[Review] Star Trek Bridge Crew

[Lunix I]

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is a first-person virtual reality game, released on 30 May 2017. It is set in the alternate reality, after the events of 2009's Star Trek, where you play as the crew of the USS Aegis (NX-1787) (β), a ship tasked with finding a homeworld for the survivors of Vulcan.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is virtual reality action-adventure video game developed by Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew takes place in the timeline established in the 2009 Star Trek film and sees the Starfleet ship USS Aegis searching for a new homeworld for the Vulcans after the destruction of their planet. The ship heads for a region of space called 'The Trench', which is being occupied by Klingons.

The game is played through four roles: captain, tactical officer, engineer and helm officer. The captain is the only role to which mission objectives are directly displayed; they are responsible for communicating these to the crew and issuing orders to accomplish them. The helm officer controls the ship's course and travel between regions through impulse or warp drive.

The tactical officer is in charge of sensors and weapons. The engineer manages the ship's power distribution and supervises repairs. Each role except the captain may be occupied by a human player or by an NPC indirectly controlled by the captain. Both story and randomly generated missions exist.

Fans will also appreciate the ability to create their own avatar, choosing between the human or vulcan race. The avatar editor is very complete while remaining intuitive, and also allows to choose the appearance, sex, age or the skin color of his character before embarking on the adventure in multiplayer.

In December 2017, the game developers modified the game so that it can be played without a virtual-reality headset. Prior to that, the game could only be played using a headset.

It was developed by Red Storm Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. Series actors Karl Urban, LeVar Burton and Jeri Ryan appeared at E3 2016 to promote the game during Ubisoft's press conference. A new trailer was showcased at CES 2017. The game was released on May 30, 2017.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew received "generally positive" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Eurogamer ranked it 42nd on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017", while GamesRadar+ ranked it 25th on their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017.

The players are commissioned by the Federation to take command of the U.S.S Aegis spacecraft, whose mission is to explore The Trench, an unknown sector of the universe, in the hope of discovering a habitable planet for the Vulcan people. This mysterious area contains many wonders of breathtaking beauty, but also houses disturbing anomalies and dangerous dangers. In addition, the Klingon Empire is also determined to conquer The Trench.

Designed for 4 players, Star Trek: Bridge Crew offers users to each occupy a key position on the ship's crew: captain, pilot, tactician and chief engineer. The four crew members sit side by side in the aircraft, and must cooperate to carry out their missions. The captain is the one in the lead role. He receives the objectives, and communicates them to his teammates. He transmits the instructions, coordinates the crew, and also chooses which angle of view to display on the main screen of the spacecraft.