Star Trek: Infection

Actually, I wanted to wait until I beat the game before writing a review. But looks like that's not gonna happen. I really can't recommend this. I'm about 3.5 hours in, playing like 30 to 60 minutes every evening. I should be almost at the end by now and took a little break because I was getting too frustrated, but today I just decided I won't be booting it up again. Where do I even start? I'll just write my thoughts down as they come. Let's start with the good stuff: It's Star Trek! I love Star Trek. The whole idea of playing as a Vulcan was actually super fun and I really got into character. The graphics are okay too. A bit cartoonish, but pretty cool for an early Quest game. Oh, and I should mention the performance really isn't great. It stutters and lags quite a bit, but at least it does so regularly, which somehow keeps it playable since the game is super slow anyway. But honestly, I think that's where the positives end. The sound design just isn't good. You don't feel like you're on a spaceship at all. Everything feels isolated and sometimes the audio just doesn't match what's happening on screen. I can personally ignore that, though. What I can't ignore are the haptics and physics. Walking feels off, grabbing stuff feels bad, the menus feel bad, and everything is just way too arcade-y. Physics and freedom are super important to me, especially in VR. I can totally forgive a lack of physics in older games like a VR port of Half-Life, but not in new ones. Unfortunately, it constantly feels like they could have just released this as a standard flat-screen game. The Tricorder also isn't realistic enough for my taste. A holographic menu just pops up and you use it like any other standard VR menu. It's not terrible, but I personally hate it. I would've much preferred actual displays on the Tricorder itself, even if they had to change it up a bit since the original screens are pretty meaningless. It should feel like you're actually using the equipment, not just holding a placeholder for floating menus. I admit, this bothered me way more than it probably should have. The intro was way too rushed and totally meaningless. It might as well have been cut completely. Which is a shame, because that was the perfect moment to make you feel like a real crew member, even on a tight budget. Another thing that drove me crazy was all the hand-holding. I get dropped into a world and I want to play it myself. But there are constant pop-ups telling you what to do, and it's so annoying. It ruins the immersion and kills the fun. I actually like getting stuck for a minute and figuring out what to do through gameplay. The enemies are super old-school. The second they spot you, you're dead. They just snap to you, touch you, and the game reloads the last save. No chance to run away, salvage the situation, or get any real thrill out of it. Basically, nothing has consequences, you just instantly try again. That drains a lot of the fun. Actual stealth didn't really work either. You just hide in some plants or behind a wall for a sec, wait for them to turn around, run up, and take them out with a Vulcan nerve pinch. But it's this mini-game that barely works on the Quest 3 controllers. Cool idea, but it gets annoying fast and is just poorly executed. It takes way too long and doesn't feel badass like in the shows. There's no flow, and due to the Quest 3 tracking calibration not being fine enough, it's just a massive test of patience. You can get the hang of it and get faster, but by then it's just not fun anymore. Same goes for the special infection abilities. Everything is too slow and clunky. Especially the constant switching between infected and healthy. It just feels unnecessary and goofy. As well as the phaser that doesn't shoot continious. Exploring the ship was boring too. It's there, but most places had nothing cool to find. You didn't really need the resources anyway, so it was mostly just empty rooms. You could scan some stuff with the Tricorder for info, but it was rarely anything interesting. The audio logs and text files were pretty meh as well, none of it really hooked me. The talking NPCs were a bit better, though you couldn't interact with them much, which is fine I guess. The story premise is actually pretty cool, but it just doesn't feel fully realized and is full of plot holes. For example: you have to scan crew communicators to get their ranks and unlock new areas. But right at the start, you find the Captain... and you can't scan her with the tricorder. Add all this up, and it's just not a good game. There are a lot of great ideas, but the execution feels incredibly cheap. I hate saying that, because it genuinely feels like someone put a lot of heart and soul into this, just without the technical know-how. As a demo project, I'd say it's cool. As a game I paid money for, not so much. I'm curious if the completionist in me will eventually kick in so I finish it. Not seeing it right now, though. Important context for this review: I really prefer hardcore games that are as realistic as possible, where physics and reality are simulated well. This is a very simple game, and someone else might still have a blast with it. Especially if VR is still super new to you and your expectations aren't that high yet.

A good Star Trek game. A good horror game. A fine VR game. It was fun to "interact" with Star Trek UI and gear, as well as wander around a defiant class star ship, but I wish there were more Star Trek fan service stuff. As a horror game, it was fine but kinda lacked in scary. As a VR experience it was pretty good.

Ok, so this game did launch in a pretty atrocious state, and I refunded it immediately. But I decided to give it another try after seeing it has already been patched several times, and I'm really enjoying it so far. Just enjoying walking around and soaking up the Star Trek vibes in glorious VR. I'll update my review when I've played some more, but for now I'd say the Mixed reviews are pretty unfortunate, and reflect more the game at launch than what it is now, and it looks like the developers are continuing to work on it. It's really nice to have a Star Trek game made for VR. UPDATE: ok, this is a blast! I'm having a GREAT time so far.

Soweit cool Ich bin erst rund zwei Stunden drin. Von daher könnte sich meine finale Meinung noch ändern. Bisher liebe ich es! Resident Evil trifft auf Star Trek. Total geiles Setting! Grafik: Ja, Comic. Ja Quest Port. Ja, matschige Texturen. Aber Gesamtbild und Beleuchtung sind stimmig. Also ist sie okay. Wer gute Grafik sucht, muss natürlich zu Elite Dangerous, Subnautica, Asgards Wrath oder Green Hell greifen. Gibt noch mehr, ich weiß^^ Aber ihr bekommt das Bild. Die Grafik ist hier nur Mittel zum Zweck und der wird erfüllt. Sound: Was ich bisher gehört habe, klang richtig gut. Tricorder, Phaser, Sprachausgabe, Umgebungen... alles klingt, wie ich es erwarten würde. Leveldesign Es ist ein Schiff der Defiant-Klasse. Ergo ist es natürlich nicht zu abwechslungsreich oder offen. Aber dank Jeffreys-Röhren, verschiedenen Star Trek typischen Räumen und ordentlich Zerstörungen und Wucherungen gibt es viel zu entdecken, viele optionale Routen und meist Möglichkeiten, Gegner zu umgehen. Die Aufteilung der Decks und Anordnung der Räume wirkt soweit logisch. Steuerung Tja, die ist Mist! Oft genug hat man den Phaser oder den Tricorder in der Hand, obwohl man doch etwas aufheben wollte... Da darf noch einmal nachgepatcht werden. Performance: Den neuen Patch habe ich noch nicht getestet. Ich gucke gleich^^ Aber bisher war die Performance meistens gut, stabile 90FPS. Jedoch gibt es hier und da Framedrops, die anscheinend auf meine CPU zurückzuführen waren... beim 9950X3D offenbar ein Optimierungsproblem. Spielgefühl Ja, ich bin ein Vulkanier! Und so fühle ich mich hier auch! Ständig wird die Situation logisch durchleuchtet, in Dialogen wird sachlich argumentiert. Herrlich! Und der Nackengriff wäre auch richtig geil, wäre er nicht so fummelig umgesetzt. Warum so ein albernes Minispielchen? Das kann weg! Das Spiel ist nicht perfekt. Dennoch muss ich es jedem ans Herz legen, der Resident Evil und (ja: UND) Star Trek liebt. Wer eins von beidem doof findet, sollte die Finger vom Spiel lassen. Mit ein bis drei Patches könnte hier ein Nobrainer entstehen. So ist es erstmal ein gutes Spiel für eine kleine Zielgruppe. Und mit jedem Mangel wird die Gruppe leider kleiner.

2 weeks after launch and still no fix for hands

I'd wait till they work out ALL the glitches. I've had to uninstall and reinstall it every time I've played. Regardless of streaming. This last time I streamed it LIVE, it froze so much, I finally gave up on playing. Awesome game, but too many glitches.

It's decent, nothing extraordinary but not a bad game.

A great Star Trek vibe with strong characters and a good story (at least as far as i got, i'm not through with it when writing this). When i bought the game shortly after release it had some pretty annoying performance issues and the graphics were not so great, but since the latest patches all of this vastly improved, and it is now a very enjoyable experience i can fully recommend, especially to the average Trekkie as i am.