Once upon a time, Star Trek was a vision of an optimistic, enlightened future where solving problems with violence was a last resort. Now, thanks to J.J. Abrams' fun-but-shallow reboot, it's a slick action film that's light on sci-fi, but big on explosions, excitement, and witty dialogue. Do you think your average popcorn muncher wants to see Picard sipping Earl Grey and calmly negotiating with a nebula? Of course not. They want to see Kirk 2.0 shooting an alien with a phaser as planets explode in the background.
Reflecting this flashier, dumber modern Star Trek, the inevitable spin-off game - which features an original story set after the events of the 2009 film and before the forthcoming sequel, Into Darkness - is a generic, set-piece-laden cover shooter. You spend much of it, playing as either Kirk or Spock, crouching behind bits of scenery and firing lasers at monsters. If you want to feel like the captain of your own starship, exploring the universe, and seducing weird aliens, play Mass Effect. In spirit, it's a better Star Trek game. This is, superficially, Uncharted in space.
The combat is completely unremarkable. There's barely anything to say about it. You pin yourself against cover, wait for the enemy to pop their head out, then shoot them. It's the worst kind of play-it-safe, by-the-numbers third-person shooter there is. There aren't even any interesting sci-fi weapons to play with; just reskinned shotguns, pistols, and rifles. There's something absurd about seeing Spock running around with a space shotgun, and it doesn't fit his character at all. Turning Star Trek - even the new Star Trek - into a shooter just doesn't feel right.
There are some attempts to add variety: simple environmental puzzles (e.g. find an obviously-placed power cell to open a locked door), bonus objectives that reward you for stunning rather than killing certain enemies, and some dull, sluggish Tomb Raider-style climbing. Worst of all, though, is the hacking. Almost everything you have to interact with to complete objectives involves one of a handful of tedious hacking mini-games. Sometimes you get the option to sneak through levels without being detected, but if there's one thing this game doesn't need, it's stealth.
What the game gets right is the rapport between Kirk and Spock. Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine are fundamentally very good actors, so they make the best of the hit-and-miss script. Their light-hearted back-and-forths are entertaining, and bring some humour to the otherwise drab, repetitive levels. Everything is designed with co-op in mind, and both characters have to work together to bypass certain obstacles, like combining their strength to pry open jammed doors.
With a friend, the game is a lot more fun - but that can be said of almost any co-op game. Where it falls apart is when you're playing solo. The AI is dizzyingly stupid, with abysmal pathfinding and an infuriating tendency to ignore you while you're incapacitated and waiting to be revived. At one point, the AI actually broke the game. We needed to complete a two-man hacking mini-game to proceed, but Kirk was frozen in place, running endlessly into a wall. Ridiculous.
Prejudiced after years of being burned by promising, but ultimately rubbish, film spin-offs, we weren't expecting much from Star Trek. There are some decent ideas in here - like being able to scan the environment, Metroid Prime-style, with the tricorder - but they're outweighed by flat combat, clunky controls, and uninspiring level design. Strip away the licence and you're left with an underwhelming shooter punctuated by endless hacking mini-games and woeful space combat.
Comments
34 comments so far...
MrPirtniw on 25 Apr '13 said:
You should check out some of the Metacritic scores- looks like once again the developers are ranking up their games.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/star-trek-the-video-game/user-reviews?dist=neutral
Needless to say there's been a slight backlash.
alan666 on 25 Apr '13 said:
is this score out of 5 or 10 ?
El Mag on 25 Apr '13 said:
You still taking one for the team on it Reeg?
REEEEEEGGG!!!
Nope, he's scarpered.
Headsrinker on 25 Apr '13 said:
I think we all knew that a review like this was coming as soon as we witnessed the early gameplay footage. Its Star Trek though, so it'll still sell reasonably well.
richomack360 on 25 Apr '13 said:
This game sounds more like Captain Jerk than Captain Kirk.
Reegeee on 25 Apr '13 said:
Damn shame I'd read good things about it a few months ago and all.
Hope now transfers to fuse and mars war logs.
Down with robots on 25 Apr '13 said:
Seems like it was rushed out in the end to coincide with the film out next month. Such a shame that publishers do this, they are only hurting their own business with this stupid practice.
budge on 25 Apr '13 said:
Make it so.....average.
richomack360 on 25 Apr '13 said:
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/1158287/tumbleweed-o.gif
TheCrimsonFenix on 25 Apr '13 said:
Damnit Jim, I'm a mediocre, by-the-numbers s**tty shooter, not a surprisingly good use of a movie licence.
Imaduck on 25 Apr '13 said:
You guys have some very rose tinted views of the original Star Trek
flash501 on 25 Apr '13 said:
Brown alert. I love it!
freds1 on 26 Apr '13 said:
Oh what have they done.
http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/images/GifGuide/clapping/riker.gif
JDB on 26 Apr '13 said:
Such a shame. If only bioware had the licence for this game. Even a ME re-skin would have been awesome.
billysastard on 26 Apr '13 said:
this is the first review i've actually seen for this game. was it under worldwide embargo until today?
AndyR on 26 Apr '13 said:
It released in the US on Tuesday. As far as I know review code was not supplied to them so the silence is mostly the result of reviewers having to go to the shops and buy their own copies.
DemiGoth on 26 Apr '13 said:
This game, much like the 2010 movie has lost it's connection with the original Star Trek IP as Geene made it. Star Trek is NOT about shoot, shoot and shoot some more, but it's a philosophy on how mankind has evolved beyond that. Sadly these days every movie and game made has to have explosions and lots of violence
toaplan on 26 Apr '13 said:
^ I don't care about this game, but I think the movie reboot by JJ Abrams was widely praised and very successful, just like Nolan's Batman reboot and the new Bond films with Craig - both of which contained a lot more action than the previous films. It's always refreshing to see a new take on a well-known classic, more so than seeing someone struggle to imitate previous versions of a classic.
AndyCVG on 26 Apr '13 said:
There seems to be something fishy going on with Star Trek's Metacritic user reviews...
http://youtu.be/ZB7r9m9vYNA
Padua on 26 Apr '13 said:
Love this idea. Also the reboot movie was fantastic.Zachary Quinto is a brilliant Spock. Not so brilliant Hobbit
Actually now wondering if a ME re-skin of The Hobbit would work?
sonic_uk on 26 Apr '13 said:
You can usually tell a crap game from the Embargo's. Nine times out of ten Review Embargo = automatically crap.
I feared this was going to be the case - generic third person shooter with almost nothing remarkable about it whatsoever. So much could have been done with the franchise, with its rich history, but no, they had to make a bland third person cover shooter instead and simply slap the Star Trek name on the box. I'm sure as an actual game its not as bad as the review makes out but the fact is this is Star Trek and as such I expect so much more than a generic shooter so would have marked it down as well for being one. Its funny the review mentions Mass Effect, as I've long thought that's the closest thing to Star Trek we've had so far. By that I don't mean its closer to the source material as there are actual good Star Trek games, but I feel when playing it feels as if you're in a very similar universe doing the kind of things you see in the series/films. Talking to people, making decisions and alliances, visiting new locations and planets, discovering truths about the universe and its inhabitants, as well a good combat sections and a lot of other things. Its Star Trek in spirit as the review says. Why couldn't they make a Trek game like that? They couldn't be bothered that's why.
illage2 on 26 Apr '13 said:
Yeah I kinda wanted a better trek game than this but since I like Star Trek I might give the game a go and see what its like.
Stan_Goodspeed on 26 Apr '13 said:
These are wildly different kinds of reboot. Batman and Bond have always been - to some degree - action-oriented affairs, and on top of that their respective helmers managed to go back to the roots of the characters like no other filmmaker did before. Trek '09 on the other hand abandoned the science-fiction ethos of the series in favor of a Star Wars-like space opera, at the expense of core concepts like Humanism, science and discovery.
With JJ Abrams' movie being a textbook example of a creator catering to the lowest common denominator, it's no big surprise the tie-in game ends up being less Mass Effect and more Gears of War.
MrPirtniw on 26 Apr '13 said:
toaplan on 26 Apr '13 said:
Yeah, but there's already been several multi-season series and ten movies of the old Star Trek, how much more do you need? I liked the "Star Trek: Next Generation" series with the facepalm guy and it still holds up pretty well, but I think it was time for someone to shake up the IP a bit and Abrams did a commendable job. Looking forward to the sequel with Sherlock as the villain and also the upcoming EP 7 of another sci-fi series that he's directing...
Imaduck on 26 Apr '13 said:
Agree with toa. I respect what the original Star Trek did for sci-fi but all this "it was so deep, thoughtful, well acted!". Have you watched it recently ?!
Next Generation stands up much better in my opinion. Pretty sure the lack of action in the original was due to how bad it looked when they did try and budget 
ukdruid on 26 Apr '13 said:
I dont know what exactly qualifies as a Review embargo which i always thought it was just a "dont publish your review until such a date" but according to Angryjoe he had contacted the developers about a review copy before it was released but they said they werent supplying review copies for a week or 2, which meant nobody got one, so all the reviewers had to actually buy a copy to review it, and we all know why.
ukdruid on 26 Apr '13 said:
The fact you called him the facepalm guy saddens me to know end, and so what if it had several series and 10 movies, it was still hugely successful and loved by millions of fans, i would rather Star Trek die off than it become some generic scifi action movie series, because thats not what make Star Trek popular in the first place.
I did enjoy the new movie and am looking forward to Trek 2 but if this is the future of Star Trek just more soulless action, then its just doing a complete disservice to the legacy Roddenberry left behind.
DemiGoth on 27 Apr '13 said:
That's what happens if you (as the creator of an IP) sell your IP to a 3rd party. That 3rd party (Paramount in this case) can do whatever they please with the IP (Star Trek), despite what the creator (Geene) ever intended with the IP.
For this reason I'm glad that the heirs of JRR Tolkien have setup their own company to protect the original JRR Tolkien IP and demand their participation in everything created that's related to the IP. Sometimes I wish Geene didn't sell the Star Trek IP to Paramount.
Off-topic - we'll see the same thing happen soon with Star Trek now that George is no longer the IP holder...
Metatasian on 27 Apr '13 said:
http://www.dmfiat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/picard-facepalm.jpg
paul on 27 Apr '13 said:
richomack360 on 28 Apr '13 said:
At least your version has the better graphics aye ? Because that's what makes a game yeah ?
sonic_uk on 29 Apr '13 said:
Don't bother richomack360, he is obviously a Pc Elitist scumbag - a special kind of cretin that gives normal PC gamers a bad name.
Btw, great to see someone else enjoying the delights of Streets Of Rage Remake - surely one of the best games of all time.
Ali_ on 30 Apr '13 said:
Console owners get the last laugh as we happily trade in the disappointing games while PC owners get told "no" by Game staff.