Video Game / Star Trek: The Video Game

Star Trek: The Video Game is a third-person action-adventure game released in 2013, and is the video game sequel to the 2009 film of the same name, which is part of the rebooted Star Trek franchise.

The game, which takes place between the 2009 film and Star Trek Into Darkness, follows the crew of the Enterprise as they investigate a research station located near a binary star, and discover a terraforming device that has unintentionally resulted in a new enemy threat entering the galaxy through "rips" in space — the Gorn Hegemony, who plan to steal the device and enslave the galaxy for their own means.

A notable feature of the game is its drop-in, drop-out co-operative campaign, which allows players to step into the shoes of Captain James T. Kirk or Spock as they fight across various locales, including the terraformed New Vulcan colony, a Federation Starbase and even the Gorn homeworld itself. In addition, the player can scan various audio logs and collectibles throughout the game world, which will allow the player to upgrade Kirk and Spock's tricorder and personal weapons. Unlike other works featured in the Star Trek Expanded Universe, Paramount has gone on record as saying that the game is canon with the rebooted series.

The game was critically panned at its release for its visuals, glitches, broken co-op, and numerous post launch issues that made it borderline unplayable. Little has been done to change initial impressions since it's come out.

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The game provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: The Gorn Marauder is a shotgun that fires stun grenades, while the Gorn Railer launches miniature drones that attack enemy forces.
• Action Girl: T'Mar.
• Adaptational Villainy: The Gorn of the Prime universe first made contact with the Federation by attacking a colony out of an archaic belief that the system it was in belonged to their territory, and after an altercation with James Kirk, left the Federation alone. The Gorn of the rebooted universe are much deadlier and militaristic, and go on the warpath to try and conquer the Milky Way galaxy via a mind-controlling virus and preemptive attacks on Vulcan and Federation establishments.
• Air Vent Passage Way: Several are found throughout the game, and can be used to bypass enemy ambushes or find alternate routes into areas (which results in Starfleet commendations).
• Alien Blood:
  • T'Mar has noticable green blood stains on her shirt when Kirk rescues her during the final mission.
  • When a Gorn Lieutenant is accidentally brought aboard the Enterprise, Scotty devises a way to track it by using DNA obtained from its orange bloodstains.
• Alien Invasion: By the Gorn, who attack the HELIOS-1 research station, New Vulcan, a Federation Starbase and the Enterprise itself before they're stopped.
• And the Adventure Continues: The post-credits scene has Kirk giving a supplemental report, where he notes that Admiral Pike has ordered them to go to the planet Nibiru to assist with a humanitarian mission.
• Artificial Stupidity: Both the enemies and AI teammates display instances of this. Gorn foot soldiers are slow to react to player movement, and may take cover in spaces that still leave them exposed to weapons fire. Likewise, the AI Kirk has a tendency to run nonstop into walls, while AI Spock can get stuck and refuse to accompany the player until the next checkpoint is reached.
• Attack Its Weak Point: One of the tricorder upgrades allows Kirk or Spock to pinpoint an enemy's weak spots, giving them increased damage as a result.
• Badass Crew: Much like the prior film, most of the crew gets a moment to show off their fortitude or expertise. Kirk notes in the post-credits scene that the entire crew deserves a commendation for their help.
• Bash Brothers: The game is this trope taken to its extreme. Kirk and Spock near-singlehandedly repel invasions on New Vulcan, the Frontier Starbase and the Enterprise itself, and assault the Gorn home planet and mothership. Kirk even notes this in the post-credits scene:
  I'm starting to wonder if there is anything Spock and I can't do when we work together.
• Bottomless Magazines: The standard Starfleet phaser has one, which is only tempered by a heat system that requires Kirk or Spock to stop and let the weapon cool down before firing again.
• Character Shilling: For Kirk. Audio logs throughout the game indicate that even if the crew of the Enterprise still thinks that Kirk is too young for the job of Captain, he has earned their loyalty, and they would follow him into battle no matter what. Not only that, but Kirk has earned one hell of a reputation for his actions in the previous film. The one man who disagrees with this prevailing notion and doesn't listen to Kirk's requests (Commodore Daniels) is shown to be a timid turncoat who almost immediately gets captured and tortured.
• Clothing Damage: Of the non-Fanservice variety. Kirk's shirt becomes progressively more torn and dirtied while he and Spock progress through New Vulcan, although he has time to change his shirt once back onboard the Enterprise, and uses a modified combat suit for the away mission.
• Coming in Hot: The shuttle Sulu is piloting from the Helios-1 research station is forced to make a crash landing on the Enterprise's flight deck after being damaged. It happens again when Sulu is forced to set the away shuttle down after it's blown out of the sky by the Gorn while on the other side of the Rip.
• Commander Contrarian: Commodore Daniels is this (and a Smug Snake). He mocks Kirk when he's first seen aboard the Starbase, refuses Spock's request to go to the communication bay to call for help, abandons his post and commandeers a shuttle right before Kirk and Spock escape, and tries to pin the blame for everything that happened with the Gorn on Kirk just before he dies. Kirk is justified when he says, "I never liked that guy."
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Commodore Daniels. When Kirk and Spock finds him, instead of being grateful, Daniels tries to chew out Kirk for bringing the Gorn to the Milky Way galaxy, and ends up being killed (while still strapped to the table) during the ensuing firefight between Kirk/Spock and the Gorn troops.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Kirk references Spock-Prime's statements about Kirk and Spock's friendship in the post-credits scene.
  • One of the collectible audio logs has Sulu offering to teach Kirk how to fence, echoing their encounter with Nero's henchmen on the mining drill from the 2009 film.
• Damsel in Distress: T'Mar, who has to be rescued by Kirk and Spock several times during the game. First, she has to tracked down after she goes off radio communication on New Vulcan, then has to be rescued from the Frontier Starbase (which fails, and she's captured), then rescued again from the Gorn stronghold (which fails again) and finally rescued by Kirk from the Gorn mothership.
• Downloadable Content: The "Elite Officer Pack", which is bundled with pre-ordered editions of the game, includes five separate minipacks:
  • Academy Pack (Kirk's Starfleet Academy skin, Spock's dress uniform skin, Academy phaser)
  • Brawler Pack (Kirk's leather jacket skin, Spock's Vulcan Science Academy skin)
  • Kelvin Pack (USS Kelvin uniform skins, Kelvin hand phaser)
  • Kobayashi Maru Pack (various skins)
  • Stealth Pack (stealth outfits, Starfleet Type IV sniper rifle and extra ammo)
• Escort Mission: Several, mostly revolving around Spock or Kirk carrying someone to a medical bay.
• Everyone Went to School Together: T'Mar happens to be an old classmate of Spock's, and Kirk makes note of this during their first conversation on the research station.
• Explosions in Space: Frequently. Notably occurs during the escape from HELIOS-1 in the opening chapter.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Heavily with the Ai-controlled teammate. It's possible to get your AI teammate left behind in situations that result in certain death (gliding to the Gorn stronghold, for example), but they will always pop back up at the next checkpoint.
• Genre Roulette: One of the most common complaints about the game, brought up in numerous reviews, is that it stretches itself too thin by trying to cover too many different gameplay styles, and not always in ways that compliment each other. It's nominally an "action adventure" game but most of it is just a cover-based shooter - an experience broken too frequently by shallowly designed stealth or platforming sections, a hacking minigame, starship combat, glidesuit routes, etc. The general opinion seems to be that if the game had just focused on any one of the above the end result would've been more effective.
• Giant Mook: The Gorn henchmen, who tower over the rest of the foot soldiers and carry Ravager energy weapons.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Vulcans, Enterprise crew members and Spock when they've been infected with the Gorn virus.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Surok's death at the hands of the Gorn.
• Handsome Lech: Kirk once again gets this treatment. Even Spock makes note of this when T'Mar reveals she's Vulcan.
  Kirk: I like this one.
  Spock: There are few that you do not.
• Hellish Copter: The away team shuttle that's sent to rescue T'Mar and the Helios Device is shot down as they enter the atmosphere of the Gorn home planet.
• How We Got Here: The game starts with Kirk and Spock involved in a firefight against the Gorn, then Spock purposefully walking towards Kirk and the duo punching each other. The game then flashes back two days to show how the characters got to that point, and it is revealed that Spock was infected with the Gorn virus (which caused him to lose control and attack Kirk).
• If I Do Not Return: Kirk says this to Sulu and Chekhov (ordering them to leave if the away team isn't back in six hours just before the away team departs for the Gorn home planet on the other side of the Rip.
• Involuntary Battle to the Death: The Gorn Commander attempts to force Kirk and Spock into this, via infecting Spock with their toxin and letting them duel it out in an arena. Fortunately, McCoy administers an antidote to Spock before the latter can kill Kirk.
• Late to the Tragedy: While in the Gorn stronghold, Kirk and Spock discover that Commodore Daniels and the Starfleet officers who fled from the Starbase during the attack were eventually captured and executed by the Gorn, with one of the dead officers leaving behind an Apocalyptic Log that curses out Daniels.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Lampshaded in the first mission. Kirk decides to go on the away mission to HELIOS-1 (despite Spock advising that the mission could be done just as easily by Scotty and a bunch of ensigns) because he wants a change of pace, and allays Spock's concerns by pointing out that there's no reason to wait around for Starfleet to send support ships.
• Military Maverick: Kirk, of course. Explicitly noted by Commodore Daniels, who notes that Kirk has a history of not playing by the rules.
• Mission Control: Surok, and later T'Mar, fulfill this role for the majority of the game.
• My God, What Have I Done?: T'Mar gets this when she realizes that her noble goal of terraforming a new settlement for the Vulcan people has resulted in the Gorn invading the galaxy and her father dying at the hands of the Gorn as a result. Kirk does note that she realized that it wasn't her fault (and that Daniels was to blame) in the post-credits scene.
• My Greatest Failure: T'Mar blames herself for the Helios device's unintended consequence of ripping open rifts in space, which leads to the Gorn invading and her father being captured and killed by them.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The achievement for having the Gorn melee Kirk during the first boss battle is "Arena".
  • There are a handful of Tribbles onboard the Enterprise while Kirk and Spock are searching for the escaped Gorn henchman.
  • The "Gorn Planet" chapter has subsections labeled after various episodes of the original series, including "Errand of Mercy", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Apple".
• Neck Lift: Kirk gets one when the Gorn lifts him up this way just before the first boss battle.
• Not So Stoic:
  • T'Mar seems to display emotion when faced with her father's safety, and is flustered when she falls from the shuttlecraft onto Kirk after the trio escape the research station.
  • The infected Vulcans have this, as they are still trying to maintain their calm demeanor while afflicted with the Gorn pathogen.
  • Even Spock gets in on this: when he sees T'Mar being kidnapped by the Gorn, he bullrushes and tackles their lead henchman just as he's being beamed back up to the Enterprise.
  • If the first scientist you meet on Helios-1 is anything to go by, apparently Vulcans treat falling to their deaths the same way humans do.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Played With: The In Medias Res opening shows Spock purposely walking towards Kirk with his fists clenched, just before attacking him. A later mission reveals this to not be the case - Spock was infected with the Gorn virus, and couldn't control his logical actions.
• Orbital Bombardment: Kirk orders one on a massive group of Gorn foot soldiers when he, Spock and T'Mar are pinned down and unable to beam out from New Vulcan.
• Overranked Soldier: Discussed. Audio logs can be found detailing certain characters' (Commodore Daniels, Uhura, Sulu) feelings about Kirk receiving command of the Enterprise so early in his career, but most concede that he still finds a way to win no matter what, and the crew trusts him implicitly.
• Plot Armor: Played straight when Kirk and Spock are captured by the Gorn Commander, who refuses to kill them outright because "death is too good for these two". Instead, he pits them against a monster inside a gladatorial ring, which they easily defeat and (after a confrontation with an infected Spock) escape from.
• Pre-Order Bonus: The aforementioned "Elite Officer Pack".
• Ramming Always Works: When a group of Gorn take Uhura captive on the bridge, and threaten to execute her unless Kirk transfers control of the Enterprise to them, Kirk responds by autopiloting the shuttle into the bridge, which has the net effect of sucking the enemies into space.
• Recycled Title: Although the full title is Star Trek: The Video Game, it appears on the box as simply Star Trek, the same name as the franchise, first series and the 2009 film.
• Red Shirt:
  • The first red shirt seen in the game (onboard the Frontier Starbase) appears for roughly 3 seconds before a Gorn turret blasts him with concentrated laser fire.
  • Many more are killed over the course of the game with some of the audio logs lampshading their inevitable fates.
  • However, the very first metaphorical Red Shirt you meet is a Vulcan scientist on the Helios-1 station. Five seconds after you meet him, he falls to his death.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Gorn.
• Shout-Out: Several of the achievement names are references to popular works, including:
  • "Are You Not Entertained?", given for beating your co-op partner in the "Trials" chapter.
  • "Technologic", for successfully finishing 20 mini-games during the story.
• Shown Their Work: Much like Aliens: Colonial Marines (another movie game tie-in, also released in 2013), the development team used production sketches and design documents from the 2009 film to depict areas of the Enterprise that weren't shown on-screen, including the entirety of the Engineering deck, the Captain's quarters, the Jeffries tubes and the crew quarters.
• Slave Race: The Lymax, a sentient race of aliens who were enslaved and forced to work on the Gorn home planet.
• Small Universe After All: The Form homeworld on the other side of the rip is in another galaxy.
• The Stinger: The post-credits scene has the damaged Enterprise appear back on the other side of the Rip, with Kirk giving a supplemental log praising his crew, explaining what T'Mar intends to do with the Helios Device, and their next mission.
• The Stoic: Spock, of course, as well as T'Mar, Surok and the rest of the non-infected Vulcans encountered on the HELIOS-1 research station.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Helios Device appears to be a thinly-veiled copy of the Genesis Device, with many similarities between them. They are both built by female scientists (Carol Marcus/T'Mar), who were using them to terraform a barren world (Regula/New Vulcan), but the technology is stolen by an enemy force (Khan Noonian Singh/the Gorn) and intended to be used to conquer the galaxy. The only difference is that (much like the 2009 film) the Helios Device is created much earlier than intended - as a result of the destruction of Vulcan - and the resulting terraforming of New Vulcan was successful (unlike the eventual fate of Regula).
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Kirk uses a variant of this to suck a group of Gorn soldiers out into space from the Enterprise's bridge (via crashing a shuttle into it), which almost results in Uhura's death until the safety shutters activate.
• Took a Level in Badass: Played With. McCoy decides to accompany the away team down to the planet on the other side of the Rip because he wants to help in some way, and even offers to accompany Kirk and Spock during their assault on the Gorn stronghold, but gets cold feet once he realizes the attack plan is to paraglide into the enemy encampment. Later on, when Spock has Kirk at his mercy in the Gorn arena, McCoy gets a Big Damn Heroes moment where he uses a sniper rifle - while on the shuttle as it's hovering in mid-air - to fire a dose of the antitode into Spock's neck.
• Torture Always Works: Deconstructed. The Gorn kidnap Surok for information, but he literally knows nothing at all, because his daughter was the chief designer and overseer of the Helios Device. The Gorn kill him anyway, and kidnap T'Mar, but don't get a chance to torture her before Kirk and Spock rescue her.
• Series Continuity Error: Despite this suppose to be first contact with the Gorn, Star Trek Into Darkness has McCoy mention having a semi-peaceful encounter with them a year before.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Although it isn't explicitly required, you can earn Starfleet commendations for taking down infected Vulcans and Enterprise crewmen non-fatally, with several characters thanking you for your forethought while talking to them later on. Although...
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: ...you can also kill anyone who's infected (even though they can be neutralized safely) and ignore Starfleet officers trapped by fires on Frontier Starbase.
• Virtual Paper Doll: The "Elite Officer Pack" DLC allows players to change Kirk and Spock's clothing to several different outfits, including Kirk's leather jacket from the 2009 film, Spock's Vulcan Academy outfit, the training garb they wore during the Kobayashi Maru simulation and their Starfleet Academy jumpsuits.
• Wall Bonking: The AI partners have a bad habit of running nonstop into walls, sometimes requiring players to restart the game in order to proceed.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: The Gorn have enslaved several weaker alien races, and forced them to mine on what appears to be their homeworld on the other side of the Rip.

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