That game was Star Trek: Starfleet Command III.

Star Trek: Starfleet Command III is the fourth game in the franchise, and the only game to be published by Activision. The first three games, Starfleet Command, Starfleet Command II and Starfleet Command II: Orion Pirates (the only “expansion pack” I’ve ever heard of that doesn’t need the base game to play) were all set during the TOS*-era, specifically the time period of the six movies. Starfleet Command III, on the other hand, was set during the TNG*-era. This was done so that the game could then tie-in with Star Trek Nemesis, which was slated for release that same winter… directly against Lord of the Rings… because that was smart.

Set in the year-long period between the merciful end of the Star Trek Voyager television show and the Star Trek Nemesis movie, the Federation and the Klingons are joined at the hip like one of those obnoxious couples. You know the type: hands around each other’s waists, always commenting on how pretty the other is and wanting to do EVERYTHING together. It’s that last part that leads to the construction of Unity One, a space station that is meant to represent the technological and cultural achievements of both races.

Oh, and it can spy on the Romulans.

Understandably, the idea of Captain Picard peeking into little Romulan girls’ bedrooms pisses them off, so they decide to blow the space station up and then tell both sides that the other is responsible. The Federation and the Klingons accuse each other of being treacherous swine, the Romulans start patting themselves on the back and the Alpha Quadrant appears to be on the bring of interstellar war.

Again.

But then the Borg show up and everyone puts aside their petty differences to fight their common enemy.

Again.

I could bitch all day about how the Borg became a crutch for lazy writing (hell, they were even on Enterprise), but this is a video game website so I’ll simply say the plot twist was uninspired, but the gameplay more than makes up for this eye roll-inducing moment.

You get to play through all three sides of the story: The Romulans, Klingons and Federation. A fair majority of the missions you take during the campaign are little more than sidetracking missions to earn you a little extra cash and some XP for your bridge officers. These consist of raiding parties, distress calls, and minimally-armed Ferengi Marauders who fail to realize that you’re pulling up on them in a fuckin’ Sovereign-class battleship.

To translate for our non-Trekkie readers: Godzilla vs. adorable kittens.

For all the pointless planet scanning you’ll do, there are a fair share of missions that tie directly to the game’s plot (thank God). While the game does try to mix things up with a healthy variety of mission objectives, most of the time your basic goal is “kill anyone who isn’t you”. This leads to the core of the game, which is the incredible combat.

When you think space combat, odds are you think of games like Colony Wars, Descent or… um… Colony Wars. You think of small, maneuverable fighters that allow for blistering fast combat. The gameplay of Starfleet Command III is not this. In fact, the best way to describe it would be as colonial naval battles… in space… yep. While most games boil down to “he who has the bigger gun wins”, SFC3 demands that the player use proper tactics and some smarts to get the upper hand on the enemy. Hypothetically speaking, this allows for the weakest ship in the entire game to have a puncher’s chance against much more powerful foes. This also works to add a sense of suspense to the game as you, in your Defiant-class POS tries to disable and board a Vor’Cha-class Klingon battleship.

Assuming you’re the luckiest bastard to ever walk the Earth.

While the gameplay isn’t ideal for those of you who can’t go two minutes without watching something blow up, the combination of strategy and intelligent combat is far more than enough to keep most people happy.

The other big game mode is Conquest, which basically plays as a sandbox mode where you, as your empire of choice, can try to conquer the galaxy. Unlike the campaign mode, this mode allows you to take control of the Borg in what I like to call “fuck ‘em up”. I call it this because, unless you either have the Scimitar patch or some crazy powerful mods, a Borg Cube can pretty much tear through anything and everything that has the hutspa to get in its way.

Believe it or not there is still a small, but very dedicated group of players out there who engage quite frequently in multiplayer battles. Yes, multiplayer. Activision may have shut the official servers down, but there are still servers that run the game online and are active. This little slice of awesomeness is only expanded by the fact that members of the development team are the ones behind the servers, as well as several game updates.

While the community for Starfleet Command III is understandably small, they are quite passionate and continue to churn out new patches and mods, including the absolutely mindblowing Legions at War mod. Furthermore, with the help of former Taldren members who continue to update the game with patches and mods, the game is practically bugless… except for that DirectX 8.1 error and the tedious-ass workaround for it.

If you’re trying to find a copy of this game for yourself, you’d be best “acquiring” it through torrents. Again, I normally don’t condone video game piracy, but when it’s an ultra-rare game that nobody is making money off of besides the punk trying to sell his copy for $150… yeah, I think this is the exception to the rule.

It’s a shame that Taldren went under, just as it’s a shame that Activision couldn’t keep from throwing their “Trek’s no fun anymore” temper tantrum. Starfleet Command III never got the recognition it deserves, and with the license now in the hands of Bethesda and Taldren but a distant memory, it’s quite likely that we may never see a new Starfleet Command game.

Oh well. At least we still have the Star Fleet Universe board game.

*The Original Series and The Next Generation
All screenshots from starfleetcommand3files.com