So I Tried… Star Trek

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Star Trek.

What I thought it was

A movie tie-in handling events to do with that AAA Hollywood blockbuster version of Star Trek, released in 2009. Being a fan of the series, and not so much the movie, I didn’t give this the time of day. Of course, time heals all wounds, and games get bundled everywhere, so when the Humble Bundle went to Bandai Namco, I picked up the bunch of them. Not for this title, but I figured I might as well get around to it -- and I have! Though it’s interesting to note that it’s no longer on sale on Steam...

Stupid co-op stuff...

What it actually is

A third person co-op game set in the Kelvin timeline Star Trek universe. The JJ Abrams movies, for non-Trek fans. It’s set after the events of the first movie, when the crew of the Enterprise encounter a space station in trouble. It’s up to you as Kirk or Spock (with the AI or another player controlling the other) to get in there and see what’s going on. Everything is very faithful to the source material, even down to the score, and the shaking of the space-based camera during cutscenes. The actors reprise their roles, and the characters look exactly like them.

No doubt this can be resolved diplomatically...

Will I keep playing

I don’t know… I only played for half an hour, but the co-op stuff is bugging me as a primarily single player gamer. You need to solve puzzles alongside the AI -- which can be infuriating. There’s even been plot inconsistencies already… Upon hearing the planet name “New Vulcan”, both Spock and Kirk are surprised, as they had not heard of it -- not a minute later Uhura tries to hail the planet, and Chekov plots a course to it, just from hearing the name! It’s not in the phone book! The GPS hasn’t been updated yet! Admittedly, this further marks it as being loyal to the movies...

Lens flare, argh!