Now that Star Trek Into Darkness has been released in theaters this weekend in North America, now is the best time to reflect on the shoddy Star Trek The Video Game that came out last month.
I saw Star Trek Into Darkness last week (it came out over a week ago in New Zealand) and the movie is great. The same cannot be said about the video game. The video game is not based on the movie as it has an original storyline, but all of the cast members from the film lend their likeness and voices. This is the only good thing about the game. Everything else about it is horrible.
The disappointing thing about Star Trek The Video Game is that it has been in development for three years. This is because both the game and movie were set to be released in 2012. Paramount Studios chose to release the movie in 2013 instead as it didn’t want to compete with the likes of The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises. In hindsight, the developers actually had a full year to polish up the game but they failed to capitalize on this.
You’ve probably read all of the bad reviews that the game has been receiving over the past few weeks, but I thought now was the best time to point out many of the bad experiences I had playing the game. This is not a review, it’s more about me letting out my frustrations on what could be the worst game of 2013.
Bad Graphics
This is 2013 and games aren’t supposed to look this bad. I mean Gears of War back in 2006 looked way better than this game. Also Naughty Dog proves that the PS3 is capable of delivering great looking games too.
Star Trek The Video Game on the other hand looks more like a PS2 video game. Not to mention the environments look bland and the character models’ animations look stiff and awkward. The game as a whole reminded me of the PS2/Xbox 360 version of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I played that game back in 2005 and expect games to look much better considering this is 2013!
Glitches
There are quite a few glitches I encountered during this game, but one of them made me laugh and cry at the same time. It was a famous moment where a door locked me inside and I couldn’t get out. I playing the game on single-player mode and Spock was outside doing nothing. I thought I could tell him to re-open the door for me but he didn’t respond to my command. I decided to restart from checkpoint to see if that would help. To my amazement, the checkpoint restarted me and Spock into the same locked door and then we were both stuck inside! I was laughing about how bad this glitch was, but cried when I realized I had to restart the level again to fix this problem…
Bad Level Layout
Sometimes the waypoint tells you to go a certain direction, but it leads you elsewhere. I remember going taking ages looking for the next route to take only to notice that the waypoint required me to travel below the floor. The waypoint should have directed me to the door that allowed me to climb underneath. How was I supposed to know to open a door that allowed me to travel underground? Not to mention there was a horrible stage that required me to swim. The level was dark and the swimming physics were sluggish. Captain Kirk drowned lots of times due to this horrendous level.
Shoddy Gameplay
I will keep this brief but Star Trek The Video Game is just a shoddy version of Uncharted or Gears of War. It plays like your usual third-person shooter game as it has a cover system and the game has some elements of jumping and puzzle solving. Still, everything feels stiff and jerky for some reason. It’s not a smooth and satisfying shooting experience that’s for sure.
This is just some of the reasons why Star Trek The Video Game is terrible. If you are going to watch Star Trek Into Darkness this weekend, have fun as the movie is excellent. Just make sure that you don’t play this dreadful excuse of a video game. You’ll be better off using the money to pay for movie snacks and/or drinks instead.
