Video Game Review: Star Trek: Resurgence
Star Trek is my jam and I absolutely love virtually everything made for the property, which is impressive since it was something my dad watched when he was a kid. However, I’m going to be honest that Star Trek games are usually hit or miss. Some are fantastic like Bridge Commander and Elite Force while others are just terrible with some zig zagging (Star Trek Online started terrible then became great).
I think the best format for Star Trek games are the adventure game format. I remember playing some of the classic adventure game Treks and think they really are the ones who capture the feeling of the setting the most. I think this may be the best of Trek games as it blows those games out of the water. Not necessarily the most fun Trek game but a fun game that is most faithful to the concept of what it means to be Star Trek.
The premise is you are two characters on the USS Resolute, a starship that recently suffered a massive disaster that killed a third of the crew. You first play Jara Rydek, a half-alien commander who takes over the position of first officer and serves as a newcomer to the ship's unique politics. You also play an engineer named Carter Diaz, a lower decker who is incredibly chipper despite having survived the horrific events before the game. Oh, and he’s also in love with the Chief of Security, who may or may not love him back.
Like my favorite Trek spin-off fiction, this is work best appreciated by longtime fans of the franchise. There’s references to “The Last Outpost”, the use of Spock (with a passable imitation of his voice by Piotr Michael), Riker, and other bits that are most enjoyable if you understand why Ensign Sili hates the Trill joining. However, if you don’t remember any of the Star Trek franchise’s extreme minutia, first of all, what are you doing buying this game, and second of all, it’s still pretty fun. I think. I mean, I think Lower Decks could use more references.
The game functions very much like an extremely well-done Telltale Game back from its glory days before they began shoving way too many adaptations out the door. That’s in part because this is mostly by ex-Telltale employees. As such, a lot of this will be familiar to those already familiar with the style of game. You will make a lot of dialogue choices, big dramatic “moral” choices that will mostly not change anything, and a bunch of quicktime events passing for action.
Basically, if you want the experience of serving on a Starfleet vessel then this is probably as close as you're going to get with original characters. Well, no, the first Mass Effect is probably still close with Commander Shepard, but this is pretty dang good by itself. It's not a great game but it's a very entertaining game and I think it deserved to do a lot better than it seems to have done due to exclusivity deals along with a lack of proper promotion.
If I do have a criticism, it's one of those games that was released with a lot of jank and graphical glitches that have taken a year to get better. It's fine on computers and consoles both now but this is something that probably should have been released on Steam to begin with and given a few more months of polish. I also recommend if you do get this on consoles, you get the current gen versions rather than the previous ones. It'll run much-much better. Duh.
In conclusion, Star Trek: Resurgence is a good game. It's not a great game. It's a bit too slow paced and there's still some jank in front of the game features. Moving the left stick up to activate the transporter isn't gameplay, that's just busywork. There's unfortunately a lot of busy work in this game. However, I love the characters and there's some genuinely hard choices in this game and characters that will die based on your choices. I suggest this is definitely worth a trade in at Gamestop or a sale purchase. Full price only if you can remember the T’Kon Empire.
