10 Forgotten Sci-Fi Video Games You Need To Play

4. Star Trek Invasion - Activision (2000)

Binary Domain
Activision

Licensed games have the dubious distinction of often being terrible but if we look all the way back to the year 2000 on the original PlayStation, we find that rare exception to the rule.

Star Trek source material makes for very good video game lore and yet, try as they may, few developers ever seem to get the formula right. Star Trek: Invasion is one of the few that does.

Based on none of the franchise's films directly, Invasion is a strictly space combat affair and boasts the distinction of having been developed by the same individuals responsible for the equally impressive (and equally forgotten) Colony Wars series.

In Star Trek: Invasion, you play a Valkyrie fighter pilot reporting directly to Unit Commander Worf, who guides you through 30 action-packed space-shooter missions.

Praised at the time for a fluid control system and innovative lock-on features, Invasion typically scored in the upper echelon in game magazine reviews at the time with the only complaints being that it seemed, at times, more closely related to Colony Wars than it did Trek.

Either way, the Star Trek franchise hasn't slowed any in receiving licensed games for just about every generation of hardware since but few managed to do everything as correctly as 2000's Invasion.

Contributor

Jason Russell has been working in video game journalism since the early 1990s before the internet existed, the term "fanzine" had meaning and sailors still debated as to whether or not the earth was flat. The first time. More recently he has been the guy responsible for the Retrospective column for Old School Gamer Magazine, pens up a Game Skinny column on a plethora of video game topics. He's somehow managed to author nine novels, writes and runs the blog CG Movie Review, is co-founder of the science fiction publishing house Starry Eyed Press, and sometimes, when the planets align and the caffeine has fully left his system, it's rumored he sleeps.