Licensed video games based off of upcoming movies are almost never what most would consider, “good.” Rarely are they anything worth discussing, generally because the games are rushed out in order to coincide with a film’s release. With Star Trek, though, there was at least a glimmer of hope for it. Originally announced at E3 2011, it seemed that the game could have been a decent third person shooter, as the game was being written in conjunction with the film. However, what we got was a broken mess of a game not fit to bear the name Star Trek.
Set after Star Trek and taking place in the newly rebooted universe, Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise find themselves taking on the threat of the Gorn, a lizard like alien race that has been threatening the galaxy. After capturing a device that’s being used to terraform New Vulcan (following the original’s destruction in the 2009 film), the Gorn intend to use the device for their own destructive purposes. It’s up to Kirk and Spock to recover the device.
The plot line itself is a bit dull and uninteresting. This isn’t helped by the fact that most of the voice over work is phoned in. Sure, a good deal of the cast from the film reprises their roles here (including Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock), but they all sound incredibly bored in almost all of their line delivery. They almost sound as bored as most people will be when they play this game.
The game plays as a fairly bland third person, cover based shooter. Your default weapon is your Phaser and there’s almost no reason to use anything else. Half way through the game you can upgrade your Phaser to use a charge shot that will kill almost anything in one or two hits tops.
The game does have some platforming elements, similar to ones that you would find in Uncharted. However, they are all incredibly poorly designed. For example, one section you may need to climb up to a ledge but the game will give you almost no clue that you actually need to climb. In another, you may need to jump across a gap that you would normally think would kill you. The platforming seems custom designed to make sure you’re never quite sure that you know what your doing and if what you’re doing is correct.
If you’re a classic Star Trek fan and are hoping that this re-imagined version of the classic Gorn would be something really cool, you’ll be incredibly disappointed. They all look like rejected Halo enemies and even share similar roles. For example, the sniper Gorn type looks very similar to the Jackal sniper in Halo. The large, bulky Gorn looks identical to the Brutes. There are even flying enemies who give your opponents a shield and look almost identical to the Watchers from Halo 4. Every enemy comes off as bland and uninspired.
The game is designed to be played as a co-op experience, so if you really want to make someone else miserable you can play it together. The co-op has a number of huge problems, such as long loading times when a character dies, random deaths that cause you to start over at a checkpoint and general glitches. If one player dies during a platforming section and falls to their death, you’ll have to start at a checkpoint that may be quite a ways away from where you were. While it is possible to revive your partner, it only seems to work some of the time. Sometimes, your partner will be downed and immediately die afterwards, giving you no chance to revive them.
If you decide to play it alone, though, you’ll run into your own set of glitches and problems. When playing alone, an AI partner will take the place of whichever character you didn’t choose to play as. If you’re downed, they will sometimes try to revive you and sometimes won’t. Your AI partner can be killed, forcing you back to a checkpoint, meaning that sometimes you’ll get a game over screen for no fault of your own.
On top of all of that, the AI will sometimes refuse to kill enemies, choosing instead to only use the stun function on the Phaser. When this happens, an enemy who is stunned will stand around for a few seconds. At this point, you’re supposed to run up to them and punch them. However, your AI teammate will only do this some of the time, meaning they can just keep stunning the same enemy over and over again while you’re getting shot by the rest of the enemies.
Star Trek is an incredibly glitchy game, as well. Sometimes the camera will simply pan into a character’s skull, giving you a view of their eyeballs and the inside of their mouth. Other sections have more unique glitches. At one point, you’re supposed to travel on the outside of a ship’s hull using magnetic boots. This is supposed to make you climb up walls. The game may just decide to not let you though, so you’ll have to restart the chapter. Even then, that’s not a guarantee that the game will fix itself. There’s no excuse for such a buggy release.
Star Trek would be just another bland third person shooter, even without these problems. It’s uninspired and has no real soul. There’s no redeeming qualities about it outside of the fact that it features the voice cast from the film. If you previously had any hope that this might be a good game, now’s the time to give it up. In the infamous words of Dr. McCoy: He’s dead, Jim.
A copy of Star Trek was provided to The Married Gamers for review.
