Star Trek: Encounters - Reception

Reception

The game received almost universally negative reactions from both fans and critics. It currently holds an aggregate score of 58.92% on GameRankings, and 51 out of 100, based on 17 reviews, on Metacritic. Common criticisms included the lack of an overall storyline, poor graphics and controls, events which did not fit into established Star Trek canon, and repetitive, poorly implemented gameplay.

IGN awarded the game a score of 4.9 out of 10, with a final assessment of "Bad". They felt that the game didn't feel like a Star Trek game, arguing that "it feels much closer to playing a videogame about radio-controlled cars, only with a Star Trek skin. Sure, Encounters has phasers, sensors and photon torpedos, and they even sound and look like their TV counterparts, but combat is less than riveting," and "Encounters suffers from a dire lack of Star Trek. There's very little point in using the Star Trek license without exploiting its greatest assets. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens here. Take away the name and there's little here that resembles the long-running franchise at all. And while playing through different eras of the Trek timeline is a great concept, and definitely has its appeal, the actual gameplay doesn't do it justice. It's a bargain title, but even gamers strapped for cash need to know Encounters is Star Trek only in name, not in function."

Game Revolution gave the game a B-, stating that "the game itself does nothing to draw you in. William Shatner delivers surprisingly muted, anonymous introductions to each episode before a series of anonymous text boxes explain your objectives. A little radio chatter would punctuate the action, but the game is deadly silent. Encounters throws a few hooks out there, like a planet-killer boss, but it doesn't follow through. If I saw that planet-killer kill a planet, I would be interested in stopping it...but it doesn’t, so meh! Who stays with a game that can't follow through like that?"

GameSpy rated the game 3 out 5, calling it "Fair". They stated that "the controls are surprisingly awkward; this may be by design, but it's certainly not necessary. Tutorials will get you up to speed, but the game is still annoying to control in the heat of combat. Particularly irksome are the target lock-on and firing controls, which occupy R2 and R1. My right hand slowly turned into a twisted claw as I maintained a death grip on the lock-on button while trying to also nudge fire. Eventually I had to hold the controller in a whole new way just to alleviate the hand pain."

GameSpot scored the game a 4.3 out of 10, with a "Poor" rating. They were especially critical of the gameplay, stating that "the gameplay is a mishmash of mediocre game design, simply stretching the combat as far as possible. In fact, cheap deaths and empty periods of absolutely nothing extend the missions longer than necessary. It's a short campaign, but it wears on seemingly forever since there just aren't a lot of fun activities to do. There's no exploration in the game, yet you'll be flying for extended stretches to get from point A to point B without anything new to see or eye candy to gawk at. Other attempts to break up the tedium are hit or miss. Objectives requiring you to beam crew members elsewhere or use a tractor beam to escort a damaged ship to safety are fine. Others, like following a rogue enemy's warp trail, are boring and frustrating. Losing the trail for more than a few seconds ends the mission, and the random minefields that just happen to be littering the path provide cheap deaths." They concluded that "No Trekkie wants to hate a game based on his or her favorite universe, but it's impossible to expect even the most stalwart devotee to like Star Trek: Encounters, even at its low price point. It fails at almost every conceivable level, both as a game and as a licensed product. If you've been waiting for a Star Trek game, spare yourself the frustration and keep waiting, since your imagination is bound to be more appealing than this budget-priced fiasco."