Star Trek: Bridge Crew is the Most Trekkie Experience You Can Have (Even Without Tribbles)

I remember hearing once that the best Star Trek movies always keep the action on the ship (excepting, of course, the one with the whales).  I’ve always felt the opposite about Star Trek games.  My favorite games have almost always featured away teams or crew members on missions.  Star Trek: Borg, I suppose kept the action on the ship, but flying the ship wasn’t really the point of the game.  Which makes sense, navigating the Enterprise is not like flying an X-Wing; it takes a lot of coordinated effort from a variety of crew members.  Star Trek: Bridge Crew, however, does a pretty good job capturing that feel and the VR experience is one of the best ones out there.  Even if you have no idea what a Klingon or a Cardassian is, you’ll want to check it out.

The crew does kind of look like puppets. It’s like Star Trek meets Thunderbirds.

Starships require quite a bit of effort to operate and you and your three-person crew (whether they’re living or NPC or some combination) are going to need to work together.  At the outset, the game allows you to pick one of four stations on the bridge.  Tactical and navigation are immediately the most fun.  Tactical allows you to scan ships and other interstellar objects and blast them with torpedoes (when appropriate).  Navigation lets you steer the ship and send your crew hurtling into warp.  Engineering is more of a relaxed station as you divert power to strengthen shields or reduce power to hide your presence.  The captain position allows you to order the others around or simply assume their position when you need to do it yourself.  It takes a little bit of training to get started but once you figure the stations out, you’ll be good to go.

Tactical is the most fun, though navigation is not bad either. Don’t get stuck at engineering.

Gameplay is pretty varied.  I actually never appreciated how many times the various crews of the Enterprise (and the Defiant and Voyager and the Discovery) had to run silent until I played the game.  Charging in with photon torpedoes blazing is not a viable strategy; you’ll need to be patient and cautious in pursuing your objectives.  I found the process exhilarating.  Blasting enemies out of the cosmos is fun, but stealthily teleporting six captives off a Klingon ship and making a break for it is even more exciting.  My favorite aspect of the game is the unlockable Classic Enterprise mode which is just a nightmare of user design.  Console “buttons” are all resemble glowing gemstones with nothing beyond color to distinguish them.  There seems to be little rhyme or reason to format and thank goodness the game provides a pop-up window to tell you what the buttons do.  Hardcore enthusiasts may love it, but I imagine you’ll play this mode for maybe ten minutes before reverting back to normal.

How in the world did they ever manage to fly this thing?

While the game was originally a VR-only title, you can play it without the headset if you want.  You can also play either using the wands to act as your hands, but you can also play using the controller (which is a little more precise but you lose the ability to wave your hands around like crazy).  But I’d recommend using the VR.  The immersiveness of the game makes it one of the best VR experiences out there.  You’ll bound through the five missions pretty quickly (each one in the 45-90 minute range) but the replay (from a different station or with other friends) is pretty good and there are some randomized missions, too.

THE BEST PARTS

The team work and gameplay elements work great, and the sound effects and graphics do a great job providing an immersive Star Trek experience.

THE WORST PARTS

It’s a little brief, as many VR titles tend to be, and it can be a little frustrating how to interpret some vague mission objectives.  Randomized missions are available but they aren’t quite as much fun as the story ones.

OVERALL: BUY IT

This is one of the best Star Trek games and one of the best VR experiences available right now.  Even non-Trekkies oughta check it out.