Star Trek: Resurgence Has A Great Story But Stumbles On Gameplay
Star Trek: Resurgence is choiced based narrative game from Tell-tale alumni. The story follows First Officer Jara Rydek and Petty Officer Carter Diaz. It doesn’t require in-depth knowledge of the franchise, though Rydek is half-kobliad and needs frequent medical infusions. Why this is necessary and what exactly happened to her race is only ever briefly mentioned. There’s plenty to keep your mind preoccupied that this lapse in knowledge doesn’t make it as hard as it could’ve been to connect. Players arrive to settle a petty dispute that threatens to erupt into open war between two extremely mismatched adversaries.
The narrative is the strongest point in the game’s favor. It has a fairly intricate system of balancing the ship’s politics through Rydek before seeing the effects of her decisions through Diaz. This balances out more as the real enemy is slowly revealed. And it might be a surprise even to long-time fans since the game draws on a more obscure villain. Resurgence also makes a surprising choice of having an ego-driven captain that’s worried more for his career than crew safety. It adds a nice, but frustrating, bit of underlying tension throughout the game.
The actual gameplay feels tedious. To turn a single handle multiple interaction prompts will appear. As Diaz there will be engineering aspects that all rarely require only one step. This leads to new tutorial pop-ups hours into the game. The camera control could also be tweaked as it tends to fall below the character’s shoulder in tight spaces before awkwardly panning out. Combat is nearly impossible because of this though failure can be mitigated by the “story mode” option if players get stuck on a section.
Resurgence plays like an episode while being a complete product. When switching between characters it uses a familiar font for the title cards. Without that nostalgia there might not be enough to satisfy non-Trekkies. There are a few cameos that are obviously meant to appeal to fans, but otherwise Resurgence does a good job of trying to stand on its own. But clunky flying sections, a confusingly brief stealth section make it hard to enjoy playing. The story’s twists do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to getting players to turn this game back on. If you have a hankering for any and all things Star Trek, pick this up. But it probably won’t convert anyone who isn’t already sold on the franchise.
