It was a pretty big weekend for the new movie Star Trek Into Darkness, J.J. Abrams’ long-awaited follow-up to his 2009 reboot. It scored an impressive $84 million at the U.S. box office and looks to build upon that success in the weeks ahead. For those of you who couldn’t get enough of the movie, Namco Bandai also released Star Trek: The Video Game featuring the modern team-up of Captain Kirk and Spock as they try to stop the Gorn.
For our latest Spoiler Alert, we’re diving right in to the deepest reaches of space to see how the story put together by Marianne Krawczyk with the help of screen scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci turns out. Can the evil lizard beings be stopped and peace restored to the galaxy? With Spock and Kirk on their tail, you can pretty much consider it a safe bet.
So let’s get going with the spoilers. As usual, read at your own risk, because we go over the entire story here…
The game begins with the U.S.S. Enterprise receiving a distress call from a nearby space station, which is hard at work harnessing energy from a binary star. Because of technical interference, Kirk and Spock can’t beam aboard and they take a shuttle over to commence the rescue operation. There they meet Spock’s old childhood friend T’Mar, who explains why the space station was harvesting said energy – to power a mysterious thing called the Helios device. With it, rebuilding the planet of Vulcan (which was obliterated in the first film) would be possible.
in the process they managed to rip open a hole in space. To get further explanations on the matter, Kirk and Spock meet with T’Mar’s father, Surok. The station lost power after the lizard creatures called the Gorn attacked the crew, entering through said rip in space. The two set out to stop these creatures from stealing the Helios device, attempting to rescue a few infected civilians along the way. Unfortunately, they arrive too late and the Gorn get hold of the Helios and kidnap Surok.
After the Gorn escape through the rip in space, Kirk takes the infected civilians that were rescued to a nearby starbase. Upon their arrival, they run across the unlikable Commodore Daniels who has some sort of negative history with Kirk. He explains how he gave T’Mar the specifications for the Helios, knowing it would create a wormhole.
The Gorn suddenly commence an attack, which Daniels runs away from. T’Mar is captured in the process, but Kirk manages to take down a Gorn Henchman just before he is about to beam out. They prevent him from escaping in a shuttle and Spock soon performs a mindmeld on it, learning that Surok was killed when he couldn’t help activate the Helios device… but T’Mar could. The Henchman is then locked away in the Enterprise’s brig.
Kirk decides to enter the hole with the help of the Enterprise crew. They take a shuttle with Sulu and McCoy, to a nearby planet. Their shuttle is shot down, but they manage to safely get away with the help of some wingsuits. They fly by a nearby Gorn post and blast it to bits, then proceed to head to the base where T’Mar is being held. Daniels meets up with them again and ends up getting killed during a firefight.
Kirk and Spock are captured, and brought in front of the Gorn Commander, where they’re taken to an arena and forced to fight Gorn soldiers. They overcome the Gorn, but the Commander infects Spock and forces him to fight Kirk in a battle to the death. Before this can happen, Sulu’s shuttle picks them up and McCoy heals Spock with the help of an antidote. The Commander, not pleased with his loss, grabs the Helios device and T’Mar before making his escape.
When the crew returns to the Enterprise, they find that it has been overtaken by the Gorn. Kirk and Spock manage to get to the ship through a space dive to engineering and McCoy and Sulu are beamed back shortly thereafter. With the help of Scotty and his assistant Keenser, they manage to reactivate the warp cores and restore power to sick bay, allowing McCoy to work on more antidotes for the infected. Meanwhile, Kirk and Spock head to the bridge, where the escaped Henchman is holding Uhura hostage. He demands that Kirk give him the controls to the ship. Instead, Kirk has their shuttle crash into the viewscreen, jettisoning the Henchman into space and saving Uhura.
With the rip in space set to close within an hour’s time, Kirk and Spock act quickly, space diving to the Gorn Commander’s ship. They manage to disable the targeting platform, allowing the Enterprise to fight back against it. They make it into the core, retrieving the Helios device and rescuing T’Mar. They manage to destroy the device then battle the Commander, eventually overcoming him. They beam back to the Enterprise with the help of their crew and then warp to the Milky Way galaxy before the space rip in space closes for good.
The game concludes with Kirk and Spock discussing their closing logs. T’Mar has managed to work towards making New Vulcan an actuality without the need for the Helios device and the infected have been healed, thanks to McCoy’s antidote. But the crew doesn’t have any time to rest, as they’ve been called upon for their next mission – a visit to the planet Nibiru, where Star Trek Into Darkness begins.
Star Trek: The Video Game is available now for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
