Star Trek Out In The States, Slowly Crossing Space Oceans
Star Trek: The Video Game (right now linking to a 404) is out now! Unless you're not in America! Because publishers and stores are still living in 1992! So it is that if you're in the western colonies, you can now buy and play the game and tell us if it's any good. Meanwhile we, in the Mother Country, are stuck with an ironically named 'launch video' and a pre-load option. [Piracy dances across the screen, waggling its hands and tipping its hat.]
I know we bang on about this all the time, but the gut-ripping idiocy of a publisher making their digital game available in one meaninglessly divided continent and not another, in a world where digitally downloadable games are available for free through unscrupulous means, is bewildering, self-sabotaging, and infuriating. So you've got a high profile name like Star Trek, albeit with a perhaps concerning lack of pre-release hype, and you make sure the whole world knows it's available - then don't let them buy it. This isn't an advocation of piracy - certainly not, people are capable of waiting three days - but it's a pretty bloody stupid business practice for an industry so obsessed with DRM and lawsuits.
So, here's your so-called launch video:
The sillybillies at Namco are still going with the complete nonsense that "For the first time ever, game players will get to play as two of the greatest science-fiction heroes ever -- Kirk and Spock". I must have imagined Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites!
It's currently priced at a nostril-stretching £40 on Steam.