Also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Windows As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I yearn for the days 20+ years ago when Star Trek games were plentiful and amazing. We've seen a renaissance of Star Trek shows in recent years, but the games haven't caught up yet. Hopefully that's changing, though, as Star Trek: Resurgence's May 2023 release brought a heavily cinematic and story-driven experience that FEELS like you're playing a season of Star Trek. The story revolves around the ship's new first officer, Commander Jera Rydek, and engineer Petty Officer Carter Diaz board the Centaur class science vessel USS Resolute. Rydek struggles to slip into her new role after the unpopular decision to bring in a transfer as the new first officer after the tragic death of the previous first officer instead of promoting from within the crew. Meanwhile, Diaz is just content to be a dipshit grease monkey and fix the engines while his Vulcan department head glowers at him. Taking place after Star Trek: Nemesis - specifically after William Riker becomes captain of the USS Titan but before the Hobus supernova - the story revolves around a diplomatic mission to escort a Federation ambassador to negotiations where they will serve as a neutral intermediary between the Hotari, a relatively primitive spacefaring race, and the Alydians, a race roughly on par with the Federation that has kept the Hotari in imperial bondage for centuries. If you've ever played a TellTale game like Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones, then you pretty much know what you're getting here as Dramatic Labs has created a game that plays just like that. The focus is all narrative with some action thrown in for good measure. As is the case with TellTale's games, character choice is paramount, and your choices will have a direct impact on how the story plays out. Sometimes these choices are fairly minor, and sometimes they're major turning points; a lot of the time, you don't know what impact your choices will have until after you've made it. It's not as polished as TellTale's games with some visual glitches, one instance of a bug that forced me to reload my game, and a couple of bugged achievements; but for what, from what I can tell, is the studio's first release, it's pretty darn good. It makes sense, also, that it's so similar to TellTale's games as the studio is composed of former TellTale talent. The game's flaws are entirely technical as the writing and acting are simply superb, and fortunately, those flaws are minor. Visually, the game looks last gen and feels like a backward compatibility game even running natively on Series X and PS5, but that's really not that important; Star Trek has always been about the stories and character choices, not the flashiest and most state-of-the-art visual effects. The story is broken in three acts each of which is composed of a number of chapters that have title displays exactly like you'd see in an episode of The Next Generation, Voyager, or Deep Space Nine. That helps more than you'd think to set the tone and feel as essentially a playable season of Star Trek. Star Trek: Resurgence is not a perfect game, and those wanting an action packed space adventure will be disappointed, but for those wanting a genuine Star Trek experience, then look no further. This honestly feels more authentically Star Trek in my opinion than the legendary games of twenty years past like Elite Force and Bridge Commander. The element of choice really makes you feel like you're an active participant in the events rather than an outside observer. That said, the lack of checkpoints during chapters is irksome, and for a native Series X game rather than Xbox One game played via backwards compatibility, I would have hoped for some more impressive visuals. Still, the game looks completely fine, and outside of a few hiccups, runs well. I hope that Paramount allows Design Labs to keep the license because this is exactly the type of Star Trek game I want to see more of, and I'm sure that with future opportunities to make games, the team will only improve and deliver even better narrative experiences. My Rating - B |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
May 2024
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