The time PC Gamer gave a Star Trek game just 8%: ‘If this were any worse, it would be offensive’

Thankfully, for fans of Star Trek there are now plenty of decent games to play on PC if you fancy yourself as a budding Picard or Kirk, such as 2023’s Star Trek: Resurgence, but back at the turn of the century this was far from the case.

One of the biggest culprits? Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II, which, providing for some reason you want to endure, can be downloaded for free today at a number of abandonware websites (see below for download links).

How bad can Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II be? I’ll hand over to former PC Gamer writer John Walker, who originally described the game so adroitly in issue 87 of PC Gamer magazine back in October, 2000…

---------------

“Call it a job? All you do is play games all day. Good grief, it’s alright for some. Blah blah blah…” If proof were ever needed that this over-used statement is complete twaddle, then - ta-da! - here it is.

It’s hard to imagine how Starship Creator Warp II could be any worse. Perhaps razor-blades could spring out of the box, tearing your eyes out when you first open it. Or it could contain a deadly virus which wipes your hard disk and kills all your family.

The ‘Warp II’ is in reference to the astonishingly poor prequel that paved the way for this festering nonsense. It managed to score 9%. Believe me, we were all rather excited to see how well this one would do in comparison. The principle is exactly the same: you choose one of seven ship classes (Defiant, Galaxy, Intrepid, etc.), select the shape, and then replace millions of tiny little parts with millions of other tiny little parts, wondering what was wrong with the former millions of tiny parts. Then there is a unique feature: a fun bit. From a sporadic pool of Trek regulars and obscure extras, you can assign who you want to the most important roles on board. This gives the opportunity to see perhaps the pathetic, sycophantic Kes as captain, or the insensitive and offensive Emergency Medical Hologram as ship counsellor. That’s funny. For exactly 2.13 seconds.

Then it’s off to the mission screen where you will be misinformed to the point of disillusionment, before then veritable rollercoaster ride that is the appalling graphic of your ship dribbling across a grid map at a speed that leaves you constantly checking to see whether your computer has frozen. You have no control over this part, and it takes forever, even on ‘accelerated’. Help!

And, finally, the instructions. The ‘booklet’ is in fact a folded A1 poster. A1. It is too big for a human to hold up and read. Probably the craziest production design ever.

To have not managed to drag some semblance of a playable game from the car crash of the original is on the verge of arrogance. My life is less valid for having ‘played’ this. Don’t let the same happen to you.

Verdict: 8%

Think ‘bloody’, then think ‘awful’ and you’re getting close. This game is a form of torture.

---------------

Well, there you have it, John Walker delivering the goods. Hardly a classic Star Trek game, then. However, if you fancy seeing for yourself just how bad Star Trek: Starship Creator Warp II is, then you can download it for free right now from myabandonware and oldgamesdownload.

Neatly, I can confirm - having downloaded and experienced Warp II myself - that the game runs just fine today on Windows 10 (and I'm sure it will on Windows 11, too) out of its now virtual box. All you need to do is install the game and QuickTime (remember that!), which are both included in the game download.

Enjoy! If that is the right word.

Rob is editor of PC Gamer magazine and has been PC gaming since the early 1990s, an experience that has left him with a life-long passion for first person shooters, isometric RPGs and point and click adventures. Professionally Rob has written about games, gaming hardware and consumer technology for almost twenty years, and before joining the PC Gamer team was deputy editor of T3.com, where he oversaw the website's gaming and tech content as well its news and ecommerce teams. You can also find Rob's words in a series of other gaming magazines and books such as Future Publishing's own Retro Gamer magazine and numerous titles from Bitmap Books. In addition, he is the author of Super Red Green Blue, a semi-autobiographical novel about games and gaming culture. Rob loves riding motorbikes, too.