Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of terrible Star Trek games that have defined my very existence. For every 25th Anniversary, Bridge Commander and Command, there are a dozen Dominion War’s, Hidden Evil’s and New World’s. So, does Star Trek: Resurgence fall into the former and enter an Elite Force, or does it fade away with the likes of whatever Star Trek DAC was on the Xbox 360?
While it does not reach the levels of 25th Anniversary in terms of an adventure games, Star Trek: Resurgence does a good job of making it feel like a series of TNG-era episodes strung together. But it’s this reliance on one of the goofier episodes from season one of TNG (the one where Worf gets beat up multiple times by the Ferengi with laser whips) makes Resurgence feel tied down rather than free to explore the vast wealth of possible stories that the galaxy holds.
Sta Trek: Resurgence is an adventure game in the style of those classic Telltale series games that were all the rage for a couple of years. You move around a given area and then make a number of choices by talking with characters and solving some elementary school level puzzles. How you interact with these characters will help decide how the game plays out and what characters might live and die, or love or hate you. It’s not an intricate system as you only ever have three choices: a good option, a neutral option, and a be an asshole option.
*Unfolds notebook paper* Check 1 for yes and 2 for no.
Other members of the crew will base their perception of you based on these choices and one nice thing is that you won’t be able to please everyone and likewise, not be able to save everyone. The choices, while straightforward, do pull from a number of moral and ethical dilemmas that Star Trek is known for. There were moments where making a split-second decision in a tense situation really did feel hard even though the outcome you pick will always move the story forward regardless.
The story in Resurgence sees you come aboard the U.S.S. Resolute, a starship on the edge of Federation space that has just undergone a refit after an accident took out her First Officer and many of her crew that is never really explained an only touched on twice. The captain is under a great deal of stress because of this and slowly becomes more paranoid about the possibility of losing his command. You must navigate his struggles while trying to be a good First Officer and knowing when to push back against things you might not see eye-to-eye on.
To make things worse is that your ship has been tasked with mediating peace between two races right in the middle of the largest ion storm the sector has ever seen. To make this work well in terms of gameplay episodes are split between two main characters: Commander Jara Rydek which will be running the ship on the bridge and playing diplomat, and Carter Diaz a petty officer down in the lower decks who will be keeping the ship running and handling most of the action bits off-world. The huge change between the pair in terms of their responsibilities is a fun thing that really helps break up the game.
Looks at camera: “Audience, what do you think we should do?”
Where things start to get weird is Resurgence’s reliance on TNG in name only. Because modern Star Trek can’t help itself be Star Wars, the game quickly goes from a really interesting and isolated adventure game about political struggle and a good mystery, and veers hard left into universe ending threat. I hate when Star Trek does this as it loses the core of what makes Star Trek, well, Star Trek. The last thing I need/want is yet another universal threat to all existence, especially one featuring the Tkon Empire, the precursors to all the current species in the quadrant and beyond. By the games midway point, you really lose the intimacy of the story, and it devolves into tons of yelling and firefights against impossible odds.
This is all made all the stranger as the U.S.S. Resolute is a science vessel of the Centaur Class, being essentially an Excelsior saucer section with some warp nacelles strapped to it. It’s not the type of ship equipped to handle universe ending threats from the Tkon, the most powerful race to every exist. She feels out of place and is outgunned in almost every single encounter. I understand this is the point, the underdog against the odds, but the method to the madness doesn’t feel very Star Trek. And as the Federation in the game is shown to be good (no evil Admiral’s here) it’s even stranger that the Resolute is alone in this adventure, or at least not one of the larger Borg-busting ships.
That said, the story is mostly fun and well-written until the Tkon do their thing and it turns into Mass Effect shooty-shooty-bang-bang time. The latter half of the game will end up feeling a bit monotonous and the “I don’t know is this is going to work” feeling loses a lot of its power after the 10th time you save the day by the skin of your teeth. There is a reason the old Star Trek adventure games are so beloved because they take these smaller missions, these isolated adventures that don’t put the whole universe at danger and make them feel personal.
The only screenshot that doesn’t make the game look like a comedy adventure
Graphically Star Trek: Resurgence is all over the place. It’s not a very pretty looking game, although it does have it moments, especially when legacy characters are in a cutscene. Most of the time it looks like the game was simply a mod for The Sims 3. Facial animations don’t feel natural, almost as if they are snapping into the next expression without warning. Models are all pretty basic, and the games idea of Federation aliens onboard the Resolute is to simply take a human model and make pick a random primary color. There are blue humans, red humans, and green humans just wandering around. The only other race is a Bolian who serves on the bridge and your Trill friend.
There are also a number of graphical issues that have hopefully been patched by the time of this review. Characters sometime pop into frame in a given scene, other times scenes tear apart, there is a weird amount of slowdown in sections for a game that doesn’t look to be pushing the graphical boundaries of an PS3, icons stay on-screen well after you’ve completed the task, the resolution is fucked and I played the whole game in a small box in the center of my monitor, and subtitles sometimes don’t show up, and when they do, they don’t match what is being said.
In the end, Star Trek: Resurgence is a decent Trek game that fans of the series will probably enjoy 70% of. The problem lies in Resurgence not being able to get out from under the shadow of better Telltale adventures in the same style and better Star Trek adventures that don’t revolve around saving the universe. It tries to be an episode of TNG dealing with politics, interpersonal relationships, and science, but ends up becoming an episode of Discovery with lots of shooting, skin of your teeth survival, and universal threats that only one person can stop.
Everyone’s preferred PC resolution is 1920×1080 letterboxed into whatever this is…
Star Trek: Resurgence is best when it’s a smaller TNG-era adventure experience, but unfortunately it quickly devolves into a Discovery-era action game with end of the universe stakes.
Final Score:
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