‘Star Trek’ boldly warp-speeds into a brick wall
By ROBERT WORKMAN | GamerHub.tv (MCT)
STAR TREK
Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Genres: Action-adventure, third-person shooter
Publishers: Namco Bandai Games and Paramount Pictures
ESRB Rating: T, for Teen
When a publisher announces a game that ties in with a forthcoming movie, it can either go one of two ways. Either it’s a glorious affair that presents a worthwhile experience that matches up to, or surpasses, the film (like, say, Disney’s “Aladdin” on the Sega Genesis or the more recent “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) or it’s a piece of crud that doesn’t even measure up to its source content (like the unfortunate “Aliens: Colonial Marines”). Sadly, “Star Trek: The Video Game” leads more toward the latter, a game that had some interesting ambitions, but failed to live up to them, thanks to cruddy development.
In the game, you guide Captain Kirk and his right-hand Vulcan Spock, as portrayed in the 2009 “Star Trek” film directed by J.J. Abrams, as they battle the Gorn, an evil race of lizard beings that want nothing more than primitive-style domination over the universe. Thanks to a horribly guarded Helios device, they just might be able to complete the job, unless these two can save the day. The fact that only Kirk and Spock have any strength in the game, compared to, say, most of the other able captains who are laid waste to with ease, really doesn’t say a lot about the power of Starfleet. (Case in point: When a commander of a star base is all too eager to abandon it in the heat of battle.)
But there are problems abound when the gameplay begins, mostly with bugs. “Star Trek” is riddled with them, and it gets to the point of absolute frustration. During one sequence, we’re asked to jump across a gap, where a bridge used to be. It should be simple enough to leap from one end to the other, right? Well, the first seven times, we fell to our death. The eighth, we managed to clear the gap by grabbing the ledge, then, when trying to hoist ourselves up, fell to our death anyway. After 10 minutes, we finally cleared the section, still grating our teeth over the experience.
That’s not all. The AI behavior is viciously bad in the game. The Gorn are all too easy to kill, mimicking the same duck and shoot patterns, even if you’re approaching them head on. Others are smarter than that — even more so than our co-op partner. During our first run-in with a Gorn soldier, we played as Kirk while Spock was played via AI, and he was all too easily defeated within seconds by one run-over. And every time we tried to run over to revive him, the Gorn barreled us over, practically forcing us to restart and do it again.
And that’s another thing — whose bright idea was it to make a revive mini-game? It’s a light-up circle where you have to hit four light-up icons in a row to get a full 100 percent revival. Otherwise, you only get a partial one, which doesn’t make too much of a difference anyway, given the strength of our partner. We could’ve easily done without this, mainly because when we do have to revive them, it’s in the heat of battle — and leaves us wide open to damage. Frustrating.
As for the gameplay itself, it’s flawed. The duck-and-shoot mechanics are similar to Mass Effect, and have some promise early on, but there are times your shooting can be inaccurate or, worse yet, your cover becomes susceptible to damage while the Gorn’s remains perfectly intact. It’s lacking true balance here — and the fact you don’t have a reliable ally to lean on in single player certainly doesn’t make matters better. The puzzles are frustrating as well, as you can’t always get a good layout of where things are, and when you’ve got a time limit, it’s not good. Even the tri-corder fails to provide you an idea of passage to your destination — a lot of good that hunk of junk is.
There are some space segments to go along with the action, but they’re mostly forgettable. When we took part in a shoot-out with the Enterprise, it felt half-hearted at best, with only so many shots from blasters and photons to use. And the lock-on system is completely broken, because we hit our intended targets only about a quarter of the time. Set phasers to “useless,” right?
I expected more from “Star Trek,” probably because of my excitement for the upcoming “Into Darkness” sequel (due in a couple of weeks) and the way I loved the original 2009 film, lens flares and all. But publisher Namco Bandai failed to capitalize on a good thing, thanks to shoddy bugs that may never be fixed, bad level design that mixes far too often with the very few good ones, and iffy co-op that never lives up to its innovative potential. If you’re a true “Trek” fan, proceed with caution and rent it from Redbox. Otherwise, skip it. Making a purchase would be, as Spock puts it, “illogical.”
