Star Trek - Preview

Star Trek has a new video game to add to the plethora of them out in the world. This one is based in the universe made by J.J. Abrams, and just like they rekindled fan excitement in the movie world for Star Trek it looks like it may do that in the video world as well. This game is a third person shooter placed between the first movie and second movie coming out next year. In the game you play asynchronously as either Captain James T. Kirk or Spock (or both in Co-op mode).

The demo we were shown was in 3D and had the Enterprise responding to a distress call from New Vulcan. For those of you that don't remember, Vulcan was destroyed in the most recent Star Trek movie forcing the rest of the Vulcan race to resettle elsewhere. Once you arrive Kirk, in his expected brashness, heads down to the planet with Spock when communications fail instead of sending down an away team (heaven forbid he follow protocol, but that would be no fun). Once planet side they how the  characters interact with each other, and how they work together. Kirk is the damage dealer based on his different weaponry. More likely to jump in the fire without looking he looks to be able to take more damage and deal more damage at the same time. Spock on the other hand is more observant. He uses his tricorder to scan for clues and weaknesses in enemies. They way this is shown is Kirk taking point while Spock takes tricorder reading of the dead Vulcans they come across, noting that many of them are afflicted with an unknown toxin in their blood. Then when they enter a fire fight and need to take down one of the foes without killing them Spock employes a vulcan nerve pince that knocks him out cold. The final thing they show is Spock scanning a tough enemy for a weakness, which then showed as a glowing red section on the foe that faded after a few moments. The overall dynamic between the two makes it feel like the movie did, which is a very good thing.

During the demo a new foe was introduced as well. A race that, in this timeline, is as of yet unknown. They introduce the Gorn. There were five different types of Gorn in this demo, a variety of smaller ones that weilded energy rifles and a big mofo that just charged you with brute force and the ability to take a lot of damage from federation weaponry. During the battles they show Kirk and Spock falling through a roof and landing is sepearate sections of the room, and then having to cover each other from range while they are attacked by additional Gorn. Eventuall they work back towards each other and run outside with an army on their heals. The demo ended shortly after Kirk called down a photon torpedo strike from the Enterprise by first calling up to orbiting ship and painting a target on the ground. The overall demo looked great and played smoothly.

Star Trek looks like it could be the next great single player Star Trek game. We can look forward to seeing it in 2013 (so we hope, you know how release dates work). Now if only we could get merge this games ground combat with Star Trek Online's space combat we could have the perfect Star Trek Game.