Star Trek: Bridge Crew looked fun before, but when they finally patched the Windows version to let you play without a virtual reality helmet of shame I wasn’t able to get the game to work thanks to an error message popping up every few minutes and destroying all of my progress.
Finally, the latest patch fixed whatever was broken and now I can stay in the game as long as my family will let me, and they’ve also just added Star Trek: The Next Generation content to the Windows version. I am almost as happy as a targ in shit, except the DLC has been available on the PlayStation VR Goggle System for months.
The good news is that if any of our cross-platform friends on that PlayStation 4 are still looking to crossover some chairs as oddly as you can, ST:BC TNG DLC absolutely won’t let them. Ubisoft’s bridge game is all business, don’t get any ideas Commander Riker.
The bad news is that the game’s art still has a very strange weird and plastic style that makes it look a little bit like something from 2005, at least when you’re in the non-VR mode. I haven’t tried ST:BC with an HMD yet. I’d guess that this is because Ubisoft wants to maintain a solid framerate on console VR systems so that nobody pukes on the bridge.
Ubisoft’s “CrewBots” that substitute when you don’t have enough friends to fill the ship’s roles are as dumb as bricks, they’ll routinely fly directly into asteroids and mines and incorrectly prioritize your orders. Want your shields at full strength? I hope you don’t mind giving the same order again and again. The hilarious excuse Ubisoft came up for the mediocre AI is that anything smarter would somehow destroy the game’s framerate for VR players:
Keep in mind that with VR, performance is at an extreme premium to keep framerates high to avoid player discomfort so highly sophisticated AI that heavily affects that performance was not in the cards. The crewbots are a very effective solution that meets the goals of providing basic crew substitutes without any negative impact on framerates.
The ST:BC:TNG:DLC:ABC:BBD does add the Borg and Romulans as foes, as well as other features and major changes to the Enterprise D’s UI, and then it doesn’t explain any of it. Good luck.
ST:BC:TNG:DLC:TLA is on Steam as well as through Ubisoft’s UPlay store for $15. The base Bridge Crew game goes for $40 and you can’t play the DLC without it.
Leave a Reply