 We
fully dig the Star Fleet Command games. With the exception of Activision’s Elite
Force, they are the only truly good Star Trek games yet made, and taking the bridge of the
Enterprise and loosing a spread of photon torpedoes into an uncloaked Romulan Warbird is
still one of my all-time satisfying gaming experiences. The only problem with the original
SFCII was that it lacked charisma. While tooling around in any of eight races’
starships was fun and multiplayer a gas (especially when Dynaverse II finally got up and
running), the game’s single player campaigns ultimately lacked any sort of coherent
or compelling story line. In the end, SFC II was not much more than an excellent starship
skirmish game.
 SFC
II: Orion Pirates hopes to change all that. A stand-alone add-on to SFC II, it will
feature both the original eight races as well as eight cartels of the infamous Orion
Pirates. Each cartel will feature 30 new ships, for a total of 240 all told. The game will
include 12 campaigns, 12 multiplayer missions, and 26 battles scenarios. It’s
especially intriguing that three of the missions will be based on the classic “A
Piece of the Action” Star Trek episode, which gives us some hope that the game’s
campaigns will be less narratively-impaired than SFC
II’s. With improved graphics and a
less-cluttered interface, Orion Pirates might finally be the first unequivocally excellent
Star Trek game.
 
 
Rick
Fehrenbacher |
