Review - Fallout: 76 - Six Years Later

 
    FALLOUT 76 is a game that both frustrates me as well as invites me in. Six years ago, I was one of the early adopters of the video game and it was one of the worst experiences of my gaming career. The world was lifeless, empty, lacking in any real stakes, and most of all felt unfinished. Fallout 76 was set in my home state of West Virginia where I lived fifteen years and yet somehow managed to not only fail to capture any of the places' uniqueness but didn't really have any of the kind of hilarious dark humor that it's just begging to have applied.

    Part of the problem was the idea that Fallout 76 would be a playground for players rather than a single player campaign. The idea was that they would interact with one another, be vendors, and create their own fun. Never has a video company more misread what fans wanted from their games since the introduction of Diablo to cellphones in lieu of announcing a new game. Basically, the fans of Fallout wanted to shoot guns and do quests. The wildly divergent leveling and equipment also meant PVP was terrible too.

    It didn't help the excuse for a single player campaign wasn't exactly inspired either. Basically, some genetic experiments have turned bats into dragons. Yes, they're called Scorchbeasts but they're dragons and even incorporate the programming from Skyrim. These dragons are also necromancers spreading a Resident Evil-style plague that turns people into zombies. The "Scorched" are basically feral ghouls who can use guns and want to kill all other life in the Virginia Commonwealth. Then the world. It's a painfully generic plot that somehow makes dragonslaying boring.

    But how does the game stand up six years later? The game has been patched, patched, and patched again with sixteen seasons having been released. A new season is released roughly every three months and they've added NPCs, new regions, hundreds of quests, new equipment, as well as personalized Vault dwellings that the player character can customize to their heart's content. 

    The changes to Fallout 76 can't be understated but can be summarized in a very simple statement: the game is fun to play now. The addition of NPCs is just the beginning of the reforms but adds a personal touch to the setting that was previously lacking. You actually have people to protect in the Foundation Settlers, Crater Raiders, Whitespring Refuge, and the actual living Brotherhood of Steel. The Appalachian Wasteland is no longer so empty and you have reasons to carry out the various quests you're given other than boredom.

    There's also some good new locations added to the setting with Nuka World providing some fun local color to the otherwise dingy coal mine areas. We finally get to meet the Overseer in person and she provides some extra places to craft weapons, armor, and materials while encouraging you to seek out inoculations for the new residents of Appalachia. That's not even getting into the Expeditions system that allows you to visit The Pitt (from Fallout 3) and a New Vegas inspired Atlantic City.

    The game has improved in some ways but not in others. The existence of the Vault dwellings (acquired during a quest) provides a nice solution to the hobo-like camps that most players are stuck with. I'd much rather exist in a nice, cool and enjoyable Vault room to store all of my crafting stations and decorations. However, most of the material is locked behind either the Atomic Shop or acquired in-universe plans that limit what you can build. The VATS system still is essentially nonexistent and best ignored.

    The introduction of NPCs to talk to also allows your character to voicelessly respond with snark, psychopathic glee, or unexpected characterization like a fanatical loyalty to Vault-Tec. There's even skill checks like the fact I managed to persuade a Raider to take the vaccine against Scorchdom by pointing out various science facts that convince her I know what I'm talking about. These are all welcome and I hope Bethesda will keep adding these things.

    The game has an unlimited leveling system where you cap your existing SPECIAL stats at 15 but get new perk cards every five levels. This allows you to experiment with more builds and also gradually build up your character into exactly what you want them to be. The fact you can't do this instantly is also something that's designed to keep you playing. Leveling enough is fast enough, though, especially if you are part of the multiplayer events.

    Do I have any complaints? Well, yes, the game is still a live service slot machine designed to take as much money from the player as possible. You have to belong to Xbox Live to play, which is a monthly subscription, and yet there's an additional subscription you can subscribe to in order to get in-game bonuses like the NCR Ranger Armor. The main quest is also the most boring one of them all. My biggest annoyance is you can't acquire repair kits save in the Atomic Shop, which is again designed to take your money but you can earn the points in-game, at least.

    In conclusion, Fallout 76 is now a game that's worth picking up if you're on Steam or Console. If you have Amazon Prime, you can acquire a copy of the game for free because they're being given away as part of the Fallout: The Series promotion. It's available on Playstation but I note that Bethesda is very much on Team X.

Available here

Fallout: The Series Season One review

 

*plays Atom Bomb by The Five Stars*

    I love Fallout to an unhealthy degree. Seriously, I had a Fallout wallet for years. My wife got me a Fallout themed Xbox as a birthday present. I've loved Fallout since Fallout 3, like many fans, but have also played the original Interplay games. I can tell you the secrets of the Vaults, who three fictional Presidents were, and why you should never eat Iguana on a Stick. So, I am THE target audience for Fallout: The Series. Mind you, I'm also going to be one of those annoyingly hard to please people that notices everything wrong too.

    So is it fantastic? Or an atomic bomb? Well, much like the games themselves, it has a little of both but is closer to Fallout: New Vegas versus Fallout 76. It is something that my wife, who is only familiar with Fallout through what she can see over my shoulder, enjoyed very much and probably benefited from someone to tell her little details about but is perfectly accessible to a newcomer. Indeed, what I think people are most likely to complain about is going to be from hardcore fans who are going to be upset about some lore changes-probably unreasonably so but fan is short for fanatic for a reason.

    The premise for the franchise is that it is an alternate 23rd century where the world was nuked two hundred years ago. Technology is more advanced in some ways with power armor and robots on one-hand but black and white televisions on the other. The nuclear war that happened has still not been recovered from, if such a thing were possible, and it remains a mixture of Mad Max and Sixties science fiction movies. This is already a thing super-Fallout fans will be annoyed by as some fans insist the Earth would rebuild and only Bethesda Games is keeping it stuck in ruins.

    The story follows three protagonists with the first being the Ghoul/Cooper (Walter Goggins), who is a survivor of the Great War and a former Hollywood cowboy. The years have not been kind to him and he's gone from being a singing good guy cowboy to a murderous Spaghetti Western one. The second is Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), the daughter of Vault 33's Overseer (Kyle MacLachlan), who is setting up for her arranged marriage with a stranger from Vault 32. Finally, there is Maximus (Aaron Moten), who is a new recruit to the Brotherhood of Steel and a survivor of the sacking of Shady Sands.

    I'm disinclined to spoil any of this show because it's such a wonderful road trip that involves so many Easter Eggs, callbacks, plot twists, and surprises. We get a longstanding mystery from the franchise resolved as well as the plugging of a plot hole that has existed since Fallout 2 (why are Vault-Tec experimenting on people after the apocalypse when all of that data would be seemingly irrelevant?). We also get nods to all of the games ranging from the first ("Our water chip is busted") to New Vegas and the Commonwealth.

    The GOAT (Greatest of All Time) for this series is definitely Lucy and I hereby dub her "Vault Girl" as her official nickname for inclusion among such luminaries as the Vault Dweller, Courier, and Lone Wanderer. She is naive without being stupid, kind without being insipid, and believable in her journey to becoming a survivor. She never quite sheds her Good Karma Pacifist Run playthrough ideology and is all the more lovable for it. Cooper is almost as entertaining and utters an immortal line about how, no matter how important your goal is, you will always be sidetracked from it in the Wasteland. Maximus, by contrast, is...okay. This is no fault of the actor but he seems to be a lot more naive than Lucy in some ways with none of her excuse.

    The show manages to achieve a fun balance between world-building, characterization, plot, and humor. The humor, especially, works well by exploiting Fallout's peculiar tone of zany over-the-top violence with an alternate 1950s wholesomeness. Poor Lucy will be splattered with blood many times in this show and never quite lose her perky can-do attitude for example. She needs to definitely put a few more points into her Speech score, though. Fans of the Fallout soundtracks will note a lot of the songs get use in the show and it is all the better for it. They can also afford actual Johnny Cash tunes this time around too.

    The show makes the correct choice to embrace the absolute ridiculousness of Fallout's retro-future aesthetic with appearances by a Mr. Handy, the 1950s dinner decor of the Vaults, green DOS computers, and how the fact PipBoys geo-tracking works exactly like they do in the games. We don't see as many robots or mutants as we might have in the games but I suppose even the show's extensive budget had to draw the line somewhere.

    There's been some confusion over an error in the show's timeline, though. One that some fans believed resulted in New Vegas being rendered non-canonical. The developers have already come out and said this is not the case and the show makes many-many references to the game, so its extra strange but some people presumably need a reason to complain. Fans of NCR will also be upset with some of the developments in-universe but, well, War never changes. Oh and I was upset they didn't get Ron Pearlman to do a voice over. Those are my only complaints.

    I can't wait for Season Two.

Available here

Star Trek: Being Human (New Frontier #12) by Peter David

    I actually finished this one awhile ago and didn't get around to writing the review. Indeed, I actually read this and the sequel back to back so it's doubly problematic. Thankfully, though, that means I can do their reviews simultaneously. For those wondering what the long delay of about a year and four months was, it was due to my niece moving in. Which obviously disrupted a lot of my online time. However, I'm getting back to writing my Space Academy books so I might as well get these done since I'm definitely in a humorous space opera mood.

    This book introduces the revelation that Mark McHenry, the guy capable of flying a starship in his sleep, is actually a demigod. Indeed, he is the descendant of Apollo from Who Mourns Adonis?. Peter David has a fantastic love of TOS and makes the proper decision of attempting to weld the "Wild West" days of ST into the more stately and dignified TNG era to hilarious effect. It's part of why I love this series as I admit to being someone who enjoys the goofier side of Trek with all its whales, gangster planets, and more. People harp on the holodeck episode but I actually note it's when TNG was able to cut loose.

    Ironically, I think Being Human was when Peter David started to enter his "Dark Period" of New Frontier. The series lasted far longer than I expect he knew and probably was intended to potentially end with the destruction of the Excalibur way back when. Star Trek: Stargazer is one of my favorite Trek series but it only lasted five books with a couple of side-stories involving the cast as well as a much-appreciated coda in The Buried Age. Here, things kept going and that meant a lot of plotlines started getting traumatic and merciless. Seriously, the cast gets cut down like Post-Claremont X-men with less resurrection.

    As much as I love New Frontier, I can't say the Dark Period is my favorite part of the series as the characters start getting trimmed with the Reaper's scythe and often go through hellish circumstances to rival Miles O'Brien. In this case, the set ups for the deaths of Si Cwan, Morgan Primus, and more. The characters don't remain static in the New Frontier novels but the changes are going to be something that will put both them as well as the reader through the ringer.

    There's some questionable choices mythologically like the fact that McHenry's designated love interest (and abuser--which Peter David touches on tastefully) is Artemis, the Virgin Goddess. I think it was a weird choice and I think one of the other goddesses would have been a better choice like Aphrodite or even Athena (even though she is a virgin goddess as well--Ancient Greeks man).

    Oddly, my favorite part of the book was the Si Cwan parts after he accepts the help of the Danteri in rebuilding the Thallonian Empire. It was a bad idea, Calhoun knew it was a bad idea and Si Cwan knew it was a bad idea. However, Si Cwan is one of those characters I like ala Tyrion Lannister who thinks they're worse people than they are so they underestimate the level of stupidity as well as narcissism that makes evil people do things even against their own self-interest because pragmatism isn't actually a quality of the worst. Basically, Si Cwan can't comprehend the idea of giving up power to a master because toadying is antithetical to someone with genuine self-respect.

    Basically, you can't win the game of thrones by being smart because a lot of the people with power are just genuinely stupid. 

Available here

"The Gernsback Continuum" by William Gibson review

 

    “The Gernsback Continuum” is William Gibson of 1981, looking back forty years to the the Golden Age of Science Fiction from the 1920s to the 1930s. While not quite as long from the Nineteen Eighties to the Twenty-Twenties, it’s pretty close and interesting to note that the same wistful nostalgia filter we have regarding cyberpunk as envisioned by Gibson and his contemporaries is the same that he was undoubtedly feeling when he wrote this story.

    The premise is pretty simple, a photographer is sent to take photos of art deco architecture of a futuristic kind. Said photographer starts hallucinating an alternate 1980s with flying cars, massive highways, and people dressed like they’re from the planet Krypton. Anyone who has played Fallout has an idea of what this looks like as there’s the Red Rocket stations and Robbie the Robot-esque machines. His agent is surprisingly sympathetic to his losing his mind and says to basically “cool down” by watching a lot of porn and bad TV to shock his system back to normal.

    The actual meaning of the story is debatable and has, indeed, been debated for decades. For most people, it’s a straight up ode to the classic science fiction world as envisioned by the early Pulp writers that never came to exist. There’s no Jetsons, Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers-esque future. Life became far more mundane and there’s a wistful nostalgia for a world where UFOs and crystal spires might have replaced skyscrapers or planes.

    I maintain that Gibson was far more critical in his short story of the world as it might have been and recognized the darker undercurrent that was lurking beneath the mind of many Pulp writers. People who were as often as not reactionary as progressive. For modern day fans, we can look back to Deep Space Nine’s “Far Beyond the Stars” to see how Pulp writers of the time period were really with all of the racism and sexism (arguably pretty toned down). Every HP Lovecraft fan certainly has to deal with the fact their author probably would have found some reason to hate them.

    “The Gernsback Continuum” has a particularly haunting scene where the protagonist comes across a couple of Aryan superman looking folk staring at one of their cities. White, CIS, het, and vaguely fascist in a way the Pulps envisioned because they didn’t see anyone outside of those norms having a place in the future. It becomes interesting to contrast cyberpunk, so-called dystopian fiction, as very much having a place for queer or people of color among it. William Gibson’s writing alone for example.

    Indeed, “The Gernsback Continuum” is a story that unwittingly sets itself up as the perfect metaphor for the current ongoing culture war between the Golden Age of Science Fiction and cyberpunk that it is a gateway story. The internet is absolutely filled with so-called speculative fiction fans that are furious at the inclusion of “woke” elements that represent the kind of reactionary future that cyberpunk challenged the assumptions of. To believe in a utopia in the 1930s was far easier for people who saw it as an extension of imperialist dreams and the status quo versus a dystopia that, ironically, promised an overthrow of the present order in the 1980s.

    I’ve unironically had conversations with people who state that dystopian and post-apocalypse fiction was anti-progressive. The Disney movie Tomorrowland is based around the idea that refusing to believe things are getting better was somehow antithetical to it happening. That always brings me back to this short story and what I think the real message of cyberpunk is: recognizing the systemic flaws so that they can be corrected.

    Writing my own cyberpunk, I think of it as a wistful nostalgia-filled dream of motorcycles, cybernetics, and katana. It is stuff from my childhood when I watched Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Bubblegum Crisis. Sadly, the modern day is a place where we’ve got micro-computers, the internet, megacorps, computer criminals, and the massive wealth disparity but very few of the people rising up to cast down the man. I wonder what the next age looking back on us will be.

 Available here

Star Trek: Restoration (New Frontier #11)

 
    This is the Western installment of the New Frontier series and I mean that in the most direct TOS sort of way. There's a big desert planet, an evil cattle baron, and Captain Calhoun comes down to become the new Sheriff in town. I actually love when Star Trek does this sort of stuff because as nonsensical and weird as it is, it is fully the kind of genre-bending I enjoy. It also doesn't take place in a holodeck and I give props for that.

    I don't really have a problem with Star Trek being on the sillier side of things, blasphemy as that may be. I am happy to have our protagonists visit Wild West Planet, Medieval Planet, Gangster Planet, Cyberpunk Planet, or whatever else sort of planet we need for this weeks budget. Contrivances be damned. It's one of the major appeals of New Frontier that they're willing to put a bunch of TNG-era characters in TOS sort of situations and really is the ethos of the entire series.

    But is the story really good for Mac? Surprisingly, I'd say so because there's some very interesting character development for him. His single-target sexuality (Kat Mueller aside) to Shelby is challenged by the possibility of falling in love with the Girl-of-The-Week but the big difference is that it leaves him with huge consequences: a son that he chooses and raise as his own. I thought that was a brave decision of Peter David and it leads to some very interesting encounters along the way as Mac is forced to confront his biological son seeing his adopted one.

    Random aside, I actually liked the romance of Mac and Rheela because Peter David writes the former as a man capable in all areas except romance. Mac has been with, as far as we can tell, three women in his life with his awkwardness extremely apparent when he's in a romantic situation. There's the girl he lost his virginity to, Shelby, Kat, and now the "determined homesteader" archetype. Mac is confidant everywhere but here and it's really rather sweet to see how they bond while she struggles to deal with the fact he's uncomfortable with her overtures.

    The story goes in a very odd direction with the fact that Rheela had an affair with Odin and her rain-making son is the result. That'll come up later but is the kind of absolute batguano insanity that reminds you that Peter David is a comic book writer even when he's writing novels. It's also what contributes to making New Frontier so unique.

    Even more so, I like Shelby's plot in the book and her proof that she is worthy of being a Star Fleet captain who is going to save an entire race from genocide. Even more so, she works to try to prevent a war. The Prime Directive looms over this one a great deal but understandably so. I also feel like her First Officer really shouldn't ever be a captain by the way they act regarding Shelby's decisions. Basically, they just tut-tut about the rules and constantly miss anything deeper, which is exactly the opposite of what a captain is supposed to do. To sit in the big chair, you have to interpret them in a way that goes beyond rote repetition.

    In any case, this is a good "ending" for the series with the reunification of the crew as well as Shelby accepting they're her family even if she has her own command. I'm going to have some "issues" sadly with where the story goes from here. 

Available here

Star Trek: Picard: Firewall by David Mack review

    Star Trek: Picard is a controversial spin off in my circle as it draws out very strong emotions from its viewers. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people's feelings change between the seasons. On my end, I think the Picard show was of varying quality but came up with some of the best ideas the franchise ever had. Also, I think that it has consistently produced some of the best novels that Star Trek has ever produced. THE LAST BEST HOPE by Doctor Una McCormack and ROGUE ELEMENTS by John Jackson Miller are two of my all time favorite Star Trek novels ever. FIREWALL by David Mack is now up there as well.

    The premise is that Seven of Nine has found herself adrift after the ship's return to the Alpha Quadrant. Starfleet has made the possibly justifiable decision to exclude her from Starfleet based on the idea she might be a danger. Which becomes considerably less justifiable when you remember that if she could be remotely hacked or was going to taken over by the Borg, would have probably happened during the show's seven year run. It becomes even more spiteful and prejudice-filled when you find out they've also denied her Federation citizenship. Which doesn't actually prevent her from living there but exists purely to make her feel unwelcome.

    I wasn't a big fan of "Ad Astra Per Aspera" from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because it depicted a Federation that was engaged in hate crimes and ghetto-ization of a large chunk of its population in the Illyrians. I like to believe in Roddenberry's future, we may not be perfect but we've moved past Nazi/Terran Empire behavior. I'm more inclined to accept Seven's treatment, though, because it is far more isolated and we see pushback from Janeway and others. It's also practiced only by a handful of individuals in the Federation which, sadly, include people of power.

    Anyway, Seven seeks to find herself by living on the fringes of Federation society that are also pretty dystopian and seem capitalist despite the fact they don't have money. This is a pretty common issue in many works, though, so I don't mind. That's when she's offered a chance to get her membership in the Federation and possible Starfleet commission if she infiltrates an organization called the Fenris Rangers.

    Like all prequels, the actual destination is less important than the journey. There's a lot of interesting character beats in this book like Seven coming to terms her bisexuality and also analyzing the idea that the Federation's Romulan Rescue Plan resulted in a total collapse of necessary humanitarian relief in other parts of the galaxy. It makes the question to cut their losses after the destruction of Mars seem more justified.

    Some fans were offput by Seven's attraction to women but I think it results in some of the more interesting parts of the book. We also get a relationship that is surprisingly drama free and one that I feel like will resonate with queer reader. I really liked the character of Ellory Kayd and hope she shows up in future Star Trek material. I understand that David Mack envisioned her as played by Jessica Henwick and I think that helped my mental picture a great deal.

    The Fenris Rangers are actually given a backstory and we get a sense of what they are, other than having a cool name and fighting crime. Apparently, they were once a legitimate law enforcement/security company (for lack of a better term) contracted to protect the Qiris Sector. When the governments collapsed, they continued carrying out their jobs of enforcing the law of the previous regimes. Frankly, Starfleet labeling them vigilantes in that respect is a sign of Federation arrogance as who else would qualify as a legitimate government in that situation?

    The villains of the book are also interesting because they're some of the vilest ones in Star Trek, up there with the Cardassians, but some of the most easily understood too. General Kohgish and Erol Tazgül are guilty of horrific crimes against sapience but their motives are both believable as well as extremely petty. General Kohgish just wants to make as much bank as humanly possible while Arastoo believes that he's able to keep the Romulans out of the Federation by making a buffer state via any means necessary once the Neutral Zones collapses. I also appreciate Erol isn't a part of Section 31 as that would be the "easy" way to do it. No, he's just a guy who got fired for his extreme politics.

    Admiral Janeway gets something of an off kilter performance and why I put this book as a 9.5/10 instead of a 10 out of 10. Well, that and because I feel like some of the locations like Starfield are a little too like capitalistic intolerant Earth than the Federation should be. Basically, Janeway seems awfully naive throughout the book. She doesn't seem to understand how much pressure and prejudice Seven is getting or that Starfleet's opinion on the Rangers are wholly unjustified. I wonder if those blinders are just something every Federation citizen has or it's because she wasn't in the Dominion War and saw how fallible the Federation's leadership could be.

    In conclusion, I find this to be a fantastic novel and one I really enjoyed. Seven of Nine has always been one of my favorite characters in Star Trek and this is a great bridge between her VOY and Picard personas. I really liked the Fenris Rangers as a concept and hope they eventually invite David Mack to do a sequel or perhaps even a series of novels set between this one and Season One of Picard.

Available here

Star Trek: Resurgence (PS5) review

    Star Trek is a deceptively hard franchise to adapt to video games despite the fact there's been dozens of games that have adapted it. There's good games, good Trek adaptations, and very rarely good Trek adaptions that are good games. Usually, the video games content themselves to try to do one thing very well like Elite Force where you are a bunch of Space Marines shooting up other universes on VOY or Bridge Commander where you single handedly eliminate the entire Cardassian Navy (Commander Saffi Larson, shut up!). Star Trek: Online is like a heart monitor for quality with some missions versus good and others just killing the entire population o the Beta Quadrant. As you can tell, a lot of these games don't fit into the spirit of utopian peaceful cooperation even if they're fun as hell.

    Star Trek: Resurgence is not a perfect game but it manages the mixture of exploration, investigation, diplomacy, and techno-babble mini-games better than the vast majority of Star Trek games. A lot of reviewers say it is close to a Telltale game (and had several developers who used to make those for a living) but that isn't a very good description. More precisely, it feels like one of the BETTER Telltale games before they just started churning them out and removed all interactivity from them. The game has multiple endings even if the story is mostly linear and you can choose whether some characters live or die based around your actions. A sequel is unlikely, which is a shame, so they do let you make some significant changes.

      The premise for Star Trek: Resurgence is that you are two characters on the U.S.S. Resolute. Random aside but I think Star Trek: Resurgence is a pretty awesome title by itself and it get a little confusing to have the two similar words in the game. Anyway, you are either alien-human hybrid, Commander Jara Rydek (Krizia Bajos) or engineer Carter Diaz (Josh Keaton). Both of them have defined personalities but ones you can choose the leanings of. Jara is cool and professional but torn between being loyal to her captain or the ship's crew. Carter is an amiable lower decker who either wants to do what's right by his friends or do his job professionally. The "right" decision in the game isn't always the immediately obvious one too.

    The Resolute is a ship that just underwent a refit after half the crew was killed in one of those horrifying events that happen to every ship that isn't the Enterprise. Jara is the replacement first officer and notices immediately everyone is on edge and the captain is a lot more conservative than is typical for Starfleet. He demands absolute loyalty and is petty if he doesn't get it. They're on a mission to a planet which recently had a revolution and is between the exploitative overclass versus the exploited laborers. Should be pretty easy, right? Well, it would be if EVIL wasn't involved. 

    I won't spoil the plot of the game but it is full of little adventures spread throughout what feels like an entire season of a Star Trek series that never happened. "Episode" happen with a continuing story throughout from picking up Ambassador Spock to investigating weird technology to dealing with ancient precursor races of the kind that had been mentioned in the franchise before. You do flying, shooting, science, and diplomatic missions throughout the game. Whenever you think you're done with new mini-games, a new one is introduced.

    This is one of the flaws of the game, however. Basically, a lot of the game is made up of busywork. The real appeal of Star Trek: Resurgence is the storytelling, characterization, and fidelity to the Star Trek universe. This really feels like the TNG era of Star Trek and it is as bright and optimistic as Star Trek usually is while balancing it against drama. I rapidly came to care about a lot of the characters and that's something I rarely say about Telltale games except for rare exceptions (The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, and the original The Walking Dead).

    Of the two protagonists, I have to say I like Jara Rydek a lot more than Carter Diaz. It's not that Carter is a bad character, it's just I'm all about those smooth confidant Number Ones. The fact she's an alien-human hybrid also is a nice change of pace from the usual collection of humans. I wouldn't mind having her as the star of a sequel if this game manages to find enough of a following to warrant one.

    I like the simple set up of the Hotari versus the Alydians. The Hotari have been mining dilithium for centuries on behalf of the latter because they were a Pre-Warp civilization that couldn't take advantage of it. Now, they've seized the means of production and are ready to join the galactic community on their own terms. However, the Alydians aren't one-dimensional villains and are more interested in a negotiated settlement versus a military one.

    In conclusion, Star Trek: Resurgence is something that fans of Star Trek will probably get the most out of. It's a very fun game that manages to embody the spirit of the franchise. However, the game tries to insert a lot more gameplay even when it's not necessary. They should have focused on making things like the phaser fights and flying more fun versus throwing in mini-games that, well, aren't.

 Available here