Every now and again it’s a joy to discover an excellent, old game you never knew existed. Even better is when a game you thought was total rubbish turns out to have a redeeming feature. Most recently this has been the case with Star Trek: Bridge Commander.

Quit sniggering. I recall the single player was a fairly naff series of warp jumps between planets with the odd bit of combat and storyline thrown in. Reasonably well done but nonetheless I couldn’t be arsed finishing it. Multiplayer, on the other hand, is rather good as it turns out. One of the chaps at work borrowed a few copies from the games library and so far it’s been far more fun that it has any right to be.

Granted, there aren’t too many ships or maps in the default game, however after a little bit of poking around BC Files you can have Borg Cubes, the Defiant, Space Stations, bots and even that future Star Ship from Voyager with the 4 warp nacelles. Fancy recreating Wolf 359? You can certainly take a stab, albeit with not quite as many ships. Even as a casual Trek fan this stuff is a lot of fun to play with. Multiplayer itself is also reasonably tactical despite the limited array of weapons. Throw in four or more players and you’re golden. It has quickly become a regular feature of lunch time gaming at work rather than the fad I expected. It’s a miracle for anything to last more than a couple of play sessions at lunch, C&C Generals Zero Hour being the last to do so.

Copies must go for a pittance on Ebay, track some down and make it the novelty game of your next LAN Party. Every LAN Party should have a "Guest Star" game that isn’t Halo, CS or Battlefield. Giants also comes highly recommended for surprisingly excellent multiplayer shenanigans. I once spent a whole LAN anihilating people as the gargantuan Citizen Kabuto, then switched to a Sea Reaper and butchered whoever played Kabuto instead of me, thus silencing critics who claimed "whoever plays Kabuto gets it easy". Mwuhaha.