Star Trek- Bridge Crew’s USS Aegis is one you’ll wish to be in, especially if you’re a Trek fan. The game delivers to you an experience of manning a Federation starship where three of your friends join you. You’ll need to mess around things a bit to grasp the way things work fully, and when you do, you may notice the lack of depth in the game.
There is a great attention to detail that the game offers in the visuals, from the viewscreen to the consoles and the captain’s chair. So that it is video game-friendly, some liberties are taken with the Aegis’ control, and it doesn’t look exactly like the Trek movies you see, especially the modern ones. Still, at that, it perfectly mimics the Original Series Enterprise bridge. The disappointing thing, however, is that you cannot move around the bridge or ship but you’re just fixed in either of the four positions on your seat.
The virtual touch screen the game sports is a great addition, and you can play the game and have an excellent experience with them. It’s also possible to play with a gamepad, but you’ll not have that significant experience of reaching out and touching Star Trek, unlike when you use Oculus Touch, PlayStation Move, or Vive controllers. One thing that isn’t so right that can be frustrating is the captain’s chair buttons, which are too close together that you can call a Red alert when trying to respond to a hail.
So, what’s the game about, and how do your friends play the game? Each player takes the various roles that are available on the bridge of the Aegis and the Enterprise. A captain is there who is responsible for giving orders and can also perform some small functions; Engineering, who supplies power resources for various parts of the vessels and makes repairs; Tactical, who is responsible for scanning and shooting things; and Helm, who does the steering of the ship and Warps at appropriate times.
Some tasks or roles appear to be more interesting than the others, but each of the positions has missions that are full of action. Sometimes, Engineering will be needed while Helm and Tactical take the background stage. You could here “Just keep us alive” repeatedly from the captain, and you have to do just that.
Technically, Bridge Crew can be played with less than four players. The game can also be played alone, but that wasn’t the intention of the developer. The developer of the game sets the game in such a way that to get the best experience involves you playing with three other players where you learn to cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate with your teammates. You can liken Bridge Crew to an episode of Star Trek when all the four spots are filled.
When you play with less than three players, computer-controlled officers will take up the place of a human. You don’t have to worry, they are up to the task so long there’s a human captain to monitor them. The captain has at his disposal, a pop-up menu of orders, which are connected to the station you’re monitoring, to instruct and direct the different AI officers. If you are to play alone, the game switches to a menu-driven tactics game, where your task is to give instructions to the correct station when things are hot.
For the Star Trek fans, this is definitely a game that will spur up their love for the movie again. With the VR capabilities in the game, you immerse yourself in a virtual world where it’s you in charge of those ships.
