Star Trek (2013) Review

"A mostly bland shooter set in the Star Trek Universe"

Video Review

Intro

I was at the rental store this week, and my choices for new releases wer either Star Trek or Dead Island: Riptide.  For some reason, after getting there, I was torn between the two.  Which was strange, because going in I had every intention of getting the new zombie-infested island game.  But, Star Trek was simply too alluring.  Not sure why-maybe I let the hype surrounding the upcoming movie cloud my better judgment.  Regardless of the reason I ended up getting Star Trek, I had hopes that it would be more than just another unimagined movie tie-in game.  Odds were against it, seeing as 99% of movie games could and usually should be classified as awful.  To my dismay, this one wasn't in the rare 1% category.   While still being better than a lot of movie games, Star Trek fails to be much more than another uninspired shooter.

Hold On!

Graphics/Presentation/Story

The concepts behind this game are about as creative as its title.  It's a third-person, co-operative, cover-based shooter that attempts to rival Gears of War 3 on how many times a team effort is required to open a door.  Just in case they didn't succeed, they had a back-up plan of trying to topple Mass Effect's record on elevator scenes.

Yay! another elevator scene

Star Trek is bold enough source material to work with, that one expects the different locales to look spectacular.  Instead of being blown away, I was usually dulled by the just OK presentation.  I will admit, though, on occasion I thought it looked pretty, but those thoughts never lasted very long.  Considering the awful transitions from gameplay to cut-scenes and the atrocious animations.  All right. Well, to be fair the animations themselves look fine, but for some reason they have a delayed reaction.  For example, when jumping towards a cliff that you're required to latch onto, the character will bounce into the cliff and start to fall. This would cause me to think I was gonna die, but then after a second the animation would magically start up and he would grab onto the cliff, despite the fact it looked like he teleported to do so.  Another strange, yet slightly amusing, decision was allowing the player to be able to literally run inside of and through their AI companion. I suppose this may have been done to prevent them from bumping into you or getting in your way, although, oddly enough, they didn't decide to do this with bullets.  If you shoot at him, he will block your shots instead of allowing you to shoot through him.  Cut-scenes look decent, except I can't help but want more from them, probably because their quality doesn't match the stellar voice-acting.  I say that because thankfully this game acquired the actual actors/actresses from the movie to voice their respective roles.  Not much point in doing so, though, when the characters on-screen don't do them justice.

See it sort of looks good

From the start, the player is given the option to choose between the careful and calculating Spock, or the brash and arrogant Captain Kirk.  There are only very minor differences between the two, so it doesn't really matter who you choose.  Since the two of them are constantly together throughout the course of the game, there is plenty of great dialogue between them, as expected.

The story takes place between the events of the 2009 Star Trek movie and the upcoming Star Trek Into Darkness film.  After having beaten the game, I can't really say that playing this game enhances the overall story.  In other words, when you watch the new movie I doubt your going to think that playing the game added to the experience.  To be honest, the story told in the game was kind of boring. Of course that was probably mostly because the cinematics weren't much fun to watch.  I didn't focus a lot on the game's audio when I was playing, but there were moments when it had some nice background music.  I'm not much of a Star Trek buff, seeing as I've only seen the 2009 Star Trek, but I'm assuming it was the classic music.

Gameplay/Longevity

Onto the category that makes or breaks a game, the gameplay.  Star Trek has all the right materials to be a great Third-Person Shooter, it's just that the quality of those materials are less than desired.  The developers were very smart about this game's pacing.  It's packed full of platforming, hacking mini-games, flying through space dodge sequences, interesting puzzles, timed events, collectibles; actually it seems like you don't even start shooting people until you're 45 minutes in.  Now, one would think that all that I just mentioned sounds pretty good, and some of it is, but none of it is fully realized.  Once again, I must refer back to quality, and the quality of this entire game is just really average.  It's got everything, except none of it is done well enough.  The dodge sequences, instead of being exciting, intense, and fun like they are in Dead Space, are pretty corny and almost boring.  It doesn't help that the game doesn't give you enough control over your character, and a few times I died without appearing to have hit anything.

Well you know what they say "two heads are better than one"

Shooting mechanics in this game are acceptable. Actually, I was quite fond of the animation the character has when simply running around popping off shots without aiming in with the Left-Trigger.  This game, like most third-person shooting games, insists on wanting you to take cover a lot.  Which would be fine if this game had a cover system that wasn't so lame.  I've seen worse cover systems, but this one had too many issues, and would occasionally screw up my shots.  Something I realized towards the end of my playthrough is if you want cover to be the most effective, just constantly blind-fire.  You will take very little damage, yet you're still fairly accurate.  I didn't realize how advantageous blind-firing was until I was a good 75% done, probably because it doesn't look like it should be, seeing as your character still pops his head up more than he should. Yet, for some reason, he will hardly take damage.  It's something to keep in mind if any of you decide to give this game a go.  Coincidentally, this game, like Army of Two, which I just got done playing, also has a cover-to-cover system.  I loved the one from Devil's Cartel because it was so simple and easy to use.  This one is a bit more of nuisance to activate, and the animation that follows is so lame it's actually kind of laughable.

Gameplay

The control scheme accompanying this game is not as thought-out as I would have liked.  It comes across as a bit clunky, and I'm sure that if further thought would have been put in, they could have come up with something a bit more smooth.  I did quite like how, at all times, I had a pistol-type weapon with infinite ammo, along with one main weapon which could be swapped out with tons of weapons on the map.  Actually, every weapon in this game has its own sort of charm, probably because they offer a nice variety and are unique.  Every weapon has a secondary shot which can be activated with a tap of the Right Bumper.  As expected, the Phaser alternate fire mode is stun, which is surprisingly effective.  Almost any enemy can be stunned and then executed with a press of the X button.  It's kind of weird seeing how enemies can take so many real bullets, yet can be incapacitated with a simple stun execution combo.  One of the animations for Spock is the Vulcan Pinch, which is highly amusing to watch.  Since you are able to stun enemies, there are areas in which stealth can be utilized.  While it is very helpful to attempt to adhere to these opportunities, I often found myself getting spotted and having to shoot my way out.

hmmmm... Skin Condition?

Campaign averages between 6-10 hours to complete a playthrough.  Mine was probably pushing the 10 hour mark since my partner AI companion has some serious issues actually staying alive.  I encountered this more towards the end of the game, when the gunfights got a little more frequent and intense.  He seemed to get into the habit of becoming even more stupid as the game progressed.  I mean, I noticed it in the beginning when he would get stuck up on object and not always do as he was told, but I never got frustrated with him until he started dying on me.  Really, I'd like to say the bad AI both friendly and enemy didn't bother me.  That would be a lie, though, because their stupidity often annoyed me. It might just be the worst AI I've seen this year thus far.

Cheater!

Conclusion

Star Trek (2013) has a lot going for it, so much so that I could have seen it breaking the trend that's associated with movie games, if only it would have been of a higher quality.  Sure, dialogue-wise the game is quality, what with the entire main cast lending their voices.  But, graphically the game fails to be anything more than average. This average-ness rubs off on its gameplay as well, turning it into another run-of-the-mill, cover-based third-person shooter.  It doesn't help anything that the AI is and should be called worthless.  If you're a Star Trek fan, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that this is not a worthy Star Trek game.  On the bright side, though, it could have been a lot worse, and it does offer a bit of fun, especially since there are very few games based in the same universe.  Just do yourself a favor and wait until this game is more around the $20 price tag.  May the Star Trek franchise Live Long and Prosper even if this game Dies Young and Fails.


Pros

+ Movie voice actors/actresses
+ Impressive pacing (diversity)
+ Well-implemented hacking
+ A bit of fun
+ A Star Trek game

Cons

- Overwhelmingly average
- Terrible, terrible AI
-  Bad game-to-cutscene transitions
- Delayed animations
- Texture pop-ins