While this shares the same name as the MS DOS game, this is not a console port of the 25th Anniversary. This is a completely different game, with its own gameplay, levels and even story. The story is fairly simple: The Enterprise has fallen though gravitational anomaly and ended up in an unknown region of space. They have to find dilithium crystals and make their way back home.

The game starts off pretty terribly. It feels like a shooter and exploring the first area you’ll be shot at by plants and probably killed by tiny worms. Once you figure out the game properly, there’s actually not that much shooting involved at all beyond the first level, instead the game is about exploring, finding items and working out how to use them.

Once you finish the rather tedious first level, you’re given a lot of planets to explore. Most of these are ones you either can’t land on or are just empty worlds, but it still gives the impression of a bigger world – a lot of planets are just bits of rock, after all, only a few planets contain missions that further the game. One of these is a really fun level set on a planet of rogue traders. There’s even a time travel mission where you have to save a planet that was destroyed due to the actions of Dr. McCoy.

While it has a very rough start, this surprisingly becomes quite enjoyable.

With very impressive production values, not only does this have a great visual style, but it’s also fully voiced with the full cast of The Original Series. It’s a point and click adventure game much closer to the likes of Monkey Island than previous games, which is a style that suits Star Trek extremely well

25th Anniversary comprises of 7 missions, which all feel like they could have been original episodes, with some interesting stories and some returning characters, and one is even a sort of prequel to Wrath of Khan. Although I did find that slightly odd because it starts with a Federation facility with a virus outbreak that only affected Romulans, with Spock saying it should be safe for everyone to beam over. I thought this was strange because of the link between Romulans and Vulcans and, sure enough, Spock gets ill, creating a timer for this mission (something I don’t like in games like this, I like slowly investigating everything). That said, the main parts of the mission are overall great.

Throughout the game you also get involved in ship combat. These parts of the game are horrible to control and are frustrating. The game would be better off with a simpler system where you give commands to your crew. One particularly annoying one involves a cloaked ship and you just have to hope that they don’t cloak too much to recharge shields – some of these battles are overly long.

Overall, 25th Anniversary is a really good Star Trek game, and it would be really nice to see a refreshed version that changes the ship combat and fixes some annoyances (like silencing repeated voice lines).

Loads and loads of original Star Trek charm with the entire cast returning, authentic writing, and a fun mission structure that emulates episodes of the show.

Sadly, as a classic-style point-and-click adventure game, it's pretty shaky. Clumsy controls make doing pretty much anything a massive chore, and the puzzles are either dead simple or so goofy and precise there's no way you'd ever figure them out without following a guide to the letter. I even soft-locked myself three-quarters through the (long) final mission by - of all things - doing exactly what Spock told me. And there was no way to tell that I did it without looking it up online to find other people complaining about it. Still, there's something about even this by-the-book, technical, somewhat vexing experience that feels very Trek. You defintely feel like you're sifting through technobabble and following Starfleet regulations while you fumble around and fail missions repeatedly. You do even very, very amusingly have the opportunity to get a different anonymous redshirt killed in each mission if you screw something up. Delightful.

I would be rating this waaaay lower if it wasn't just so darn comfy to hang out with our old space buddies, and am actively restraining myself from going higher despite how unforgivably broken it is - at its best moments it really does feel like you're playing lost episodes of the show. I haven't delved too far into the long, weird history of Trek gaming (yet), but for me, that's ideally what they should be shooting for.