Add a game review here. If you have recently completed a game write us a review or post any good reviews you come across. Star Trek video game review http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...ews/10021647/Star-Trek-video-game-review.html A third-person cover shooter may not be the best use of Star Trekâs enormous universe and lore, but it is --to borrow a phrase-- the most logical. Star Trek: Into Darkness is one of the yearâs most blockbusting movies. Its video game tie-in needs to be accessible and bombastic, appealing to the largest possible audience. Itâs not romantic, but itâs business. Spock would have approved. Kirk would have punched it. Probably. As tantalising a Mass Effect style RPG or an Elite inspired space-faring explore-em-up might be, a breezy, cinematic co-op shooter fits the mould. Like it or not, thereâs no reason such a game couldnât be good. Great, even. Star Trek is neither. Developer Digital Extremes, those of the excellent Darkness II, have toiled on this tie-in for three years. Set sometime between the JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot and the upcoming Into Darkness, it has Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) battling the Gorn, an intelligent race of lizard-men determined to turn the galaxyâs species into day-glo zombie slaves. Our intrepid Enterprise crew take offense to this idea, and Kirk and Spock go out to kick tail and trade witty banter. The entire game is focussed on co-op, with one player taking control of each character in multiplayer, or choosing their favourite Starfleet hunk when playing alone, with the AI drafted in to take control of their partner. The two chracters are distressingly similar in practice, despite early promises of an âasynchronous co-opâ, but teamwork is given a gentle nudge by offering up XP for the gameâs modest character upgrade system by working together. For example, if one player stuns a bad guy with their phaser, and their partner knocks them out, bonus points are awarded. Itâs a neat enough idea, and itâs not the only one. Weaponry is fizzy with alternative fire modes for a selection of exotic alien ordnance, setting your phasers to stun and using the Vulcan nerve grip gives stealth a reasonable sense of satisfaction and the odd breaks from the basic gameplay have their own appeal. A controlled free-fall through a crumbling space station, an all-too-brief spell at the guns of the Enterprise, a gun that can be set to teleport your comrade to specially marked platforms. You get the sense that Digital Extremes had a vision for this game. Nothing disruptive, but a mind to raise Star Trek above the usual licensed action fare. But the reality doesnât always match the vision, and rarely is the discrepancy between the two as startling as this. The problem is that the good ideas are drafted in from, other, better games and donât fit in with the repetitive, sludgy corridor blasting that makes up the majority of the game. Movement is sticky and inelegant, particularly when it comes to the woeful Uncharted-style platforming, and successfully finding cover is erratic. The skill upgrades that serve the neat XP grind have barely any effect at all, as if it was made for a more complex and varied game. Remnants of a grander vision. Which leads us to Star Trekâs other major problem. It isnât finished. It isnât even close. There are a litany of bugs that blight the entire game. Waypoints called up on your Tricorder scanner often fail to activate, occasionally context-sensitive actions to open doors or press buttons simply donât work, and sometimes you will lose control of your character entirely as he starts wandering off somewhere else. Reloads due to the game breaking are not uncommon, particularly when playing with the AI as a companion. At one point I had to reload a checkpoint because Kirk had gotten a mission-essential power source stuck on his gun. After the reload, the battery was stuck in the floor beneath Kirk, floating around the ground as if he was riding it like a skateboard. I had to go back to the start of the level. Another instance almost had me quitting the game entirely, a seemingly impossible fight against a Gorn lieutenant that I couldnât fathom how to beat. A later retry revealed I couldnât beat it before because it had glitched, the Lieutenantâs escape kicking in far earlier than it should have. I beat it easily this time... because the great idiot jammed up on some steel steps. This is all very frustrating, but the poor state of Star Trek goes beyond irritating --if mildly amusing-- glitches. Thereâs a glaring lack of polish throughout, which affects the very fundamentals of the game. Worse, the AI for friend and foe goes completely haywire. Gorn will wander right up to you and not notice youâre there or become stuck on scenery. Meanwhile the pathfinding of an AI companion is appalling, with your partner occasionally just staying behind, or running on the spot into a wall. Several occasions while playing Star Trek, I was ready to call it a write-off, whether itâs the bugs, the terrible signposting or the fact itâs just plain dull. But then the game surprises with a section thatâs not half-bad. A sky-dive onto a Gorn planet, followed by sniping cloaked sentries, sneaking around them by climbing rock-faces. This is enjoyable stuff. Itâs not brilliant by any means, plagued as it is by the gameâs pervasive design flaws. But Star Trek undulates wildly from ropy and diverting to a quivering, unplayable mess. Glimpses of what might have been flashing past the windows of boring corridors that house idiotic enemies and set the stage for monotonous busywork. And it is so infuriating. Not because Star Trek is ever hard, but because it could have been good. And itâs not. You can tell, in its best and worst moments, that this was a labour of love gone bad. The plot is jolly enough and, while the stilted sound mix makes it sound like Pine and Quinto often werenât in the same room, the dialogue between the two heroes gets over the odd-couple relationship that drives the original series and the Abrams reboot. Itâs tempting to mark this one down as another tie-in squashed under the pressure of arriving in time with the movie. A product knocked out quick and dirty in order to line up on the shelves next to lunch-boxes and action figures. But with a decent development time and the brief flashes of inspiration Star Trek shows, it feels as if that is just one part of a more fundamental issue in the gameâs development. Maybe one day weâll get the Star Trek game we want and its universe deserves. But this certainly isnât it. I doubt itâs the game Digital Extremes envisaged when it set to work either. And thatâs a real shame.
