Admiral Chang's Verdict: Bah! If you prick us do we not bleed? Where is the Klingon game where we wipe humans off the face of the galaxy?
Captain Kirk's Verdict: I have... tasted the lips... of... many members of the female species in races throughout the galaxy. Yet, yours... are... <and so on>
My Verdict: The funny thing is, with the sheer number of bad Trek games made, this one cracks the top five. Or maybe that should be, "the sad thing is."
Game Information
Game Type: Inform
Author Info: John Menichelli is also responsible for the porting of Zork I to Hugo.
Other Games By This Author: Not Just A Game
Download Link: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/ztrek.z5
The Review...
There aren't many good Star Trek games out there, and that's a shame.
There is, of course, Judgment Rites. That game is one of the best ever made, regardless of whether you own a pair of Spock ears or not. It's simply a well-made and entertaining adventure. Its predecessor, the 25th Anniversary game, is pretty good as well. A Final Unity drags a bit, but at least you have the illusion of choice when it comes to which crew members you want on the away missions. Having always wanted to see an episode where Troi and Beverly are beamed down on an alien world where, slowly, their minds become dominated by a higher intelligence (mine and my trackball's) and their bodies no longer resist the sexual electricity the two characters had generated over the course of their time together on the ship... well, A Final Unity falls a little short of that, but at least you don't have to beam Riker down if you don't want to.
(And, of course, any game centered solely around the Klingons sucks ass. I realize that's not exactly a nicely-versed and well thought-out description but let's be honest -- everyone here at Reviews From Trotting Krips save their best work for the Mullets Galore forums.)
Super Z Trek is a port, for Inform, of a game that has apparently been in development for various home computers since, uh, 1974. That would make this game, essentially, as old as me. I am happy to say that I have experienced more personal growth than this once-BASIC gem and that women reportedly find me much more fun to play with. I do, however, lose out when compared, apparently, to Battlechess.
Menichelli's port for the Z-Machine is, much like his previous port of Zork I for Hugo, well done, bug-free and professionally programmed. The game itself is still kind of fun if you dig the old show. It's neat seeing Sulu and Chekov respectfully tell you what a complete moron you are if you attempt to drive the ship into a star. One thing the game does very well is convey the sense of dread that would accompany a Star Trek episode centered around killing Klingons. Many quality episodes of the original series started off, instantly, with Kirk explaining what the deal was and things going right from there. That style of quick pacing and urgency translates well with Super Z Trek. You have a limited amount of time to complete the mission and it's possible to get stranded out in the middle of nowhere if you don't watch your fuel reserves.
One glitch in the translation is that, in the original version of the game, a level of complexity was added to shooting down the enemy ships by having to enter the direction and then the tenth's place of that direction. Since Inform can't deal with numbers that way, Menichelli has added a chance of missing the ship to each firing of the torpedoes and phasers.
If you've never played the game before and aren't hopelessly deluded concerning Picard or Janeway's inherent superiority, as a captain, over Kirk then you definitely want to give it a whirl. The replayability factor is fairly low, although it's difficult to beat the game the first few times you play it. Eliminating Klingon scum from the universe and winning the game is surprisingly pleasing.
The source code is also available at ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/inform6/examples/games/ztrek.inf
Simple Rating: 6.1 / 10
Complicated Rating:
Story: 7.2 / 10
Writing: N.A
Playability: 8.9 / 10
Puzzle Quality: N/A
Parser Responsiveness: N/A
Special Ratings For This Game
Port Quality: 9.1 / 10