Star Trek: Bridge Crew no longer requires space-goggles
What's in the box? Pain
In what feels like an unusual sign of the times, the formerly VR-only Wobbling Around While The Camera Shakes simulator Star Trek: Bridge Crew is now open for all PC players of all stripes to enjoy, rather than just the silly headgear contingent.
The non-VR patch for the also adds support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets, which seem to be increasingly common these days, giving huge Trekkie nerds even more opportunities to speak Klingon at each other, despite flying a Federation ship. Nerds.
As non-VR players only have to render a single image, the new version of the game also lets you crank up the graphical sliders a little further than they used to go, although the developers say that if you've got a beefy enough machine, then VR-users can try this out as well, although don't expect it to go well unless you've got GPU horsepower to spare.
One thing the developers are keen to stress is that Star Trek: Bridge Crew is a social experience, meant to be played with friends. Thanks to this update, Bridge Crew now offers full cross-device, cross-platform play, meaning that it should be easier than ever to rope your mates into living out your daftest spacefaring fantasies. PG-rated ones, hopefully.
Still, the reason for this update may well have been a shortage of players overall. A quick look at the fan-run Steam Charts (usually a reliable enough source of data) reveals that the game has been hovering at an average of 20 concurrent players on Steam at any given time for the past few months. After all, without players, a game like this is just a hollow shell of itself.
The announcement video for the update above also includes a little bit of a tease at some major new feature or content coming to the game in the near-ish future, although Ubisoft remain tight-lipped on what this might involve.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew is also down to half price for the length of the Steam Winter sale, putting it at a reasonable enough £20/$25, although I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity for them not to offer a multi-copy bundle to share with friends.