I’ve been reading a bunch of Kelvin comics from the latest Star Trek comics Humble Bundle, and they acknowledge the events of this game, which made me keen to experience it. In terms of being a performed piece of media with all the main cast reprising their roles, it’s almost like another movie in this series. A really long, boring movie with a ton of shooting.

First up: the name is the dumbest thing ever. This is an original story that takes place between the first two movies, and yet they didn’t give it a subtitle, which makes you think it’s a four-years-late adaptation of the first reboot film, which itself already defied good taste by eschewing any distinguishing title. The whole thing’s a clusterflop.

With that out of the way, how about the game? All I ever heard was that it was a train wreck, another in a long line of rushed licenced games. I say it’s not that disastrous, it’s a perfectly cromulent game, the shooting is fine. It’s a third-person shooter with some cover and stealth mechanics, it’s got integrated online or local co-op which is nice, although the AI partner is a bit of a dope. Go here, shoot this, scan that. The tricorder is a nice gameplay mechanic with many uses, including scanning things. I wish there were more things to scan though, it didn’t quite reach Metroid Prime heights. The main “problem“ is the frequent glitchy animations which end up being more amusing than anything.

Well no, my main problem with the game is its boring writing. Half the actors do a decent job being their characters, while the other half sound utterly disinterested, and you can’t blame them. Lots of stock filler, and worst of all the major new character, Vulcan captain T’Mar, falls into every trope trap under the sun. Her whole plotline is based around her father, Kirk touches her inappropriately, she falls out of a shuttle crash on top of him, then she’s kidnapped and needs to be rescued. She’s as bad as Carol Marcus in Into Darkness, which is damning.

But the plot is why I played this. It’s fine. It reinterprets the Gorn as being extra-galactic conquerors with highly advanced technology (such a radical alternate take doesn’t really make sense but just go with it (also the Green Lantern crossover comic reintroduces the normal Gorn in the Kelvin timeline, so whatever)). Their skills of genetic manipulation means a bit of variety in enemy types, although the scale of their empire (an entire other galaxy) makes them a threat uncredible in their incredibleness. The story also involves our only significant look at New Vulcan, I appreciated that. There’s not much else to it.

Or indeed to this review, although I have to mention the amusingly lumpy potato faces, which somehwat capture the actors’ likenesses but are actually horrifying homunculi. I got a great camera angle at one point clipping through Spock’s head (of course I played as Spock the whole game, Kirk is no choice at all), showing his fully modeled teeth in a void face, and it was an improvement.