For those starved of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek continuation for four years, the idea of a game featuring a canonical story and the movies’ main cast must seem rather appealing.
Yet this tie-in misfires on most crucial fronts. The co-op shooter design doesn’t suit the licence, the cutscenes are eyebrow-raising and it’s a thoroughly boring addition to an already overpopulated genre.
In an age where most publishers have given up on licensing movies and TV shows for games simply because they’ve mostly been nonsense and consumers aren’t having it anymore, Star Trek is admittedly a relatively expensive-feeling product.
Artistically, Digital Extremes has captured the universe well, with some locations looking surprisingly sharp and detailed, even if they’re sometimes running on empty when it comes to set piece ideas.
Star Trek’s credibility should come from the way the property is used, then, and the presence of the entire ensemble cast as well as a Bad Robot-endorsed story does provide a limited legitimacy. With a tale involving New Vulcan and the Gorn (we’ll get to them), you opt to trot around as either Kirk or Spock, accompanied by the other as either a human or stupid AI partner in an unrelentingly dull shootout to the finish (there’s a few easy puzzles and awful platforming bits, as well).
In all fairness, Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine do sound like they give a crap in their delivery of the average script, but the dreadful animation undermines the feat of securing such high-level voiceover talent.
The characters walk and talk like Thunderbirds puppets with heads moulded out of compressed bread, their mouths yammering up and down as these Hollywood A-listers spill out characterless one-liners, as if a teenager is sat in the background spamming an internet soundboard after too many skittles.
The Gorn seem like a poor choice for Abrams’ newly established mythos, too, and here they run around like men actually dressed in lizard suits, which is either authentic or embarrassing, depending on how you regard Trek lore.
Either way, they’re a moronic species, providing no threat as they tit about while you wrangle with the uninteresting choice of whether to stun or kill them. Controlling the Enterprise marks an embarrassing and confusing low of the whole affair, too.
The latest Star Trek game is a meek way to experience the potential of Abrams’ reinterpretation of the franchise, then.
Whether you think Into Darkness is worth the wait or not, this will only sour your perception of the world it portrays.
