Games News: First Look At Star Trek D-A-C Official Announcment w/ new Screenthots + STO Update

Since we first found a promotional sheet for "Star Trek DAC" a few weeks ago the new game has been a bit mysterious, until now. Today TrekMovie was given the exclusive first look at the official announcement and new screenshots for the arcade shooter inspired by the new Star Trek movie. See all that below, plus we have a quick update on the latest on that other game, Star Trek Online.

 

Star Trek D-A-C: $10 for some Star Trek shoot-em-up fun
Star Trek®: D-A-C is a fast-paced, top-down space shooter inspired by the upcoming Star Trek feature film. This pick up and play game allows you and your friends to pick sides (Federation or Romulan), choose starships (including the new U.S.S. Enterprise), and battle it out online. Developed by Naked Sky for Paramount Interactive, Star Trek: D-A-C will be available in May for download via Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® for only $10 (800 Microsoft Points). It will be available on the PlayStation®Network and Windows PC shortly thereafter.


Virtual box art for the downloadable Star Trek D-A-C game

KEY FEATURES:

  • Arcade-Style Space Combat: Lead your team to victory as you command a starship in epic multiplayer space battles
  • Enlist in Starfleet or join the Romulan Empire: Play as one of the two factions from the upcoming “Star Trek” motion picture
  • Three Different Game Play Modes:
    • Single-Player: Practice against AI bots to become an expert captain
    • Online Multiplayer: Twelve players (six per team) compete in intense online battles
    • Online Co-Op: Team up with friends to combat in space
  • Three Different Game Types:
    • Team Deathmatch: Teams go head-to-head in a winner-takes-all fight to the finish
    • Conquest: Teams must protect and conquer Control Points in space
    • Assault: Teams take turns trying to dominate or defend a sector of space
  • Superior Graphics: With visuals inspired by the film, players of Star Trek: D-A-C fight in a diverse array of outer space settings
  • Three Ship Classes for Each Faction: The powerful Flagship, the nimble Fighter and the devastating Bomber each provide unique capabilities in combat
  • Original Content Inspired by Upcoming “Star Trek” Film: Take down enemies while flying the new U.S.S. Enterprise
  • Change the Course of Battle With a Variety of Power-Ups & Special Pick-Ups: Upgrade your ship’s weapons mid-fight and discover powerful pickups to dominate your enemies
  • “Star Trek” Soundtrack: Star Trek: D-A-C features music and sound effects taken from the new “Star Trek” movie
  •  ESRB Rating: E

NEW SCREENSHOTS:


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)


Star Trek D-A-C screenshot (click to enlarge)

First Impressions of DAC
On Thursday I had a chance to play around with Star Trek D-A-C and I will have a full early review later, but it is a lot of fun. This multi-player focused space shooter is easy to jump into, but has some surprising layers of tactics for a $10 download title. Hopefully some day we will get an elaborate game tied into the new movie universe, but until then Star Trek D-A-C should prove entertaining to people who just like to shoot at their friends…in space.

Oh…even after playing the game and pestering the room full of developers, I still don’t know what D-A-C stands for…but apparently one can figure it out eventually after playing through the game.

 

STO Update: ‘Path to 2409’, New Video Clips & More
D-A-C is the most imminent Star Trek game, but not the only one. In the last week there have been a couple of updates for the other Star Trek game in development, Cryptic’s Star Trek Online MMORPG

Firstly, Cryptic has released a new ‘Path to 2409’ supplement in the form of an ‘interview’ with a former member of Starfleet.

Path to 2409 – 2386

I meet David Steiner in Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House, Holosuite Arcade, Gift Shop and Ferengi Embassy. It’s the hub of social life on Deep Space Nine, and there’s an infectious air of fun, revelry and commerce punctuated by shouts of joy and cries of dismay from the dabo tables.
Steiner keeps his eyes down and his voice low, ignoring the frivolity surrounding him. He nurses a Saurian brandy during our interview, but from the empty glasses on the table when I arrived, I could tell it wasn’t his first drink of the evening.
Q: So, you were at the Battle of Gila IV.
A: I saw it all. Awful business. After the treaty with the Dominion was signed, I’d hoped never to see anything like that again.

read the rest at startrekonline.com

Also there is an interview with Craig Zinkievich featured on MSNBC.com, which mostly covers old group, but the video shows new shots of starships moving in space.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More STO Links

  • At MMORPG.com
    Christine Thompson, talks about writing for the Star Trek Online experience and describes some of the challenges in writing for the game.
  • STO official forums Kobayashi Maru Challenge #10

     

Thanks to TrekMovie Game Reporter Joe Gunnell, who contributed to this report

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I’m still curious on why the Romulan ships are inspired by the borgified Narada. Maybe Nero gave them some of his technology in the end?

Those nacelles are definitely further apart than the movie ship

#2.

Fascinating. I didn’t notice that. Good catch. Maybe the Enterprise goes through a tiny refit in the end?

i don’t like that the warp nacelles look like rocket boosters.

Didn’t I read an interview on here somewhere with the guys who designed the JJ-prise, and did the movie FX, that they wanted moveable bits on the ship. Apparently the deflector dish moves in and out, and expands, and also “the fins” move apart at warp speed. Does this mean the nacelles move apart at warp speed??? Kind of the reverse of Voyager.

DAC: Defend and Conquer!

Hey Where’s The Part where you get to Seek Out New Life and New civilizations…??? oh Wait I’m thinking about STAR TREK!!!!!! sorry. No offense, But this Game looks Dumb. The other Star Fleet ships Don’t look Like Star Fleet Ships. The Romulan Ships Don’t Look Like Romulan Ships.
Which means this whole thing is unrecognizable. Is that what The “NEW” Star Trek is going to be about?? just Shoot ’em up fun? these kinda Games Are Fun, when it’s Something Else, like Starwars, or whatever. Not Trek. other than that the graphics are nice…..

@7 This Path is made just by Bethesda a couple of years earlier with Legacy (PC), Conquest (Wii) and Encounters (PS2)… everyone is just a simple, mindless shoot’em’up

This DAC game looks like 1995….

@ 7: It’s just an arcade game, it’s not supposed to follow every code of Star Trek. Just space ships destroying each other.

Oh man you have to love that Maru scenario linked at the end. I love the pages and pages of people saying they would let their crews die and refuse to violate romulan space etc.

Cryptic would become my personal god if they added the scenario into the game at a high level. I want to see how many of these armchair moralists will sacrifice their character and all the bridge crew they spent months levelling up. I want the characters to be deleted when they die from the disease.

@7

LOL yet another case where “change” is not desireable!

Re: 7 and 10
Except it isn’t just the arcade game. The entire premise of STO is also “space cowboy shoot-em’-up,” which, I agree, ain’t Trek. How about some CREATIVE programming that involves the “explore strange new worlds” and “seek out new life” sides of Trek. This is lazy, no-brainer work. Substitute the graphics and this could be any other space opera: Star Wars, Stargate, or Galaxy Quest, for that matter. As much as I love space action and adventure (I do like Star Wars) I’d love to see something that really made Trek Trek and I hope the movie doesn’t jettison those bits just to get a rip roaring story. If it does I’ll abandon ship, no win scenario or no.

Looks like a Ferderation-i-fied version of Asteroids. Should be fun!

Although i understand the need for a “different” game, you have to realize two things:

1) Like it or not, “space cowboy shoot-em’-up” is a part of Star Trek. Does “Balance of Terror” and the latter half of “Wrath of Khan” ring any bells?

2) I can’t remember when there was a movie tie-in video/computer game (but i’m not big into the console games) – so first off, be thankful at least they made this. Generic, but this is a marketable game who’s primary goal is to get young guys (the xBox crowd) into the theaters (this fits the “action” theme of the trailers). Want a “explore strange new worlds” game? Sounds like that MMORPG is more your style.

It’s a freaking $10.00 game, it’s a shoot em up for Vulcanian sake. You want a long involved role playing trek game, it sure as heck isn’t going to be $10.00. I’ve been a trek fan since 1969, and I am as much a lover of canon as anyone. But anyone who thinks that a $10.00 game is going to reflect every aspect of Star Trek is nuts.

For Trek to survive and grow it needs to evolve. Trek stopped evolving a long time ago. If the show is to continue in the future, then it needs to speak with a more modern voice. It’s unfortunate that some fans have become so hid bound that they won’t even give the movie a chance. I repeat again.

Botom line it’s a $10.00 game, it’s not going to be a huge interactive Star Trek experience.

The answer to the “D-A-C” mystery is evident in the description of the game:

” * Team Deathmatch: Teams go head-to-head in a winner-takes-all fight to the finish
* Conquest: Teams must protect and conquer Control Points in space
* Assault: Teams take turns trying to dominate or defend a sector of space”

Deathmatch – Assault – Conquest

14–

I was definitely thinking of Asteroids, myself. I foresee fast-paced, addictive gameplay. Perhaps the storyline won’t be engrossing or deep, but I doubt we’ll see that in many $10 budget titles. Looks like fun.

For those who are upset or disappointed by the fact that DAC appears to be a shoot-em-up, I should point out that the overwhelming majority of the early Star Trek games were essentially shoot-em-ups.

With the exception of 25th Anniversary and A Final Unity, most Trek games have been largely combat-centric. It’s (for better or worse) much easier for a game developer to sell (or design) a game on the premises of action and competition than it is on the premises of diplomacy and exploration.

I don’t think that the ideal Trek game should rely on combat for its core, as I think Star Trek was a great deal more than just action. All the same, a good Trek game needs to have the excitement and adventure of the show … just like it needs the intelligence and spirit that really made the show what it was.

Hope it’s more fun than ST: Legacy… Bethesda really dropped the ball on that title…

#7

Relax. It’s just a shoot-em-up. I’ve yet to see a real Star Trek game. Maybe “A Final Unity”, but adventures are (alas) niche games.

#19 “I don’t think that the ideal Trek game should rely on combat for its core, as I think Star Trek was a great deal more than just action”

I agree. That’s why “Star Trek” and “videogames” belongs to different worlds :)

21 — Quote me out of context AND get my number wrong? ; P

In all seriousness, though, I would agree to some extent that the ideal Trek experience lies beyond the purview of video games. It isn’t always within the purview of television, as we’ve definitely seen over the years (TNG: “Shades of Gray” or TOS: “The Way to Eden,” for a couple horrific examples).

That doesn’t mean that a Trek game can’t be fun, even if it isn’t embracing the zeitgeist (thanks ZQ) of the Trek experience.

@1 Likely. 25 years is a long time. He must’ve done something else besides brooding

Does anybody think PSN will get it the week after it releases on Live?

All Trek games bow before my heavily modded Klingon Academy game. Pretty much any Star Trek ship from any era from Enterprise to Nemesis (which is actually fun to have the Scimitar get attacked by Archer’s Enterprise and do no damage, eventually I yawn and cloak the Scimitar and unleash a volley of 20 torpedos and vaporize his puny ship)

Also fun is Borg cube vs Imperial Star Destroyer (from Star Wars), or Centauri cruiser (with planetary assault mass driver) vs Star Destroyer.

I also have many Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica ships.

Its kind of fun doing USS Defiant from DS9 vs 20 TOS Klingon cruisers. One time I fired two quantum torpedos at Klingon ship; the torpedo blew a hole in it and crippled it – the 2nd torpedo flew through the hole and destroyed another Klingon ship BEHIND that one!

Has a bit of a learning curve with the numberkey menu system, but after 8 years I’m pretty good with it, and the game holds up pretty well after 8 years, especially having several hundred modded ships.

Using scripts you can modify how many ships deploy in a battle, hence a huge battle between 500 Klingon ships and 200 Starfleet ships, all TOS except for my core group of 22 USS Defiant ships.

The TOS ships are pretty fun, especially since I reprogrammed some of the ships to have the TOS effects, like torpedos. There is even stuff from the Star Fleet Technical Manual, like the huge Space Station with dock-spheres and one-nacelled scouts and destroyers, and even transport-tugs, and a TOS Miranda type (USS Avenger).

PORT 2 LINUX PLZ KTHNX!!!1!

(both!)

There’s no reason that some software publisher can’t get “Star Trek” right. It’s not that hard to make a game that’s part space-battle, part logic problem, part ‘protect”.

Hell, if they can make a video game out of “24” and include the brainy CTU analysis aspects of the show as well as Jack shooting anyone not American, they can make a “Star Trek” game.

Why are all of these games space battle? EVen if they can’t get the cast members needed to record the lines, I’d settle for a well done game that was a mix of character play and space travel/combat.

As for “movie insipred” games, handheld game for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was released, as well as games for “Star Trek: Generations” and a sequel to “Star Trek: Insurrection” called “Star Trek: Hidden Evil”.

I still have the Generations game for PC, it was actually pretty good, a mix of first person shooter/RPG away teams and mission based levels on the big E.

Birth of the Federation though is by far and away my favourite Trek game, Civilization meets Trek, the perfect combination! I’d pay many Quatloo’s for a sequel but unfortunately Microprose got bought out by Hasbro shortly after the game was released and it got lost in the shuffle.

The last Trek games I bought were Elite Force and that god awful one for the PS2 where you were basically an X-Wing pilot but I’ll probably check out Star Trek: Online.

Will this be as good as Star Trek checkers was on the old Startrek.com site?

#22 “Quote me out of context AND get my number wrong? ; P”

Sorry about that :)

Well, 10 $ seems a bit much for what is essentially a flash game.

13

One of the more dominant aspects of STO is exploration. “Seeking out new life and new civilizations.” Which is to say, you can point your ship in any which way and see what’s out there. From what has been released to so far, STO is very much trying to be true to the nature of Star Trek.

Looks better than the unreleased Star Trek V NES game, a playable ROM of which is floating around on the Net.

Yeah, I’m hoping STO has exploration missions that involve meeting new aliens and discovering new cities and worlds and all that. I don’t mind space battle games for Trek, especially for what it is.

Oh, and I have to say that I just got Legacy and think it’s a lot of fun! There’s a bit of a learning curve learning the controls (like the recent Iron Man game) but once you do I think it’s pretty enjoyable and the graphics are beautiful. It is harder then it seems like it should be sometimes, but all in all I thought it was pretty nice.

#1

Nah, it’s just because the designers were lazy. It’s not like they actually thought this game out at all. It was rushed out (like the viral games) to fill that extra marketing quota. Even though it’s cheap (and it should be), it looks like one of the most boring games to hit the market in 5 years.

I have to second the question of why the Romulan ships look anything like the late 24th century Narada.

It’s a good thing some of you don’t work in game development because you’d cause the company to lose money. This type of game is fine, they know what sells.

While DAC may not follow the broader ideals of Trek, I still hope it will be a fun little Arcade game to play.
And the Generations bridge from the STO video looks frikkin’ awesome!

#37

Yeah, and there are a hundred other games out there with the same approach that people could be playing instead of this game. “Armada”, which came out nearly a decade ago, is still exciting and it has the same approach. The only difference between the two is that this one is just the player shooting at little Naradas; “Armada” had the benefit of choice and narrative, not to mention more ships. I just expected something better from a movie tie-in game. But hey, it’s ten dollars. If people want to play it, I hope they get their money’s worth (and that wasn’t a sarcastic comment). With that said, I’m looking forward to “STO” because from the outset it looks like it will be an exceptionally decent Star Trek game. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to play “Starfox”.

Not sure if it’s been said already, but this looks like another variant on a couple of other Xbox360 Arcade games – Wing Commander Arena, and Battlestar Galactica.

From the screenshots it looks like the identical engine, just re-skinned for Star Trek. Throw in a couple of new game modes, and boom – $10 downloadable tie-in game.

Having played both WCA and BSG on the 360, I can say they’re fun distractions, and there’s definitely some strategy involved, but the game probably won’t hold your attention for more than a few hours.

Paulaner — no worries, just giving you a hard time! : )

You guys are really laying it on thick lately with all the “we got the exclusive first look…” stuff lately. It’s crap, makes you look like amateurs, and most importantly of all … READERS. DON’T. CARE.

Cut it out.

28-

Birth of the Federation was one of the best Star Trek games ever. It had the rare quality of being both difficult and fun. It required a little bit of knowledge about the ST universe too. The fact that you only get access to certain wonders when you rule the minor race associated with that structure (e.g. the super soldier academy comes with the Angosians) gave it a uniquely Trek feel. You also have to choose which empire you play as carefully. The Romulans have cloaking devices, for instance, which gives a decisive edge in space battles. But their ships are practically worthless against orbital defence platforms. As the Federation, you had to provoke the other empires into declaring war on you (because your popular support takes a big hit when you’re the “aggressor”).

Now, there were problems with it. Memory leaks caused major slowdowns. There were some balance issues. Once the Borg show up, it is pretty much “game over” unless you have loads of Defiants or cloaked ships. But I remember playing it when it first came out and thinking: we finally had a winner.

So, of course, the developers didn’t bother to provide any support for this little gem. The game didn’t come with any Master of Orion / Galactic Civilizations style ship editor. The long promised memory leak patch was never released. And despite high interest from fans, a sequel never materialized.

I don’t like the way they’re treating the warp engines as thrusters. Seems odd.

43 —

You might be interested in Star Trek: Supremacy, which is a fan-made game that’s essentially a Birth of the Federation 2:

http://www.startreksupremacy.com/download.html

This MMORPG stuff being TNG based, is making me appreciate how important this restart is that we’re having, from the narration in that news story to the character conversation in Quark’s bar. There is so much meaningless canoniacle crap that needs to be thrown in to get a sense that the writers are die hard nerds, that it’s almost no fun. No non Trekkie is going to get the dabo table jargon, and the line after line of description of what happens in Quark’s bar, or really care.

It’s so exciting for this new movie to have an element of mystery to it, to discover things for the first time and not have a laundry list of things we have to go through to make if feel trekkie.

Im gonna go ahead and skip this DAC, just looks like a pretty lame game wrapped in Star Trek.

This game is just the modern version of the Trek game we played when I was in Junior High way back in 1978. We would go to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley and play on the computers there. There was a game called “Trek” which was text based and was based on the premise that the player was the captain of the Enterprise and the Klingons were firing at the ship. You were supposed to fire and take evasive maneuvers, as well as take advice from Mr. Spock. Alas, I always blew the ship up, which I think somehow Mr. Spock always informed me of. Anyway it must have been one of the first computer games based on Star Trek and it was essentially a shooter game. This new game is just a modern version of that game, perhaps aimed at Middle School kids who want to pretend their Captain of the Enterprise. Only now you don’t have to go to the Lawrence Hall of Science to play it.

#42 “READERS. DON’T. CARE.”

I have no problem thinking on my own, King, but thank you…even if your bold assumption is wrong.

Divide and Conquer