Star Trek

Introduction

Looking to cash in on the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, publisher Namco Bandai Games and developer Digital Extremes teamed up to produce a Star Trek game that's designed to bridge the story gap between 2009's Star Trek and the new film. Basically, the Enterprise and crew have an encounter with the Gorn that have appeared from a rip in space near New Vulcan. The two sides clash over a Federation device called the Helios and end up in a battle for power. All of these events take place prior to the opening scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness where the Enterprise is visiting planet Nibiru.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

Sort of a hybrid between a platformer and a third-person, cover based shooter similar to the Uncharted series, Star Trek puts the player in control of Captain Kirk or Commander Spock. Players can choose which character to play, but cannot switch between the two characters when within a level. However, players can call in a co-op partner, either offline or online, to play the other character. Otherwise, the opposing character is controlled by A.I. Players have a choice of blasting their way through levels with a variety of standard weapons like a machine gun, shotgun or sniper rifle or simply attempting a more humane offense with phasers set to stun. You can receive a commendation for working through levels for using stun, but it's simply not as fun.

Sadly, the A.I. is incredibly stupid, both friendly and unfriendly characters. During combat, my partner would continuously avoid cover and stay far behind the player's character. More often than not, you can race through levels and the game will have to reload your A.I. controlled partner as if it was keeping up the whole time. Fortunately, enemies are just as moronic and don't really offer much of a challenge to anyone that's played a third-person shooter before. My favorite example of their stupidity happened when a batch of Gorn enemies completely forgot they were battling Kirk and stood around waiting to be taken out. Glitches like that are just one example why Star Trek: The Game feels more like an effort to cash in on a franchise than make a fantastic game.

Many of the movement mechanics simply seem broken. There were multiple points in the game were I took cover on the wrong side of a barrier due to funky controls. The co-op puzzles that broke up the action weren't much better, but they were fairly basic button mashing events that didn't require a bit of thought to traverse. If anything, it felt like a waste of time. The one high point in the game was a sequence in which Spock and Kirk beamed themselves around to various platforms using handheld transporters, but that was still linear by design.

Actions within the game allow the player to build up experience points to unlock upgrades for weapons and equipment. It's a fairly straightforward system that helps the character traverse levels more quickly. The Tricorder, for instance, can reveal enemy locations and provide a mapping tool to reach the next objective.