Star Trek is not Star Wars, this is beyond doubt. The franchise created fifty years ago by Gene Roddenberry has always lived a reputation studded with multiple “high”
phases often followed by thunderous falls of interest. And so if on the one hand the Disney saga is now back in the limelight with a new series of annual film episodes, accompanied by a couple of respectable videogame productions, for Star Trek we are all waiting for the new TV series produced by Netflix, Discovery ,
which should not make us regret the best times of Kirk and Picard. In the field of video games, however, we must admit that the brand has not fared very well in the last decade.Excluding a handful of unsuccessful attempts on mobile platforms, the disputed Star Trek of Digital Extremes a handful of years ago and the survivor Star Trek Online,
which still enjoys a discrete base fan to say it all, is really struggling to think of some really exciting title. It is also, but not only for these reasons, that we have always looked with interest at Ubisoft’s attempt to return to exploit this brand by adding, among other things, the variable of virtual reality and after a handful of opportunities to try the game in a controlled environment,
taking advantage of the various trade fairs, it is finally time to get our hands on the final version.Armed with PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR and lots of hopes, we then wore our tight-fitting, colorful suits to dress as the crew of a Starfleet ship. Follow us to find out how it went.
PLAYSTATION TROPHIES 4
Star Trek: Bridge Crew offers 33 trophies. The golden four require rather complex conditions to be met like the rescue of 120 people in the Kobayashi Maru challenge or the successful outcome of a battle with at least three opposing ships simultaneously.
There is also a trophy that requires the completion of the campaign and of each type of Ongoing Voyages mission. The thirteen silver trophies require other specific conditions to be met, generally simpler and the same applies to the fifteen bronze that can often be unlocked even only by performing the most basic tasks of each position. There is also the classic platinum trophy.
CAPTAIN’S DIARY
The game concept of Star Trek: Bridge Crew is really basic and immediate. We are on board the USS Aegis (codename NX-1787) and at the controls of the four main roles of the crew, we will have to face a narrative campaign and an endless series of procedural missions. The cornerstone of the gaming experience is virtual reality, since the title can only be played with a viewer;
on console this means that the title is available on PlayStation 4, while on PC we can move at our discretion from Oculus Rift to HTC Vive.The adventure is set in an unspecified period of the Star Trek continuity, and we feel that we are moderately close to the Next Generation era. Our mission is to explore and trace an unknown area of space
called The Trench in search of a livable planet where to transport the now decimated Vulcan population. We are far beyond the neutral zone and the main threat is represented by the Klingons, who are also interested in setting up in this area, probably to build an outpost of the empire.
Concretely we will be in front of a campaign composed of a prologue, with a challenge of Kobayashi Maru impossible to complete and repeatable as many times as you want, and from five missions to incremental release.Let us be clear that we are not dealing with a particularly developed narrative or with engaging intermezzo sequences.
The missions have a simple incipit told aloud and act as a pretext to get us familiar with the commands of the ship and with the situations in which we can come across and join the short tutorial composed mostly of texts and indications for specific tasks.
The real heart of the game is in fact represented by the Ongoing Voyages mode. This is a fairly classic system of procedural missions that can be carried out indefinitely and which belong to four specific strands.In fact, we find defense missions, where we will deploy in defense of some ships of Starfleet, recovery, where we will be required to intercept and capture a rescue klingon fugitive, with the aim of recovering as many survivors as possible from a catastrophe of research, the simplest and “light” missions since we will only be required to scan planets and anomalies.
Unlike the campaign, this mode can also be tackled on board the original Enterprise that will allow us not only to have access to a particularly faithful and fascinating reproduction of the Kirk ship’s command bridge, but also to significantly increase the difficulty of the
