By Nathan Grayson on March 21st, 2013 at 2:00 pm.
I haven’t actually seen a lot of classic Star Trek, but even I know what a Gorn is. To those weened on later versions of the universe, your introduction to the scaly brutes probably came via snippets of the original series’ magnificent fight choreography. William Shatner fought one tooth and nail (and rock and tree branch and bigger rock and ACTION KICK) in a trial by combat, and then no one mentioned the Gorn again for like a thousand years. But now they get their very own videogame, so it all worked out. In Star Trek: The Game, you’ll be blasting them in all shapes and sizes. Sadly, however, Digital Extremes seems to have oh-so-slightly reined in their fantastic dress sense.
And for reference, here’s a Gorn from back when videogames barely even existed:
Awwww, they’re all gorn up now. The new ones can rush on all-fours, turn invisible, and be giant! Actual giant, too, and not just an average-sized man in a costume pretending to be giant. Though I do sort of hope there’s a bonus mode where Gorn are done up in their classic skins and Kirk controls like he just ate an 18-wheeler.
It’s all kind of surreal, though. I mean, on one hand, we have this game that looks competently similar to Mass Effect, but then there’s also this very direct and tangible link to a landmark series pretty much every sci-fi videogame has stolen liberally from. The student becomes the teacher, and also there are space crocodiles. Someday, I wish to leave behind a similar legacy.
Star Trek: The Game Sorta Of The Movie Except Not will bring its Kirk-Spock bro-op action to our modern game-o-verse on April 26th. I really hope it’s better than only kinda slightly all right, and hey, Digital Extremes did quite nicely with The Darkness 2. Fingers crossed?
21/03/2013 at 14:03 zeroskill says:
Third person shooters are the new first person shooters.
21/03/2013 at 14:18 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
We need a fourth-person shooter, a game from the perspective of someone totally uninvolved with and impractically distant from the action.
21/03/2013 at 14:22 distantlurker says:
That’s kinda how it feels to play walking dead survival instinct…
21/03/2013 at 14:29 Wreckdum says:
That game was dead on arrival.
21/03/2013 at 21:00 natalieethan2201 says:
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21/03/2013 at 14:31 Kollega says:
I’m not sure about being uninvolved, but for “being impractically far from the action”, Signal Ops has you covered.
21/03/2013 at 14:32 DeepwellBridge says:
I guess you could say every third person shooter is also a fourth person shooter because of the controller guy behind the ‘ol fourth wall.
21/03/2013 at 14:49 c-Row says:
Playing one of the Blood Bowl commentators? Not a shooter, but you get the idea.
21/03/2013 at 15:12 Taragon says:
i dunno, id love to see a 2nd person shooter, get to see the view from the eyes of the victim
21/03/2013 at 18:15 TsunamiWombat says:
The Shadowrun game for the …Genesis? I believe? The one starring Jake Armitage. Anyway, it takes place from an isometric perspective, and combat is handled by entering aiming and moving a reticule over your target. So thats pretty close to 4th person shooting.
That or any strategy game ever.
21/03/2013 at 14:25 cjlr says:
And yet, second person shooters never really caught on…
21/03/2013 at 14:39 Bhazor says:
I have a real soft spot for second person perspective games. Sadly theres not many with Siren being the only full game to use it.
21/03/2013 at 15:05 Oozo says:
At least they tried!
http://www.kongregate.com/games/himojii/second-person-shooter-zato
21/03/2013 at 18:16 TsunamiWombat says:
2ps would be any side scrolling shooter ever, I think. So, Contra.
21/03/2013 at 14:09 Ansob says:
Well, this has gone from no interest at all to a little bit of interest. I am fairly sure “Kirk and Spock fight dinosaurs with laser guns” has to rank fairly high on the list of people’s boyhood fantasies.
21/03/2013 at 14:10 guygodbois00 says:
This could have been so much more.
21/03/2013 at 14:24 distantlurker says:
Dude, it’s a movie tie in. It really couldn’t.
21/03/2013 at 15:26 analydilatedcorporatestyle says:
Gorn are the days of good game movie tie-ins like…………………………………………..now I didn’t think that through did I!
21/03/2013 at 15:54 HothMonster says:
The Lion King Genesis game is clearly what you were thinking of
21/03/2013 at 16:06 phuzz says:
GoldenEye, pretty much the only decent film > game conversion I can think of.
21/03/2013 at 16:28 lasikbear says:
Aladdin the game was pretty good, but balls hard.
The Chronicles of Ridick games were actually all pretty great especially compared to expectations.
21/03/2013 at 16:57 idiotapocs says:
Actually, I remember Lionking to be insanely hard, while I finished off Aladdin 3 or 4 times as a kid. Also, Batman AA. Not AC, AA.
21/03/2013 at 17:37 analydilatedcorporatestyle says:
Yup, give you the Chronicles of Riddick(prefered Assault on Dark Athena mesel like) and of course The Hobbit by Melbourne House!
21/03/2013 at 18:55 Jeroen D Stout says:
Gorn! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T70-HTlKRXo#t=37
21/03/2013 at 18:59 Thermal Ions says:
Khan’t you come up with a single one?
21/03/2013 at 20:22 Chris D says:
Spiderman 2. I think that’s all of them now, though.
21/03/2013 at 16:25 jonfitt says:
How is it that when you combine a movie/show that had very little to do with laser fights with a medium like videogames where literally anything is possible, do you end up with a third person cover shooter?
.
Spock and Kirk are not the Kane and Lynch of space.
.
The point and click Trek games from the 90s are still going to be the best Trek games.
22/03/2013 at 03:36 Reapy says:
Yes damn. I’m not even much of a star trek fan but this is certainly shitting all over everything star trek was about.
My reaction was like ‘holy shitty gears of star trek, batman’.
21/03/2013 at 14:23 Morlock says:
Is there a game that consciously aims for the cheap, fake, trashy look of old sci-fi series such as Star Trek or the German ripoff of Star Trek, “Raumpatroullie” (Raumschiff Orion)?
You can find Raumpatroullie on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGcIy76N9sY
21/03/2013 at 14:38 Kollega says:
There was a game immitating a giant robot B-movie (complete with red-cyan 3D effect) that i sadly don’t know the title of, and there was The Unstoppable Gorg that picked the (very) cheap sci-fi serials as the style for it’s cutscenes.
21/03/2013 at 16:20 DeepwellBridge says:
Unstoppable Gorg was a lot of fun! The only thing that could have made it better would be to add Mystery Science Theater commentary in the background.
21/03/2013 at 14:41 DeVadder says:
The first episode of Raumpatroullie Orion aired in germany 4 days after the first episode of Star Trek aired in America.
I doubt they really had the time to properly rip off a lot in 4 days.
21/03/2013 at 19:36 Morlock says:
Didn’t know that… thanks!
22/03/2013 at 03:25 emertonom says:
There’s also “It Came From the Desert,” although that’s reaching pretty far back. Or, going even further back, “The Movie Monster Game,” which I played on Apple II, but apparently was also on Commodore 64.
21/03/2013 at 14:25 Rise / Run says:
For the record, a Kirk-Spock bro-op laserfight to the dinosaurs WAS my wife’s boyhood fantasy. I somehow missed the gorn episode, so I guess not so much mine…
21/03/2013 at 14:33 Surlywombat says:
I congratulate you on your open mindedness.
21/03/2013 at 15:51 Solidstate89 says:
Your wife had a boyhood fantasy? Good on ya, man. Don’t let anyone judge you.
21/03/2013 at 14:25 Drake Sigar says:
Brb, Gorn huntin.
21/03/2013 at 15:32 Cryptoshrimp says:
Carribou goooorrn
21/03/2013 at 14:27 Toberoth_Syn says:
Mass Effect: The Game
Now with added Gorn!
Edit: Oh bugger, you already noted the ME similarities. How gornless of me.
21/03/2013 at 14:28 Calabi says:
Design looks a bit generic. Just your typical lizard man that roars at camera on cue.
21/03/2013 at 14:45 PoulWrist says:
Yeah. Why did they remove the multifaceted eyes :(
Also, reminded me of XCOM somehow :p
21/03/2013 at 14:36 manveruppd says:
But have they learned to lift with their legs rather than their waist in the intervening years?
21/03/2013 at 14:40 Mo6eB says:
Am I the only one who feels sick when looking at a game with one of these skewed third-person cameras? I mean a camera that doesn’t have the character centred on screen, but (usually) on the left. I kind of get the point that it allows for a lower camera without obstructing the view, but looking at such a game gives me a sense of unease similar to having someone hovering a hot poker next to my unmentionables.
21/03/2013 at 14:54 Chris D says:
Coincidentally a scene from the movie script was leaked a little earlier today:
“We have you now, Kirk! You will tell us everything we want to know.
In your dreams, Benedict Cumberbatch. Starfleet officers don’t break so easily!
Guard! Stand in front of the Captain. Now move a little to the left…
You bastard!…..”
22/03/2013 at 00:48 colossalstrikepackage says:
Awesome sauce
21/03/2013 at 14:46 yonsito says:
Those are Gorn?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xka6IYCpj4E
21/03/2013 at 14:46 Jesrad says:
Each clip was embarrassing enough that I couldn’t make it to the end of either. Taking a comical ‘monster’ from a show that has aged terribly and shoehorning it into a generic save-the-universe shooter can only end in shame and failure.
21/03/2013 at 14:50 Gap Gen says:
Gorn blimey!
21/03/2013 at 14:51 Lemming says:
Eh. I like the Gorn ‘update’ (ie the brute), but talk about watering that down when that’s your primary villainous race and there’s loads of different types. And ‘taking over the entire Federation’? What kind of hackneyed bullshit is that?
Why not just have the brute as the true Gorn and throw in some other aliens? For Star Trek, variety is what makes it work, because it’s supposed to be like an ongoing voyage, not killing the biggest threat in the universe and going home in time for tea.
Even Voyager: Elite Force recognised that and found a way to include multiple alien baddies.
21/03/2013 at 14:57 mikmanner says:
“…one of the most popular Star Trek villains of all time.” – this is because that clip of Kirk fighting a rubber man is hilariously rubbish. Surely updating the creature and turning it into a videogame monster defeats the point / appeal of that popular scene.
21/03/2013 at 15:02 Chalk says:
So the gorn are in the new movie?
21/03/2013 at 15:40 Jeroen D Stout says:
I am not certain I have ever been as enthusiastic about anything as this man clearly is about female Gorn appearing in the by-product of a dishonest franchise reboot.
21/03/2013 at 16:09 Ovno says:
Oh come on they had Gorn in Enterprise too, not just T.O.S.
21/03/2013 at 16:38 Prime says:
And they at least tried to maintain some kind of resemblance….
21/03/2013 at 16:17 writerryan says:
Looks like Kirk’s fight moves were the inspiration for Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
21/03/2013 at 16:32 benjamin says:
I don’t like the look of this Star trek game. It just isn’t the game I’m looking for. But rather than moaning about the perversion of a great concept I’m just not going to buy the game. So there.
21/03/2013 at 16:46 ChainsawHands says:
Giant gorn? What you want for that is a giant Spock.
21/03/2013 at 17:40 Koozer says:
Wait, why have the Gorn decided to get naked for combat now?
22/03/2013 at 02:46 MacTheGeek says:
The Gorn wanted to fight naked on TOS, but Roddenberry was too clothes-minded.
21/03/2013 at 18:02 zenjestre says:
i want this game to be the same kind of debacle colonial marines was, just so i can jam it in the trekkies’ faces, all “THIS is what THAT felt like!”
22/03/2013 at 16:24 Grygus says:
Trekkies know more about how it feels to receive a terrible game based on their fandom than anyone; even if this is worse than ACM, you won’t get much mileage out of lording over how their expectations were met.
21/03/2013 at 21:28 hermpesaurusrex says:
Wow this just looks bad.
22/03/2013 at 10:08 crinkles esq. says:
“Oh, excellent! They’re making a new Trek TOS game! That’s crazy. Well, let’s check out the video.”
“Wait, why is everyone firing Star Wars blasters at some sort of hell-dogs? Oh, gods. No, this is a tie-in for the new ‘reimagined’ Trek movie.”
21/03/2013 at 16:43 jkz says:
Now look here Mr. Spambot, if you are going the spam the RPS comments, please at least check your grammar and spelling beforehand. Thanks.