Star Trek Bridge Crew

[DisturbedSwan]

Started this yesterday, put in around 5 hours into it.

 

It puts you in the bridge of one of the Starfleet ships and assigns you various roles - Engineer, Helm, Captain and Tactical - and pairs you up with random online folks or AI companions to go through a series of structured missions and more vague procedural simulations that are a little bit different every time. It can be played in PSVR or non-VR.

 

This has probably been the most mind-boggling of the VR games I've tried. After meticulously going through each of the training routines which took about 45 minutes I was ready for action, so selected quick match from the menu and suddenly 3 avatars were in front of me in the virtual lobby waving and saying hello. It was the fucking weirdest thing, I just couldn't help but giggle at the absurdity, awkwardness and weirdness of the situation, it was just so damn odd and crazy to see these realistic looking avatars in front of me with all their arms and faces moving, staring and waving at will.

 

So we entered the mission. I'd done the training missions but I wasn't confident with any of them, one of the other guys suggested doing Engineer as it was the easiest so I picked that and just went with it really. It's crazy how everyone takes their roles quite seriously - there has been some messing about too - but by and large it's folks asking others to target a ship and saying 'yes captain' and shit like that, it's just overwhelming how mad it is when you're in there, words can't do it justice.

 

I go through the mission, we fail spectacularly and have a good laugh about it. Then it's back out to the lobby to try another again. 

 

The downsides of it is that the AI companions are really shit so you need to play with real folks, and probably 80% of the people I've been paired with have been kids, which isn't exactly ideal but they've been polite enough I guess. 

 

But yeah, as an organised crew this would be one of the very best co-op multiplayer experiences out there and I'd say it's essential if you have a PSVR just to see how weird and crazy it is. With randoms though it's luck of the draw what kind of folks you're gonna get, but I've had a ton of fun with it so far and can't get enough of being on that bridge and having that feeling again, it's just bananas.