The days of multiple Star Trek shows airing may be something for the old days, but a game for console and PC brings it back with a lot more to work with. Is Star Trek Resurgence a game for more than just Trek fans?
For a moment there, Star Trek was having its time in the sun, returning seemingly from a world where no regular Trek show was running. In the 90s, there was Picard, Sisko, and Janeway, before the era of Trek became a little muddled and lost its way.
If you know you know, and following Voyager and First Contact, the world basically needed to wait for Alex Kurtzman to join forces with J.J. Abrams and reboot the whole thing. Not every rebooted title was great, but it rekindled interest in the franchise, and allowed other shows to follow.
That’s a bit of a checkered history for Trek, and it’s much the same for interactive fiction for the franchise.
In fact, Star Trek games have a pretty obvious history of hits and misses in the styles of games, and then also how fun they are. Sadly, they are almost always never as solid as a Star Wars game, a franchise that pumps out solid entries every few years. By comparison, most of the Trek games this writer has played have been garbage.
There a few good choices — A Final Unity from the old PC days and Elite Force a little later, to name a few — but Trek has never quite had the reputation for great games that Wars has achieved.
There have been lots of duds. So many duds. More than this reviewer would like to remember. You only need to glance at his CD and DVD collection to find them. Generations anyone, or even an interactive movie with the Borg?
Star Trek: Resurgence is not that game. It’s better. It’s more fun. It’s an evolution on an interactive narrative, and barring some bugs and occasional scripting quirks, it’s also a lot of fun.
How does Star Trek Resurgence play?
If you’ve ever wanted to jump into a movie — and let’s face it, who hasn’t wanted to jump into a movie? — you’ve probably played a video game to get some of that experience.
For many of us, games are the literal definition of an interactive movie, allowing us to step inside the shoes of a character and a narrative, and experiencing life from that point of view.
Star Trek has dabbled with this time and time again, but few titles have really delivered the life of a Starfleet Officer and the narrative shows like The Next Generation and Voyager (this writer’s favourite) have portrayed. They’ve always more been a little piecemeal: parts of the job, like the action or the planning, but never the full experience.
Star Trek Resurgence tries to solve that while letting you watch the narrative play out, a combination of the development team’s experience building modern choose your own adventures from the days of Telltale Games, plus some changes to evolve the narrative’s approach and make it more like a fully interactive game. Kinda sorta.
You’ll follow the story of Commander Jara Rydek, a transfer on her way to the starship Resolute after the Captain decided to get someone for first officer rather than promote within. That action creates division, and you quickly understand that you need to connect with the crew by trusting them.
At the same time, you’ll also play another character, Petty Officer Carter Diaz, an engineer with a Trill friend Edsilar, who works with you at times, as well.
It’s playing both sides of a Star Trek episode: the officers in charge and the officers doing most of the work, and Resurgence lets you give both a go.
As a first officer, you’ll go on away missions of diplomacy and exploration, while also making executive decisions on the bridge of the ship. Meanwhile Carter’s missions will see you opening panels, punching details in, tweaking transporter paths, and so on.
You know, all the engineering bits and bobs the show alludes to and that Lower Decks hints at, but never lets you properly experience because it’s not real life.
The developers have clearly had a lot of fun with what the experience of being in an episode could be, and essentially let you try every aspect on. There are aliens you need to talk to, aliens you need to shoot phasers at, and aliens that will probably die, as well.
Dialogue is a key part, as you’d expect from a Star Trek game.
Resurgence is doing its best to emulate the feeling of being in a Star Trek episode, and each section of the game you play even runs the show’s font and titles like you might expect from the 90s shows.
With each segment comes a new section, and that familiar typography letting you know this part is a new section. And there are a lot of sections.
But the structure is just like a show, with segments typically interchanging between the main characters and the plot: the USS Resolute has been called to a planet to negotiate diplomacy between two races, only to discover that an alien civilisation from thousands of years ago has taken over the bodies of the aliens and officers, and is hell bent on restoring what it believes is the way it should be and taking over the galaxy once again.
A few guest stars pop up, including Spock and Captain Riker, as well as a recreation of a character from an episode of The Next Generation back in 1987, “The Last Outpost”.
In many ways, Star Trek Resurgence is a sequel to “The Last Outpost”, making it a continuation of an original story as opposed to something entirely new to begin with. Credit to the developers for doing the research needed to pull that off.
This is a classic Trek like vibe like it used to be. There’s nothing wrong with new Trek, either; shows like Discovery, Picard, and Strange New Worlds are great fun, but Resurgence is more like what TNG, DS9, and Voyager were all about.
Is it fun?
And it is surprisingly fun, if not much longer than this reviewer expected. While he expected the story to run for a few hours, he was surprised when it hit 10 and started to wind up. That’s roughly ten times longer than an episode of the show, and with a reasonable amount of replay-ability given the multiple endings and decision trees.
Granted, you’ll have to sit through some of the same conversations again, as the developers never seemed to program in a “skip” button. But some will change, and that’s kind of exciting, too.
Resurgence is a combination of dialogue and mini-games, the latter of which tries to recreate aspects of the show. Opening sections up, using the tools of engineering, setting up systems, tweaking things, being an engineer, and even flying a ship.
You’ll also get to walk around on away missions, or even the ship, complete with an extra level where you can just tour the USS Resolute at your own leisure. The bridge, engineering, and so on. It’s like that tour of the Enterprise you always wanted.
It’s fun, though at times the mini-games can be grinding. Each comes with a set of instructions, and it can feel like you’re just going through the motions to get to the next interesting block of choose-your-own-adventure dialogue.
Some are definitely better than others, punctuated by quick time events where you have to press a couple of buttons very quickly. Failure to do so either restarts the level, or forces you to sit through a section in black and white, as if it was both a bug and a penalty.
Weirdly, the monochromatic treatment gives Trek a film noir vibe, and it feels less like a penalty and more an aesthetic treatment. It’s a very Captain Proton vibe from Voyager, and doesn’t seem like a penalty, even if it clearly is.
Dying as a character also means you’ll probably need to restart sections, even though some characters can and will die as a result of the actions you take. It’s a little bit of a mixed narrative where you can also decide to come back from death and play in “Story Mode”, which basically means for that little section, you can’t die, and the story will keep going.
If anything, Story Mode seems a point by the developers that it knows the mini-games aren’t always fun, and you should just, you know, keep going. They get it as much as we do.
This is handy, too, because there are some parts of the game that just don’t play nicely. While Resurgence is available on console and PC, playing it on the Steam Deck, the game was mostly stable, though some sections clearly weren’t tweaked for the hardware.
Too many graphics on screen at once means frame rate can crawl, and you’ll struggle to make it through quick time events, forcing you to reach for Story Mode once again.
Is it for fans or for everyone?
While the use of a Star Trek property clearly makes Resurgence focused on Trekkers and Trekkies most of all, regular gamers can dig Resurgence, as well.
There’s a story that evolves, some good solid storytelling and acting, and even some neat evolutions of the style of game Telltale made famous, which makes sense because the developer Bruner House is helmed by the former CEO and founder of Telltale.
It should then come as no surprise that Resurgence plays a lot like a Telltale game, but with a little more in the tank. There’s some action and adventure beyond the scripted storytelling.
And yes, fans of sci-fi and Trek in general will get the most out of Resurgence, but there’s a fun game for everyone. More fun than this reviewer had playing the recent Tron title, another sci-fi franchise with a solid following.
Final thoughts (TLDR)
We’re a little late to this party having just decided to get back into game reviewing, thanks to the Steam Deck’s arrival in our lives. That alone means we can do bits and pieces of gaming putting the girls to bed, rather than simply doomscrolling another platform and social network.
Resurgence is a great diversion, providing an episodic narrative that’s both easy to get into and rewarding. If you’ve always wanted to see what life inside Star Trek is like, this is a solid approach. It’s not perfect, but it’s easy to get into.
I for one am looking forward to a sequel. At least I now know how to play most of the mini games. Maybe I can put that information to good use later on. Recommended.
