Star Trek Review Round Up – The wrath of Khan’t play it

Video games. The final frontier. These are the adventures of the SS Lens Flare. It’s ongoing mission: To chart the co-op of the new Star Trek video game. To boldly go where no noob has gone before. DAAAA DA DA DA! DA DA DA DAAAAAA DA DA!

The reviews are out for Star Trek: The Video Game, and it looks like it’s headed at warp speed 9 to bargain bins around the world. Geoff’s busy playing it right now, and as soon as we can get the medical doc working so that we can wake him from his coma, we’ll have a review of our own up.

Here’s what the critics have to say so far:

CVG – 4.5/10

There are some decent ideas in here – like being able to scan the environment, Metroid Prime-style, with the tricorder – but they’re outweighed by flat combat, clunky controls, and uninspiring level design. Strip away the licence and you’re left with an underwhelming shooter punctuated by endless hacking mini-games and woeful space combat.

Eurogamer – 6/10

It all adds up to a game that is never as good as it should be, nor as bad as it often seems. Too much of the game design is fighting against itself, with clever ideas subservient to generic structure, strong writing weighed down by clunky production, rich combat held back by execution that never dares ask too much of the player. It requires patience and forgiveness to find it, but the good stuff is worth the effort.

Polygon – 3/10

Star Trek has picked up practically every bad habit of the past five years of game design. Hinky ledge traversal. An arbitrary upgrade system. Hacking mini-games that evolve from “dull” to “Ambien” through the course of the game. Samey secondary weapons…It’s almost messianic in its willingness to take all of gaming’s sins onto its rickety frame.

Hardcore Gamer Magazine – 1.5/5

It falls completely on its ass in every category. Generic shooting, incredibly poor artificial intelligence and glitchy bug-ridden gameplay amounts to nothing more than a meager attempt to cash in on next month’s film.

Digital Spy – 2/5

Digital Extremes clearly set out to develop a game that is more than a mere licensed cash-in, but Star Trek is a title with big problems, from camera issues to ropey cover and platforming mechanics.
Although the studio set out to please the diehard Trekkies by embracing the source material, they will find far more satisfactory co-op experiences elsewhere.

Pretty harsh reviews overall for the game. Talk about a captain’s log…

Last Updated: April 26, 2013