Star Trek: Bridge Crew (PlayStation 4)

Star Trek: Bridge Crew is a first-person VR experience of being onboard a Federation starship, namely on the ship’s bridge where most of the key officers are, and boldly go on various perilous missions where strategy, tactics, and teamwork are key to success and getting back home in one piece. While the game was initially released as a VR-only title, via a later patch it also started supporting TV mode gameplay, which provides higher resolution but lower character immersion, as well as the lack of full camera angle views that can be achieved with VR headset.

The game requires a Ubisoft user account and online connection in order to start it, which additionally keeps track of latest add-ons, community events, and provides the ability to play online, whether skirmish missions or campaign mode. The entire gameplay takes place on the ship’s bridge, but the character camera can be switched to the external one where the camera is placed on top of the player’s starship, giving the player a chance to see the space, planets, asteroids, starships, battles, and everything external as if being there, which gives a feel of 3rd-person spaceship navigation during TV mode, but provides a somewhat astronaut-in-space feel when played in VR mode.

There are four key player characters in this game:

• Captain – gives orders, decides what to do, how to do something, and where to go
• Helm – steers the ship, adjusts the heading, changes between impulse and warp speeds
• Tactical – analyzes targets, keeps track of ship’s shields, fires phasers and torpedoes
• Engineer – performs ship repairs, distributes power between engine and weapons

Each of the four main characters can be an actual player (co-op online up to 4 players), or a single player can control all four (one at the time, remaining three are controlled by AI). While the captain has a set of pre-set commands he or she can activate, the game also supports voice commands to which AI crew will react, while in co-op mode players can simply talk to each other and execute team decisions. While the game uses a 1st-person perspective, each of the players can generate their own character (race, gender, head style, and hair style), which is how they will appear to other players or themselves in singleplayer when viewed from another character’s perspective.