Sam Parker PC Editor	Now Playing: Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (PC) Favorite Star Trek Games: Birth of the Federation (PC), Starfleet Command (PC), Elite Force (PC)

No More Star Trek

The other week, Activision announced that it is terminating its Star Trek licensing agreement and won't make any more Star Trek games. To make things more interesting, it's also suing Paramount's parent company, Viacom, for not doing enough with the television and movie series. Clearly, a game publisher can't depend on a franchise license to magically turn games into best-sellers, but when there's a lot of money at stake, a publisher can and does expect to get some marketing advantage in exchange for the royalty payments. And the $11 million that Activision has paid out to Viacom over the last five years isn't chump change.

It's great to walk through virtual versions of sets from a show you've enjoyed, but a game has to offer a bit more.

On some level, I was actually saddened by this news--not because I've loved all of Activision's Star Trek games, but because it underlines the very real decline of Star Trek. At one point, Star Trek represented a mainstream sci-fi vision that was at once inspiring and entertaining, but now the series' guardians at Paramount are having a hard time making anything that's relevant or fresh. There has to be a huge number of ex-Star Trek fans out there who lost interest sometime during the Star Trek: Voyager run, and I'm certainly one of them. But that doesn't mean I'd ever turn down good new series, movies, or games that could rekindle that old fandom for a moment. While I didn't rush out to see Star Trek: Nemesis in the first few weeks like I did with last five or so movies, I was genuinely happy to catch it on a flight.

Taking control of huge ships in real-time battles can be interesting, but it can be complicated.

About the games, I always hope to see licensed games that do much more than transpose the subject material onto standard game conventions, instead delivering a unique game experience that captures the essence of some part of what makes the licensed material cool and perhaps even providing new insight into the original content. That's a tall order, and of the Star Trek games, perhaps only the Starfleet Command series has had even a glimmer of this sort of success. But we only have to look at some of the best Star Wars games--most notably, TIE Fighter and Jedi Knight --to know that it's possible for licensed sci-fi games to be great.

There've been more than a few underwhelming Star Trek games. Remember Klingon Honor Guard?

Might Star Wars simply provide better material for games than Star Trek? It's certainly possible. Yes, there've been plenty of unsatisfying Star Wars games. But the best ones have re-created the visceral thrill of lightsaber duels and space battles between huge numbers of fighters. The simple fact that the original Star Wars movies provided such exciting scenarios gave the games a leg up. Star Trek doesn't emphasize solo combat in the same way. Capital ship battles may look cool on the big screen, but they don't translate into fast-paced action gameplay. Other elements of the Star Trek premise can be difficult to work into gameplay, but games like Bridge Commander and Elite Force II have made good attempts at capturing the diplomatic and problem-solving spirit of the shows.