I played through this over the last few days and thought I'd leave some impressions here as by far the bulk of the thread was pre-release and someone maybe considering picking it up on a Steam sale or something might be looking for some playthrough opinions. I played the 360 version and it's obviously been patched since release.
This is going to sound more negative than it is. I'm going to start with stuff I thought didn't work, but I think you know going in that this is going to be a sort of frustrating, rough around the edges experience so you might gain more from reading the stuff that DID work.
What Didn't Work:
- Platforming is terrible and there are a few levels where you need to make big jumps and it's quite difficult to do so. There's some lag between pressing the jump button and jumping. I would rather platforming be charitably broken like in the Uncharted series (where if the game detects that it seems like you're trying to jump from one platform to another, it'll magically stretch your jump arc so you make it than here). Checkpoints are generous and there's no real issue if you die from the platforming, but it is a little annoying, especially on the Gorn Planet chapter.
- Partner AI is pretty poor. Spock ruined several stealth sections for me and needed to be bossed around another few times. There are several segments where the game wants one of you to do one thing while the other does another thing and Spock had difficulties getting the timing down. Other than these segments the AI is generally good at warping to your side when you're not looking which helps make up for pathfinding issues.
- Pacing. Initially the game does a fairly good job of breaking up action sequences with more exploration based sequences but by the end of the game it becomes a bit of a chore slog.
- Glitches. I didn't experience any game-breaking glitches, but relatively frequent floating guns, clipped models, things where my tricorder got sort of hooked on an object I couldn't do anything with. The worst glitch I got is a part where a scripted screen shaking effect didn't dissipate so it was 5 minutes later and the screen was still shaking and I couldn't aim at all and my controller's rumble was going crazy. When I died this fixed itself naturally.
- The Ship Battle level is straight up awful. The controls suck, it's hard to hit the enemies, it's hard to tell if they're hitting you. It's basically a turret section by you can periodically press a button to get a little cutscene where the Enterprise goes bonkers and blows stuff up. This occurs early in the story and never comes back, which is a very good thing.
- Stealth doesn't really work. It sort of does, I mean. You can move around sneakily and do one-button takedowns of enemies you sneak up on. And there's an upgrade to make less noise when you're moving. But it's very unclear what cone of vision the enemies have, how they're going to react to sound, whether they'll notice you hidden behind a wall if they walk by, etc. But the worst is that almost every stealth section has an automatic turret. You can hack turrets, but hacking only has a switch-allegiance mode which means if you hack the turret it'll immediately shoot at the enemies which in turns blows your stealth. Ditto flying drones. If you see one, you can choose between blowing it up (massive noise) and hacking it, but hacking it puts it on your side and makes it immediately shoot enemies. There's also one stealth segment where there are drones that heal enemies and I couldn't at all figure out what I was supposed to do with them.
- Too much shooting.
- There's no ending, you beat the last boss and then the Enterprise goes into warp and then credits. There's an epilogue after the credits but it's pretty lifeless.
What Worked:
- Movement and shooting feels fine. There are no headshots but enemies generally don't take too many shots and you don't fight too many at once so that's fine. Guns are a carry-two system where one will always be your phaser, but some of the other guns are neat particularly by the end-game. Cover feels fine although not perfect. Your character moves at an appropriate speed most of the time.
- Using the tricorder feels great in general. There's tons of hidden loot to scan, which ties in with the game's experience system. I love the visual effects on the tricorder. And unlike Batman's detective mode, the tricorder feels like something that makes sense in the context of the story. Star Trek episodes are filled with people scanning everything all the time. There should in fact be more tricorder.
- The voice actors all appear as themselves and most appear to be acting in character. Line readings are generally crisp. I still like Quinto's affect that he uses for Spock. Having the bad guys being the Gorn and making lizard noises means that they don't need to hire any external actors to be a villain, which works pretty well. The music, although it leans way way way way way too hard on the main theme from Star Trek 2009, is nice enough.
- Hacking minigames are generally well-implemented and since you always have the choice to do it yourself or assign your AI teammate to do it, you can skip them if they get tiring.
- Non-lethal and alternate route objectives. In many cases you need to subdue infected federation crewmen with non-lethal fire instead of killing them. Doing so just gets you a meaningless in-game award (which you can't even seem to view anywhere after you've finished the game) but it is rewarding. There's an upgrade for your phaser that breaks this by making stun fire instantly incapacitate almost every enemy, and the enemy AI (see above) is broken so that if you snipe a guy next to an enemy, that enemy will still stand around like a boob instead of reacting to his compatriot keeling over dead. But it's generally more fun to not kill people than kill people. Alternate route objectives pop up a few times and are always way more fun than the primary route. I wish they'd do more of this so the game would feel more like a platforming action-exploration game than a Gears of War style shooter.
- The squirrel suit and jetpack sections are so fun. I mean, not when you hit a wall or something and instantly die, but when you're just sailing through the air or space it's really really cool.
- The spacewalk / teleporter gun sections are fun.
- It's generally a pretty game. There's some spotty textures, but the design is generally quite good looking. Character models look decent. Lighting is generally nice especially in the overly bright Abrams-style sets like the Enterprise. The Enterprise bridge looks wonderful when you visit it. I mean there are some pop-in/blur-in issues and it's a licensed game and it's low budget and I played it on 360, but visually I was impressed relative to my expectations.
All in all, I'd say that this is not a great game but it is generally fairly playable and I'd recommend it at a low price. Consider playing on easy to help minimize frustration. Be aware that you're getting Gears of War with limited platforming as opposed to Mass Effect, and be aware that it's not the Star Trek game you've always wanted but rather a third-person shooter with Star Trek characters in the Star Trek universe. I wish it was more than it is, but I'm not pissed off that I played through it. It's a significantly less stupid, better, and more engaging game than Dead Space 3 or Aliens: Colonial Marines. So, buyer beware, but I felt it was worth playing.
