REVIEW - Star Trek: Resurgence is the premium narrative Trek experience we’ve been waiting for
Set a course for jolliness.
By Jonathan Garrett
26/06/23
Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Review Code provided by Dramatic Labs.
Remodulate your shields and divert power to the impulse reactor; Star Trek: Resurgence is a successful “choose your dialogue” jaunt through a beloved era of Trek history that establishes new continuity with obvious reverence for what came before. It evokes the best of Telltale with a visual style afforded by a logical implementation of Unreal. Yes it’s a tad janky in places; there’s graphical glitches, and the facial animation can at times be wonky, but it’s well written, choices are meaningful, and for this old timey Trek fan, a video game dream come true.
The split narrative between the two lead characters runs the Trek trope gamut between “the pressures of command” right through to “the lower decks”, and much like the best of Telltale, it will go out of its way to inform you of the impact of your choices. Supporting characters regularly reflect on how they feel about you, with a mercifully clean interface that lets you check in on their current perception of your actions.
Dialogue trees are more nuanced than the more binary “good and bad” forks in the road presented by games of a similar type, with plenty of opportunity to either role play the character based on their apparent in game personality, or steer their conversations based on your own Machiavellian agenda. Some of the critical command decisions you’ll be faced with tie in nicely with the evolution of your character relationships and provide appropriately higher stakes at key moments (none of which we’ll spoil here, of course).
Even if you don’t know your isolinear spanners from your phase decouplers, this is a well paced sci-fi story that just so happens to be set in an immediately familiar universe (in this case, post Star Trek: Nemesis). That being said, this has so clearly been aimed at Trek fans, and those nostalgic for Activision’s licensed golden era, that Resurgence can hold its head high against classics like Elite Force and Armada.
You’ll likely find the most traditionally “game-like” sequences the least effective; aiming with a phaser is awkward at best, and some of the mini game quick button prompts seem unnecessarily convoluted. Despite those occasional hiccups, Star Trek: Resurgence is a winner. It’s one of the best Trek games of the last ten years, and hopefully the beginning of more faithful licensed efforts from a studio that’s just getting started.
This would be a most prudent purchase, NUMBA ONE.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
YEAH!
Star Trek: Resurgence delivers a narratively satisfying “Next Generation-era” adventure that will make Trekkies set their phasers to fun.
BUT
You’ll have to be willing to overlook some technical shortcomings and weird controls.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
