Cool! In UPlayland, I’m CaptainCruller.
-g
What looks most cool to me about this is the option to play dynamic missions. I’m not sure if there’s any sort of progression here – doesn’t seem like it – or even a scoring system, but either of those would be nifty.
Also, I’m not convinced it benefits in any gameplay way from having multiple players. I mean, yeah, sure, for the LOLs. But this might as well be a single-player game.
-Tom
I haven’t tried it with humans yet, but strongly suspect that the various social interactions (general silliness, disagreements over what to do next, making timely decisions to avoid getting blown up, etc) will be much of the long term fun. Especially since there are so few canned missions.
Diego
Single player you say? Ok time to buy those Oculus controllers!
I like you Tom, but sometimes I just don’t understand you. This must be your coup de grace on “single player” co-op board games, but in a video game format. Or maybe it is just a different shade of me looking at Cards Against Humanity and declaring that there is no game there.
From what I saw in streams, if you take away the other players, you take away the experience and quite possibly the game itself.
What’s to understand? There is nothing in the design of Star Trek: Bridge Crew that’s geared toward multiplayer. You can play the entire game from the captain’s seat* with the exact same efficiency (well, frankly, far better efficiency) as multiplayer.
In other words, this isn’t like Captain Sonar or Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator, games that are specifically designed for multiplayer. Instead, this is a game where you can have your friends push the buttons for you. I don’t doubt that would be plenty fun, but it’s worth pointing out that there’s absolutely nothing in here engineered for multiplayer gameplay beyond the fact that multiple people can push buttons in the same gamespace. People might want to know that as either a caveat or a recommendation. Take it as you will**.
-Tom
* I didn’t see any way to control the teleporters or system hacking from the captain’s seat, so for that you might have to jump into a crew station?
** Recommendation for me, since I have only one VR rig in the house and no desire to play online with strangers.
I just played the tutorial for Bridge Crew and really am enjoying it as a single player game. It seems like you’ll be able to play primarily in the captains chair, but will need to jump to systems to do things better. (for example, target specific systems without going to sub menus, or re-route power). In a difficult mission where there’s no way to pause, I could see this being hard with only AI.
I think there’s enough of us QT3ers with this, maybe we should do some coordinated multiplayer with non-strangers?
I am relieved to hear it’s not really necessary to play multiplayer. None of the regular gaming friends have VR yet, and my desire to play with random strangers is not very high. I was holding off until I saw some reliable confirmation that it remains enjoyable in single player.
No pause in single player? Even if you take off the headset?
How long are typical missions?
But I have a VR rig and would totally play this with you. You’d even get to order me around!
Wait, this sounds fucking horrible…
Eurogamer’s review was pretty down on the single-player. I can’t see it being much fun other than as a tutorial. But I’m about to dive into it, so I’ll let you know.
Hmm, not the best first impression. I was getting pretty frequent server drops throughout the tutorial, which kicks you back to the main menu. Started a single-player game twice but never got as far as taking control without losing the connection.
Sounds like you should hail engineering
(he says sarcastically while wishing he had a vr setup)
I am soooo in for multiplayer! Haven’t set the game up yet, but will be doing so Friday evening.
You can target specific systems from the captain’s chair. You can balance power, but as you noted, you can’t do the fancy re-route without jumping into the engineer’s chair. You also can’t prioritize repairs. I can see that being useful in the heat of battle, but it’s trivially easy to bop around to different chairs.
After playing a couple of the single-player missions, I’m not sold on this as a viable single-player game. There just aren’t that many “verbs” for interacting with stuff. Scan, shoot, transport, that’s about it, with some minor variations. I’m guessing the only meaningful value you here is adding verbs by playing with other people. But I still think there’s no design support for multiplayer gameplay. It’s the equivalent of playing Diablo where I press the left mouse button and you press the right mouse button.
That said, it might all come together playing with the original Enterprise. The avionics are hilariously clunky! It looks amazing! It could be a real hoot, but you’d need people who are familiar with each of the stations, and you have to get by with a lot less information at your fingertips. They didn’t really know how to make spaceships convenient back in the 70s.
-Tom
So here’s my question - I only have the headset, does this require the special controllers? I might buy some, but I’d like to know.
Nope- you can play it with an Xbox (or similar) controller.
Awesome! I’m going to get the Oculus Touch controllers, but I’d rather wait til my next paycheck.
It also has voice controls or something, right?
I’m going to pick this up. Anyone want to try to run some missions?
I’m up for trying multi this weekend with QT3ers. No voice controls for AI - you just select from menus as you look at their positions from the captain’s chair.