[gameinfo title=”Game Info” game_name=”Star Trek” developers=”Digital Extremes” publishers=”Namco Bandai / Paramount Pictures” platforms=”PS3/360/PC” genres=”Third Person Action Adventure” release_date=”April 26th” version_played=”PS3″]
Star Trek is a third-person action-adventure Star Trek video game, developed by Digital Extremes. The story sees The USS Enterprise receives a distress call from a space station harvesting the power of a binary star. There is too much interference to beam the crew aboard, so Captain James T. Kirk and Spock take a shuttle to rescue the crew. They encounter T’Mar, a childhood friend of Spock, who explains they were gathering energy to power the Helios device, which would speed up the terraforming of New Vulcan, but unwittingly opened a Rip in space. Beaming to New Vulcan, Kirk and Spock meet with T’Mar’s father Surok, who explains the station’s power from the base was lost after they were attacked by creatures – who call themselves the Gorn. The story does a good job of setting up the second movie.
I find the voice acting and music in Star Trek to be one of it’s only redeeming qualities. The voices are authentic to the movie and the dialogue can be quite charming to Star Trek fans. This helps Star Trek at least semi appeal to the Trekkies out there.
The visuals seemed to be slapped together. They look quite dated and there is quite a good amount of screen tearing throughout the game. Whilst you were never going to be playing this game for it’s graphic, there is a ton of glitches that just can’t be forgiven in 2013. You will experience things like your player falling through the level and having to restart certain chapters for absolutely no reason.
Star Trek sees you playing as either Kirk or Spock for the entire adventure. Whilst it was good to have the choice, you won’t experience much gameplay differences between the two characters. There are 6 major environments which feature a total of more than thirty mission segments.
The shooting mechanic is acceptable. You are equipped with a phaser, a secondary weapon and a few type of grenades. Rolling in and out of cover works quite well and never felt like it was a struggle to get into cover. You receive XP through a variety of ways which can be spent on multiple weapon and Tricorder upgrades. I must admit that whilst I was surprised to see that you could upgrade your weapons, they didn’t really have much effect on the gameplay as a whole.
You can play in single player or split screen co-op. Whilst playing the single player mode, the AI will take control of whichever main character you didn’t choose to player as. The AI never really got in my way which was something for the game to be praised for as it could’ve easily gone the opposite way.
The bits in between that break the gunfights were easily my favourite The stealth portions were a breath of fresh air and the segments that featured either winged jumpsuits or small thrusters were a great chance of pace. The campaign as a whole is repetitive but will appeal to Startrek fans.
Star Trek definitely fails to live up the hype that surrounded the game on announcement. It unfortunately fails to break the cookie cutter movie-game mould. The authenticity of the stories and the character means that it will appeal to the biggest Star Trek fans however don’t expect to have a great time otherwise.
