Star Trek Resurgence Review

‘Mr. Worf (dramatic pause) … FIRE’

Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and PC.

Developed by Dynamic Labs.

Published by Bruner House LLC

RRP: £33.49

Well, that short quote doesn’t exactly sum up this game, it is somewhat useful though as you’ll hopefully see.

The primary ship is the U.S.S. Resolute, which shares its name with either the desk used by multiple Presidents of the United States in the Oval Office or the British ship it was made from, the H.M.S. Resolute.

There have been quite a number of Star Trek video games over the years, This quite noticeably dipped a lot in the years termed (by me) as ‘the really Lost Era’ (‘The Lost Era’ is the term used to refer to the novel series spanning from the launch of the Enterprise B under Captain John Harriman from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to the launch of the Enterprise D under Captain Jean Luc Picard.) the really Lost Era is between the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise in 2005 and the premiere of Star Trek Discovery and it’s 6 spin offs so far in 2017.

This era saw the premiers in 2009, 12 and 16 of the unfairly maligned Kelvin Timeline trilogy, but as the name suggests, the trilogy was a revisiting of Star Trek (1966 - 69), but in a separate timeline which outside of a single nearly off hand reference in Star Trek: Discovery, does not cross over (in cannon) with the Prime timeline.

The uptick in games based on Star Trek since Discovery brought the franchise back has not been too substantial, but it is definitely there. The MMORPG Star Trek Online arguably helped keep the Prime Universe flame alive in the really Lost Era. Indeed, certain elements such as new ship designs are now canonised as they are now in Star Trek Picard. It is here that we find the latest of these, the narrative adventure game Star Trek Resurgence.

My experience with point and click games is limited to The Secret of Monkey Island re masters and a limited number of adventures with Sam and Max. This game is not strictly one of these, but I would say it is directly comparable.

The game is set 2 years after Star Trek Voyager ends in 2378 and roughly when Star Trek Lower Decks begins. However, it is largely (if not wholly) unrelated to both. Instead, this is a wholly new crew of the previously unseen USS Resolute, its crew were never seen before and instead of drawing upon the sheer vast number of species in the last 57 years of Star Trek, we get a protagonist in Commander Jara Rydek. I would not go so far as saying the character is terrible, but they have about as many flaws as the Empire State Building.

Star Trek is known for its wealth of characters, well received and otherwise (Hey Neelix, how are you doing?) and includes cameos from a small number. I’m trying to avoid spoilers to who they are, one could not get the original actor, so Dynamic Labs have gone with a sound alike and the other …

… well, I would be surprised if their one appearance took more than an hour in the dialogue recording booth (minor spoiler), was probably stunt cast for being strongly associated with the franchise decades and has been in one of the shows recently, so was probably readily available.

Let’s just say I hope there was a hefty paycheque.

None of the roles are exactly grating, but the late 24th century is incredibly well trodden ground in Star Trek (26 seasons and 4 films are set there, the 22nd has 4, 23rd has 9 seasons and 9 films, 25th has 2 seasons and 32nd has 3 seasons. All so far), So there is little new for long term fans.

I shall channel my inner U.S.S. Voyager Chief Engineer B’Lenna Torres for this paragraph. I feel the dialogue sections are assembled competently. They can seem to rely on this a bit much HOWEVER, unlike other franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek has always been dialogue heavy and I feel this should be praised. Some of the lip synching is a tad ropey, but only out in a few cases and at most, by a few frames. This could be a calibration issue from my television.

Although if this is the case, so much perfect lip synching is a bit suspicious. Overall, the graphic quality is good, but nothing groundbreaking and in the case of one of the cameos, the graphics creating the character model would look advanced on a PlayStation 2 or even early Xbox 360, but on a game that has just released with a £33 price tag, if it comes under fire, I will do nothing to shield it.

I will be a lot more critical of the third person combat and tricorder sequences. They do not appear very often, but to quote Hugo Drax in Moonraker, they have the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.

The Tricorder reliably chirrups to tell you there is something nearby to scan, although I often would open my tricorder (the model of which is not used by Starfleet by 2380 *pushes glasses back*) and spend quite some time looking for what it wanted to scan in, that gets annoying fairly quickly.

Where the game really wears out its welcome is with the third person Phaser combat. Firstly, in Star Trek Voyager, it is established (perhaps ill advised) that phasers can also fire with a broad beam of fire, so one person can maximise the targets they can hit in the shortest time. This game ignores this completely and it would come in very handy in many instances. Additionally, you can’t do what I feel is fairly standard, lining up a shot when you are in cover. The combat is fairly shallow and with the infinitely re-spawning enemies that just appear in front of you out of thin air, makes these sequences quickly tiresome.

In all, this is not exactly a worthless game. But it has quite a few flaws which stand out with prominence as this has a fairly short run time (around 12 hours or slightly less maximum). The cameos are not exactly with substance and could have been entirely omitted and replaced with other characters effortlessly, making me ask ‘just why?’. There are much better Star Trek games out there, I would personally recommend the Elite Force games and the Armada trilogy.

There is an old joke that the best of the Star Trek films is The Wrath of Khan, and the second best is Galaxy Quest. I would expand on that, there are a few Star Trek games that could be considered the best (it depends on what you are looking for to be fair), but the second has to be Mass Effect. As something of a Star Trek authority, this game firmly scratches a Trek flavoured itch.

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