It's a whole lot of the Star Trek universe crammed into one game. It's Star Trek: Legacy, and X-Play has the review for your 360.
The Pros
- Aww pretty!
- Faithfully replicates your favorite starships
The Cons
- Boring combat
- Mood-killing bugs
- Inexplicable multiplayer hangs
“It’s been a long road...” Thank you Russell Watson, and yes, it certainly has: 40 years of Star Trek, six television series, ten movies, an eleventh on the way...and a bunch of boilerplate tie-ins that seem to badger this franchise like tribbles. Nope, Star Trek Legacy doesn’t buck that trend, except this time it really is a crying shame, because what might have been a winning approximation of ship-on-ship combat ends up crippled by sloppy bugs and monotonously regressive missions. Darn it Star Trek, when are you finally going to go where no game designer’s gone before?
Nice Borgy Borgy...
Murphy’s little known but near-ubiquitous second law: tie-ins suck. Legacy tries valiantly not to by cramming in all five of our favorite captains voiced by each of the series actors from Scott Bakula to Kate Mulgrew. It wraps itself in gorgeous nebula-laden space and faithfully replicates everything from Archer’s NX-01 USS Enterprise to Picard’s super-powered Sovereign-class NCC-1701-E. It even slips in the movie refits and one-offs like The Motion Picture’s refurbished USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and The Wrath of Khan’s USS Reliant. And whatever you’ve heard about the PC version’s crappy graphics, the 360’s ships look like someone forklifted them off the TV FX team’s hard drives and straight into Legacy’s starry vistas.
Too bad the missions turn out to be sillier than William Shatner “singing” Mr. Tambourine Man as you breeze through an incomprehensible story that--surprise, surprise--involves everyone’s favorite ratings booster, the Borg. Apparently some no-name Vulcan scientist wants to appoint herself queen she-bop of the Borg collective in a way that conveniently intersects with all three Star Trek eras. Whatever. It’s really just a breezy excuse to get Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway into firefights that trot out a few token Klingons and Romulans as hors d'oeuvres before getting to the inevitable “assimilate this!” Between battles, you can scan objects, escort friendlies, and beam things around, but these amount to little more than button presses with canned responses that trigger like chatter from pull-string dolls.
Mirror Mirror
So how about the ship combat? Try: Fair to partly cloudy with a 100% chance of boredom after the first two or three missions. You’re essentially playing a real-time squad level shooter in space with up to four starships you can switch between using the d-pad. Left alone, ships employ a reasonably competent A.I. which you can influence somewhat by issuing group commands like go to X, escort Y, or gang attack Z. You can also diddle with impulse engines (full, half, quarter), boost various subsystems (at cost to others), warp short distances, or issue repair commands to any of five subsystems, though the latter feels like a cheap gameplay tactic designed to make you fumble arbitrarily between commanders. If your squad buddies can aim and fire on their own, why not auto-repair as well?
The real problem with Legacy’s battles, though, is that they never evolve. Whether you’re flanking Romulans or blasting Borg cubes, the missions just dress up the same tired turn-and-fire mechanics with different narrative blather. As you zip around a sector tagging planets or escorting ships you’ll bump into bad guys, at which point it’s: target (right bumper), fire lasers (right trigger), recharge, pivot, fire torpedos (left trigger), recharge, pivot, fire lasers...and so on, ad nauseam. Sure, you get better, sleeker looking ships as you advance, but so what? They’re just bigger, beefier guns firing the same boring bullets. You want multiple solutions to a problem? Phasers or torpedos, hooray.
You Canna’ Change the Laws of Physics!
Really? What about the “laws of collision detection” then, which in Legacy were apparently cribbed from an amusement park primer on bumper cars. There’s in fact no attempt whatsoever to model collisions realistically, meaning starships bounce off each other like indestructible toys or pinball unceremoniously into peewee-sized planets. Was it too much to ask that ships auto-reverse when close to a planet? To render damage when ships collide? Instead, nuzzling vessels jitter like flies caught by their wings or hang ghost-like in exploding opponents’ debris. It’s like an unintentional nod to Spaceballs or something.
And what’s up with bugs in a console game? Clicking the right bumper targets the nearest enemy, but if you’re still holding it when that target’s destroyed the camera flips out. Occasionally you’ll want to select two of the same ship class for a mission, except that the game confuses the ship captains, putting Archer in command of the NX-02 Columbia instead of the NX-01 Enterprise. Huh? And on the strategic map (accessed via the select button) your course vector sometimes shows your ships moving in one direction but brokenly targeting another. Take Legacy online for up to four player skirmish missions using Federation, Klingon, Romulan, or Borg factions and you’ll be lucky to get a single match off with all the de-syncs and lockups. Clearly Legacy’s hopes of surfing the holiday wave got the better of its need to spend two to three additional months sorting the glitches out.
Patch Trek
Legacy isn’t a total bust. It looks great and it’s interface certainly works better on the 360’s controllers than whatever cockeyed madness went into justifying the PC’s. If Mad Doc can fix the multiplayer somehow, there’s every reason to believe trekkers and even fussier trekkies could find something to desire here. But if you’re more into Star Trek for its “away” missions and diplomatic angles or can’t wait for patches, pass this one by and reset your expectations for the inevitable next-in-line.
Article by: Matt Peckham
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin
Comments
StudentGamer47
Ever snce I first found out about this game, I've been curious to try it out. So for the next few years I kept my eyes open for a copy.
Earlier this month I finally found a copy and immediately bought it.
I put it in my Playstation 2 and began playing it.
I'll admit that the cinematic graphics are a bit early 2000's and what-not, the rest of the game is visually impressive.The detail put into the fighters, capital ships, starbases, etc. came out great in the game. The way the capital ships take damage as you attack them is impressive as well.
What's also interesting is how the Mirror Universe counterparts of several of the enemies from the Original Series are shown. Plus Sulu and his crew traveling the galaxy to find a way home is a good story for this kind of game.
What really makes this a fun game is how the space combat plays out. With a selection of fighters to choose from, the game makes you carefully choose which fighter would be best for the mission. The actual combat focuses on locking onto an enemy and firing you phasers or photon torpedoes at them. With the use of forward and reverse thrusters, you'll be able to find your targets and destroy them.
But with all goood things, there are downsides. Perhaps the biggest downside is the lack of voice talent in this game. You have the original George Takai and Walter Koeing providing the voices of Sulu and Checkov, put that's it. There's no Kirk, no Spock, not even Scotty to tell us the Dilithium crystals are at the breaking point.
Along with those two main actors, there's several voices that aren't really that memorable.
Also, after you complete the game, there's really not too much to go back to. You would have to erase the file you just completed and play the game on the next big difficulty. Although it gives you the option of replaying levels so you can increase your rank, it still isn't good enough.
This is a great game no doubt, I just wish they had more memorable voice acting in it and have something more challenging in the game.
Star Trek: Shattered Universe gets a 3 out of 5.
Also, why is the review for Star Trek: Legacy on this page?
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