cantina was now in a cave and had a row of dewback stalls next to it. I remember wondering how this was more like the original, but it was too cool to ignore.

Did you use your hand as a blaster?

What game is that?

I'm afraid that this project might not only draw the wrath of Disney/Fox, but also Bantam Books, Dark Horse Comics, Nintendo, Varèse Sarabande, and anyone else involved in the conception of Shadows.

I'm surprised Kickstarter hasn't taken it down, as the guidelines say that you can't post anything you don't own the intellectual property of.

I wish you the best of luck, I just advise that this be kept on the down low.

Sounds very interesting! I've not released a fan edit myself, so I can't be very much help, but I'm sure fanedit.org has some kind of submission process/instructions.

The problem is, even with the vagueness, we know now there IS a surprise. Like knowing that "Sixth Sense" has a twist ending, you'll be looking for SOMETHING.

This sucks.

I don't want to hear about them, even if they aren't true.

I had a dream last night that Harmy released a clip of an all-new Cantina entrance. It had depth and a camera move, but the Cantina was now in a cave and had a row of dewback stalls next to it. I remember wondering how this was more like the original, but it was too cool to ignore.

Thanks Wook, I feel better about the name now. :-)

And its was most recently a British ship, that's even more appropriate.

Season 26B said:

New clip for your viewing pleasure, entitled "The Enterprise is Home":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x5vi2h5geY

So Harrison's ship is named the USS Vengeance.

That's... pretty disappointing. Like "General Grevious" level.