Review - Star Trek: The Game
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This review can be summed up into one sentence; I really wanted to like Star Trek: The Game. As a life-long trekkie, I love when something new based in the Star Trek universe comes out. I have third person Trek games, first person games, encyclopedias, a voice activated omnipedia, trivia games, and turn based strategy games; and most of them I really liked. So when I learned that Namco was making a Star Trek game with the Gorn as the main enemies at last E3, I was excited. To learn that they had the actors from the new series reprising their roles for voices told me that I could at least expect the acting in the game to be good. I had high hopes for this game. Too bad they were misplaced.
Bring a Can of Raid
This is a buggy game. My first noticeable experience with this was on New Vulcan hacking into a door. The door was exceptionally difficult and required Kirk (myself) and Spock (the computer) to hack it at the same time. So I started on my terminal and Spock never came to help. Kirk continually told Spock that he needed help but nothing ever happened and I could not exit the hacking GUI to see what was happening. I finally had to restart the level and try again to get it to work. The next bug was shortly after when I had to cross a pool of electrified water. Once I had the electricity off, Spock walked through the water to where I was and got stuck in an infinite loop walking up a few stairs. Again, I had to restart the game from the last checkpoint to continue. For testing purpose I walked back in the water until Spock followed me and then back on the landing, and again Spock got stuck. Finally in a stealth area I could not drop through a vent. Here is where I quit and called it a day. I actually raged quit over not being able to fall. It may get better later in the game (I doubt it) but this was my limit.
Team Work?
OK, I already complained about the CPU, but let us look a litter deeper at this. The game was made to be played with two people. So much so, that you can set your game to public so that anyone can join in. But, not everyone wants to play with the general public and not everyone has friends that are always available to play. To combat this when you start the game you choose Kirk or Spock and the computer plays the other. But choose carefully and forever hold your peace as this is the character you will play for the rest of the game. What would have been nice is if they had given us a mechanism in the game that allowed you to swap between Spock and Kirk at will. I know this would have stopped some gamers from doing the multiplayer, but at the same time it would have fixed two of my threebug gripes from above.
Mission Successes
So what did they do right in this game? Well they did get the correct actors to voice the characters which allowed a match up with the reboot of Star Trek. They also don't have horrible graphics. In fact I loved the set pieces I was playing in. The first level involved some space walks, the second level was on New Vulcan, third was a space battle, and the forth was on a Federation space station. Weapons were also Trek appropriate. Finally there was the tricorder. The tricorder allowed you to scan the area to unlock audio logs and data on weapons and the environment. The latter, are provided with some commentary from Scotty. More of these would have been entertaining, but not enough to save this game.
Our Own Kobayashi Maru
This game was a great idea. It was truly a valiant try, but given how it came out, this is a no win scenario for this game. If you want a good shooting game in the Star Trek universe I advise you try to find a copy of Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. Just pass on Star Trek The Game. It is not worth your time.