Star Trek The Video Game PC Review

When I first played Star Trek: The Video Game on PC, I genuinely wanted to like it. Digital Extremes had taken Captain Kirk and Spock and built an entire third-person action game around their partnership. On paper, co-op and Star Trek should have fitted together perfectly.

For a while, they almost did.

The campaign is set in the timeline established by the 2009 Star Trek film. Kirk and Spock investigate a crisis involving New Vulcan and eventually face the Gorn, with the story designed to bridge the cinematic adventures of the Enterprise crew.

The game also arrived at an interesting point for the franchise. GLN had covered the April 2013 release date for Star Trek: The Video Game several months earlier, when the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were confirmed for launch.

What should have been a convincing extension of that universe instead became one of the most frustrating games I played that year. There are flashes of a much better Star Trek adventure here, particularly when another player takes control of your partner, but unreliable AI, awkward movement and technical problems repeatedly undermine them.

Kirk and Spock Make Co-op the Core Mechanic

Kirk and Spock are both playable throughout the campaign.

Their partnership affects more than the story. Players help one another through doors and obstacles, flank enemies during firefights and work together during scripted sequences.

The two characters also have different strengths. Kirk leans towards a more direct approach, while Spock’s abilities give him alternative options during certain encounters.

I found the game considerably more enjoyable when playing online with another person. During the first half of the campaign, coordinating with a friend produced some genuine Star Trek moments.

That is when the central idea works.

The problem is that the entire campaign has been designed around two characters, even when only one human is playing.

Companion AI Makes Solo Play Much Worse

Play alone and the second character becomes an AI-controlled companion.

This was one of the biggest problems during my playthrough.

I encountered situations where my partner stood idle during firefights instead of providing useful support. On other occasions, the AI behaved unpredictably or glitched through parts of the environment.

Enemy behaviour could be just as erratic. Some enemies were strangely passive, while others suddenly became aggressive. Physics bugs occasionally sent bodies flying around rooms in ways that clearly were not intended.

These problems mattered because the campaign depends so heavily on cooperation.

A mediocre companion in a conventional third-person shooter is annoying. In a game explicitly built around Kirk and Spock working together, an unreliable partner damages one of its fundamental mechanics.

Online co-op therefore isn’t simply a bonus mode. In my experience, playing with another person was the best way to experience the campaign because it removed one of the game’s most persistent weaknesses.

Cover Shooting and Platforming Lack Polish

Combat is primarily built around third-person shooting and a cover system.

Kirk and Spock use Federation weapons alongside equipment acquired during the campaign, while encounters frequently ask you to move between cover and deal with groups of Gorn.

The ingredients are familiar, but the execution never felt as precise as the games that clearly influenced it.

I found movement between cover sluggish. There were also moments when my character behaved unpredictably around cover, leaving me exposed while shields disappeared under enemy fire.

Platforming creates similar problems.

Characters climb, jump and traverse environmental obstacles throughout the campaign. These sections should break up the shooting, but I found the movement stiff and repetitive.

Mistiming a jump could also mean repeating more of a section than I wanted because of checkpoint placement.

Games such as Mass Effect had already demonstrated how cover-based combat could support a science-fiction adventure, while Uncharted had established a much higher standard for cinematic traversal. Star Trek borrows ideas from both without matching the responsiveness of either.

The Tricorder Adds Exploration but Limited Progression

Not everything revolves around shooting.

The Tricorder allows players to scan characters, enemies and objects throughout the environment. Scanning can reveal information while contributing towards the game’s progression system.

It’s an idea that suits Star Trek extremely well.

Using a Tricorder to investigate an environment feels far more appropriate to the licence than simply firing a phaser at everything that moves. It gives the game an opportunity to represent the scientific and exploratory side of the franchise.

The progression attached to it was less convincing for me.

Scanning earns experience that can be used towards upgrades, but I rarely felt that those improvements transformed the way I approached the campaign. What initially seemed like an interesting incentive to investigate environments gradually became repetitive.

There is a good concept buried here. I just wanted the discoveries and upgrades to matter more.

The Enterprise Is More Convincing Than the Combat

The strongest visual work is often found aboard the USS Enterprise.

I was impressed by the recreation of familiar interiors, particularly the bridge and crew areas. These environments do a much better job of selling the film universe than many of the combat spaces.

Some exterior sequences are also striking. Stepping outside into space gives the game a sense of scale that its corridors and conventional firefights often lack.

Elsewhere, the visual quality is inconsistent.

Character models are recognisable as their film counterparts, but environmental textures can look soft and lighting is uneven. Even in 2013, parts of the game looked dated.

That inconsistency is frustrating because there are clearly artists here who understood the source material.

When Star Trek: The Video Game concentrates on the Enterprise, its characters and the scale of space, it can briefly look like the cinematic adventure it was trying to become.

The Film Cast Gives the Story Authenticity

Presentation is one of the game’s strongest qualities.

Chris Pine returns as Kirk and Zachary Quinto voices Spock. Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho and Anton Yelchin also reprise their roles from the films.

That matters.

Hearing the actual cast immediately gives conversations an authenticity that substitute performers would have struggled to reproduce. Michael Giacchino’s music also helps connect the game with the cinematic version of Star Trek.

The original story was written by Marianne Krawczyk and centres on the Gorn becoming involved in the rebuilding of New Vulcan.

There are moments when the combination of the cast, music and familiar environments makes the game feel like a genuine extension of the films.

Unfortunately, presentation cannot compensate for the mechanical problems surrounding it.

PC Graphics and Performance

My original PC experience was considerably better from a performance perspective than it was from a gameplay perspective. I experienced high frame rates during my playthrough, although I did not record formal benchmark measurements at the time.

Contemporary PC testing supports the broader conclusion that Star Trek: The Video Game was not particularly demanding. DSOGaming reported more than 100fps at 1920×1080 using a GeForce GTX 680 with the available settings maximised. That is independent testing, not a GLN benchmark.

The bigger problem with the PC version is its limited graphics configuration. Resolution, aspect ratio, V-Sync, texture quality and shadow quality are configurable, but there is no conventional in-game anti-aliasing option.

The PC version ran at high frame rates during my original playthrough, but its graphics menu provides relatively few ways to adjust image quality. Contemporary PC testing also demonstrated that the game could render at resolutions substantially above 1080p on suitable hardware:

PC Feature	Star Trek: The Video Game
Resolution	Configurable
Aspect ratio	Configurable
V-Sync	Supported
Texture quality	Configurable
Shadow quality	Configurable
In-game anti-aliasing option	Not available
3840×2160 rendering	Demonstrated in contemporary PC testing
Controller support	Supported
Original PC storage requirement	8 GB free space
GLN historical performance experience	High frame rates during original PC playthrough

The 3840×2160 result should not be confused with a claim that the game was marketed as a native 4K PC release. It demonstrates that the Windows version could be rendered at that resolution when suitable hardware and display configurations were used.

Likewise, I would not retroactively attach an exact frame-rate measurement to my own 2013 experience. I remember the game performing well on PC, but that is different from having benchmark data.

The Story Loses Momentum

The campaign begins much better than it ends.

The initial mystery, New Vulcan setting and arrival of the Gorn give Kirk and Spock a reason to work together beyond simply putting two recognisable characters on screen.

I enjoyed parts of that setup.

By the later chapters, however, the game’s technical problems had worn me down. Bugs and awkward mechanics increasingly got in the way of the adventure, while the story itself lost momentum.

The conclusion was particularly disappointing.

After spending hours following Kirk and Spock across the campaign, I expected considerably more payoff from the final act. Instead, the ending felt abrupt and left me thinking about the game’s problems rather than its story.

That sums up much of Star Trek: The Video Game. There are good ideas throughout it, but too few are given the polish they need.

Elite Force Shows What Is Missing

Having played Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force years earlier, I found it difficult not to compare the two.

Elite Force is obviously from a different generation and approaches the licence differently. What matters is how effectively it made me feel like a member of a Starfleet crew.

Its missions, pacing and environments worked together to create that feeling.

Star Trek: The Video Game occasionally achieves something similar. Walking through the Enterprise, scanning an unfamiliar object or cooperating with another player can briefly capture the same appeal.

Then an AI companion stops behaving properly, a movement system gets in the way or another technical problem breaks the illusion.

That difference is more important to me than the age of either game’s graphics.

A Star Trek game does not simply need phasers, the Enterprise and familiar actors. Its mechanics need to make interacting with that universe enjoyable.

Digital Extremes understood parts of that challenge, but the finished game never brings all of those pieces together.

Later games would continue taking the franchise in very different directions, including the grand-strategy approach of Star Trek: Infinite. The 2013 game remains unusual because it attempted to turn the Kirk and Spock partnership itself into the foundation of a cooperative action game.

That was a worthwhile idea.

Playing with a friend still exposes some of the experience Digital Extremes was aiming for, and the authentic cast, Enterprise environments and occasional space sequences give fans something to appreciate.

Playing alone exposes far more of its weaknesses.

I still see the blueprint of a much better game in Star Trek: The Video Game. Unfortunately, unreliable AI, clumsy traversal, inconsistent combat and an underwhelming final act prevent that version from ever fully emerging.

For a committed Star Trek fan, there is enough here to make one journey through the campaign interesting, particularly with a co-op partner. For everyone else, its strongest ideas are difficult to recommend over the problems surrounding them.

Star Trek: The Video Game Quick Facts

Developer

Digital Extremes

Publisher

Namco Bandai Games

Reviewed platform

Microsoft Windows (PC)

PC Release Date

23 April 2013

Genre

Third-person shooter / action-adventure

Playable protagonists

James T. Kirk and Spock

Primary enemy

Gorn

Game modes

Single-player, two-player online co-op

Engine

Evolution Engine

Controller support

Yes

Current GOG status

GOG Dreamlist entry