Star Trek: Resurgence Review

Stardate something-or-other, it begins, just like any Star Trek thing should. In Star Trek Resurgence, the new adventure from Dramatic Labs (a studio formed from the now-resurrected ashes of Telltale Games) you play as Jara Rydek, the newly appointed half-Kobliad First Officer of the U.S.S. Resolute, and engineer Carter Diaz, one of the crew tasked with restoring the ship to its former glory. As with The Walking Dead and the rest of Telltale's output, you're in charge of making crucial decisions that determine the direction of the narrative, which, whether or not you're a fan of the iconic sci-fi series, proves to be hugely engaging.

Dramatic Labs' crack at the universe dreamt up by Gene Roddenberry takes the well-worn Telltale adventure game template, to tell an intriguing tale of feuding alien races and troubles aboard your ship amid a powerful ion storm, the origins of which are a mystery. As Rydek, you'll engage in diplomacy alongside Captain Solano and Ambassador Spock (yes, the Spock), acting as mediator, attempting to broker peace between the Alydian and the Hotari civilisations, as they teeter on the brink of all-out war. Naturally, things go awry, and before long you're having to make big calls that impact your mission, your crew, and the fate of the galaxy.

What follows is a nicely paced chunk of space opera, set shortly after the events of Star Trek: The Next Generation, wherein a fight over a deuridium mine escalates into something far more sinister, involving the dangerous return of a long-lost empire. While Rydek finds herself on the frontline of a brewing conflict, Diaz tinkers in the lower decks, flicking console switches, repairing shuttles, and activating various mechanisms, before being unavoidably swept up in the overarching drama. And you can tell it's really dramatic, due to all of the overly animated eyebrows. Seriously, they seldom stop moving.

Beyond eyebrow-raising dialogue choices, Star Trek: Resurgence features a wealth of QTE actions, some of which can seem a mite superfluous or perfunctory, while others are far more involved. There are junctures that enable you to unholster your phaser for a spot of cover shooter combat - albeit very scrappy, half-baked cover shooter combat – and segments that demand the use of your tricorder to scan objects for suspicious anomalous radiation or whatever. There are even a couple of stealth sections that aren't completely terrible, and a couple of instances that have you (slowly) piloting a shuttle through an asteroid field. Suffice it to say, Dramatic Labs has ensured there's a nice bit of variety on offer here.

Crucially, the story is compelling enough to keep you hooked, even if you're not particularly au fait with Star Trek and its sci-fi jargon. Divided into titled scenes, Resurgence hops energetically from one intriguing development to another, hitting you with choices fairly thick and fast, all of which are on a timer – you've very little opportunity to carefully consider your decision; you have to make it quickly and live with the consequences. Anyone who has previously played and enjoyed a Telltale game will have an idea of what to expect from Star Trek: Resurgence, right down to the immediate reactions to your choices, as denoted by a character portrait in the corner of the screen, complemented by a red frame for a negative reaction, a green frame for positive, and a white frame for a neutral response. You'll remember that.

It all starts off at a nice, measured pace, setting things up and introducing you to the crew of the U.S.S. Resolute, then gradually ramps things up as you work towards restoring the reputation of the Starfleet vessel, six months on from a previous disaster. Expertly switching the narrative between Rydek's diplomatic efforts and a journey into enemy territory, and Diaz's own side of the story, as he and his fellow engineer Nili Edsilar become embroiled in unravelling their own part of the mystery, presenting Resurgence's story from two differing, dovetailing perspectives works remarkably well. When events come to a head at the end, it's a satisfying pay off worth waiting for.

Adopting a pleasingly stylised, almost slightly cartoony look, and weaving a yarn that die-hard and casual fans alike will enjoy, Star Trek: Resurgence mostly hits the right notes, save for a few technical flaws and minor bugs, such as rare instances of fuzzy audio, some niggling graphical glitches, and a singular bugged QTE we encountered (this could seemingly only be bypassed by switching the difficulty to Story Mode, in which it's impossible to fail a QTE). And, late-game, some QTEs can seem a tad pointless and throwaway (pushing the left stick into the middle of a circle crops up a lot). These are tiny complaints, however, in what is otherwise a solid and memorable slice of sci-fi adventure – Star Trek: Resurgence is a place worth boldly going, where no one has gone before.