Into Darkness – Star Trek The Video Game Review

I’m going to make a point of this, I am not a Trekkie. I’ve only watched Star Trek when ever there was nothing on TV but I will admit the movies are good. I did enjoy the J.J. Abrams and I’m excited to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. I’m aware of the characters, some of the creatures and races, but that the extent of my knowledge.

This actually makes me one of the best people to do a review the Star Trek game, based off the J.J. Abrams’ remake. The reason why is simple, I have no expectations, I have no worry for continuations, and I can focus just on the information that is given to me in the game. After all that is what we’re trying to review here.

Star Trek takes place a few years after the events of the movie, a distress beacon is called from a space station that is generating power from two stars which causes Captain Kirk and Spock (played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto) to investigate. This sets in motion the events that transpire during the game as the pair find that the Vulcan’s are using the power of the stars to generate a device called Helios which will help them terraform a new planet for them to live in. The power of the Helios device causes the Gorn (who people will remember for the cheesy fight scene in the original series of Shatner fighting a giant lizard man,) to rip out of a tear in space and attack the Vulcan.

If your picking the game up for the story, your not getting a whole lot here, it’s short and sweet but has not lasting appeal, you’ll blast through the story and forget everything that has happened in it fairly quick. While the game is a co-operative shooter allowing you to play as Kirk and Spock, the story doesn’t change if you select the different characters.

The game is primary a co-operative third person, cover based shooter like Gears of War. After selecting Kirk or Spock at the beginning of the game, you will take on the Gorn and stop them from using the Helios Device against the Federation. Kirk and Spock each have their own unique moves, with Kirk being more of a brawler and Spock focused on stealth, they are each given a Phaser with the option to kill or stun. While the stun ability is mainly focused on freezing the opponent long enough for you to do a melee attack, it is largely useless against the Gorn enemies.

Kirk and Spock do have the ability to equip other Federation and Gorn weapons, all of which have a secondary attack that will either protect you or damage your opponents. Primary fire of these weapons are similar to those that you will see in basic shooters like shotguns and machine guns. Grenades that I’ve seen in the game are mainly focused on stunning the opponents and do minimal damage.

During the game, you will earn experience points for collecting data on enemies, weapons and recorders to get a better back ground on the situation. The Experience points can upgrade your Phasers as well as special combat tactics that will allow you to disable weapons and grenades, boost shields or improve hacking of the Gorn mechanical weapons like turrets and sentry guns. You gain more experience if you do extra bonus missions that appear in the level, most of the time they stay in the idea of playing the level with Stealth intentions and using the stun attacks.

The game isn’t without it’s glitches though, with some of them being so bad that it forces you to restart the checkpoint. Most of which is due to unresponsive commands to get into cover or switch cover and preform special commands like boosting and forcing specific doors open. Another issues that occurs is when you play the game in single player mode, where it suffers from what I like to call “Sheva Alomar” Syndrome, where the second player AI will run into the line of fire and refuse to heal you when you fall. That being said, the game becomes much better when you play with a friend either on the couch or online.

The game does have the likeness of the actors from the movie and they also provide their voice over. This is a great benefit tot he game having the likes of Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho and Anton Yelchin joining Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. The Gorn have received a much needed update to their character design and actually looks menacing.

Star Trek the Video game is not a bad game, if you have a partner you can the game is playable and a ton of fun, however as a single player game, the AI makes the second player completely useless and kills most of the fun for the title. With a little more polish the game could have been amazing but there is way to many glitches for someone willing to play the game in Single Player mode to enjoy.