New Life for Star Trek

MY HEAD ASPLODE

Star Trek: Legacy [for Xbox 360 and PC] places you in the role of the Admiral of a task force of warships, which you control in small and large-scale battles. Test your strategic and tactical skills in real-time combat featuring authentic spaceships, full damage modeling, and spectacular visual effects.

Star Trek: Tactical Assault [for NDS and PSP] features real-time spaceship combat from the universe of the original Star Trek series. With a wide array of authentic Star Trek races, ships, and weaponry, you can engage in single-player battle through either the Federation or Klingon campaigns or in head-to-head wireless multiplayer combat.

Bethesda is one of the few companies that I will buy their games without renting or trying out first. Now you tell me they’ve got the Star Trek license!?!? Between this and Fallout 3, Bethesda is sitting pretty if they can make these into quality games. Oh, please, let the Star Trek franchise be redeemed.

Gosh, I haven’t been this excited about a Star Trek game since Starfleet Command II. Not III, because that game was a dumbed-down crapfest. Starfleet Battles purity FTW!

In related news, I read a developer’s diary for GalCiv II, and I am very intrigued. Regrettably, I was never able to commit the time to the first Galactic Civilizations game that it truly deserved. Galactic Civilizations filled a dark hole left by the garbage that was Masters of Orion III (aka Masters of Galactic Empire Upper Managers).

I feel like that for every EA and Ubisoft out there, there are a couple small-time developers like Strategy First and others that lovingly release really great strategy games. You know, like the ones you used to play like Civilization, Masters of Orion, and Jagged Alliance. Not to disparage big developers like Bethesda and Bioware, but I am more and more impressed by the exploits of some of these smaller companies, especially for someone like me who grew up with strategy games of all kinds. And as people like me get older and older, these kinds of companies are only going to making more and more money, so I think the future is bright for strategy gaming.