I haven’t seen the Start Trek movie but I hear good things about it. That’s more than can be said of this official Star Trek game brought out to cash in on the movie. Reviews online aren’t favourable but I thought I’d try it for myself and see what I made of it.
So the premise, in case you don’t know, is that The Gorn have attacked New Vulcan and eventually attack Starfleet themselves and you, as Kirk or Spock, have to put a stop to all this lizard-shenanigans.
The game focusses on co-op, so you can play online with a friend or have the AI take control of either Spock or Kirk. It’s a third-person shooter featuring a bit of cover and some little puzzles where you have to hack doors and other gadgetry by matching up symbols or drawing a path from one node to another.
Straight away you’ll realise it’s all very official, the likenesses are great (apart from Simon Pegg as Scotty), voices are all from the original actors and expect all the right sound effects of transporters, tricorders and phasers doing their thing. The problem lies in that the whole game just seems unfinished and is full of bugs. For instance, when you die sometimes you just ragdoll and catapult into the air, limbs bending in impossible ways, your AI partner sometimes gets stuck and just moonwalks on the spot or leans through scenery, clipping as it does it, facial expressions are laughable at times and characters don’t even face each other to talk to you. These things were part and parcel 8 years ago but not today!
Combat is also just not all that fun. You can pop out behind cover to fire your phaser or alien weaponry like the Ravager but The Gorn just aren’t an exciting bunch of things to fight. Lizard men with guns? If you’re a Star Trek fan you might enjoy their return but for me, it all just seems a bit silly.
The action is broken up slightly with an Enterprise space battle that’s possibly the worst on-rails shooting section I’ve ever had to play and you even get to perform a ‘mind-meld’ which takes you into some flashbacks framed by what looks like the opening credits of a Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who.
Star Trek is not a great game, however, the film is so spend your money in the cinema instead. It gets a mediocre 5 out of 10.
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Related: Star Trek The Videogame announced, Star Trek game, Star Trek review on Youtube