Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Matt Mumma

STAR TREK: Legacy places you in the Admiral’s chair as you command your hand-selected fleet of starships into battle. Featuring striking space environments, detailed weapon effects, and full damage modeling, the single player Federation campaign and robust multiplayer modes span the entire STAR TREK Universe with over 80 ships and 4 playable races. While commanding Federation, Romulan, Klingon, or Borg fleets, this real-time combat game provides a strategic and tactical experience as you battle across vast sections of space.

That is the official Introduction to the game. While the hopes and expectations of this game were very high, parts of the final PC product left a bit to be desired. The game has some very big plusses: actual actor voices of the 5 Captains, gorgeous scenery, a lively story, and a fine score to go with it. However, the XBox 360 version, released almost simultaneously, is where this one belongs. Producer beware, if you bring a game to a PC you must utilize the strengths of the PC while remaining aware of the diversity of that platform.

Stunning indeed! The galaxies in the background are gorgeous. The nebulas were colorful, but brief. The planets in the galaxies were little more than flat photos. They looked great, but there was no sense of distance or atmosphere with them. In fact, I thought I was in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 after my bumped my ship into one. It was B-movie special effects at best in that regard. The ships themselves were quite detailed and the damage models were gruesome. When my ship was hit with a torpedo, large fragments of my craft were gone. It was rather amazing they would ‘fly’ at all after a few of the hits I took. Very well done in the looks department.

If only everything else had received so much attention.

The background music is the same orchestral score we’re accustomed to in the movies. Soothing melodies caress you while you’re cruising about the galaxy, but once the bad guys are on the scene the dramatic tones of the horn section let you know you’re not alone. A huge bonus was that voice-overs were from the actual Captains from the shows. D.C. Fontana wrote the storyline with her partner Derek Chester, and is actually delivered by Scott Bakula (Enterprise Prequel),  William Shatner (Original series & Movies), Patrick Stewart (Start Trek: The Next Generation & Movies), Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek Voyager), & Avery Brooks (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). The storyline was going well. Bakula was a bit uninspired, and Shatner was rather flat as well, but it is pretty amazing they got the original actors. The music definitely heightens the drama and the actors provide for a nostalgic bonus.

The sound effects are not bad. The distinctly familiar shot of a torpedo or laser barrage are captured. The explosions are complete with metal twisting and oxygen venting into the void.  Your ensign goes on about “We’ve dropped out of warp” and “we can’t take much more to the hull.” The neat part was that, besides the Enterprise, you can command other ships in your group and each one has its own distinct Captain and ensign voices. There is no screaming or anything, and I never once heard the famous Enterprise klaxon. That does not detract from the game at all.

Get some coffee because this is long, but it is for your own good. The controls in this game are just horrific. The entire game is run with a total of 10 keys; perhaps because that was all they had on the 360 controller. That might sound like a good thing, but they’re just all wrong and not able to be changed. Reaction time of the option I selected and actual execution seems to take forever. Some type of warp countdown would be nice to let you know that the crew is at least thinking about your orders.

Then there is the layout. Every game I’ve played in the last few years uses the TAB key to target something. Not ST:L! No, the TAB key opens the map. You target with the spacebar, but more annoyingly the spacebar only targets the closest target. If you want to select a specific target you must hold the spacebar and use the mouse wheel to choose from a maximum of 6 targets. Being left-handed, it wasn’t a total nightmare-on-a-stick for me unless I had to bring the mouse into it. The problem is that with all these unique actions, many of your options are buried within sub-menus. If you need to repair your weapons you hold down the R key, and then use a very shaky mouse cursor onto the appropriate sub-system (Hull, Weapons, etc). The cursor is very unforgiving as far as where on the button you need to click and it is harder to hold still than trying to do calligraphy in a typhoon. It would have been nice if a tap of the R key brought up a menu with unique letters for each subsystem. If you want to scan an object, you have to hold down the F key and use the mouse in a radial menu. That would be fine if you were restrained to the menu, but, instead, your mouse can wander all over the map and again you are trying to thread the needle to select your preferred option. Oh, did you want to scan that enemy ship? Well I hailed them, sorry.

Finally, heavens help you if you need to destroy a sub-system. The game’s forum on this subject was short but ablaze with this topic. I never got it to work, but apparently you need a perfect lock on the target with the phasers to even consider the option. This is practically impossible if you’re moving. Once you have that lock, the in-game hint tells you to use LS once to bring up the menu. I am guessing this is a typo from the 360 port because there is no left stick on my keyboard. There is, allegedly, a mod to hack this, but I never found it and it shouldn’t be necessary. It’s all a huge chore. I hate chores.

If it looks pretty, sounds pretty, but handles like a Yugo under water, how good can the game be? As a space-sim, I can’t stand the aircraft-like banked turns. The physics are just screwy. Ok, maybe that is too much to expect; however, things could have been done better. Several times there were issues with ships crashing into each other. There’s no downside in the game to this, but it looks bad. Crashing into the planet did hurt my ship, but it damaged my ship in a manner equivalent to walking into a wall. A ship, even one that can hold a large metropolitan inside, is no match for a planet, or a moon, or even an asteroid. The sense of scale was nowhere to be found. There were no thoughts about proper orbit. This goes for ship-to-station contact as well. I was stopped. I was 2.9 Mega meters (Mm) from the object and I was lined up. I didn’t want to get closer because that would hurt. So I’m just inside range to scan, I selected scan, and my ship starts to approach the target! NOOOO!

Then there is the fleet option. Between missions you can spend points to add ships to your command. They’re pretty too. However, they’re kind of brainless when it comes to orders. Several times, in each and every mission, I had to take charge of my ships and get them where I needed them. Pressing the 5 key selects everyone, and so long as there’s no thinking they will do what you want. However, once the fighting starts, it is anyone’s guess. They don’t repair themselves, they don’t defend themselves, and they don’t fight for you. They say they’re coming, but they just get swarmed, dazed, and confused. Unless they were all there with me I had a heck of a time taking out targets, and there were plenty of targets, so me playing Sheppard the entire time wasn’t good for the nerves. The sheer number of targets was plenty to worry about; at times, overwhelmingly so.

There is a patch for a few items so make sure you get your hands on that quick.

You can play 3 levels of difficulty and 4 different races and dozens of different ships. So in terms of volume you can play this quite a bit. The story is pretty linear so once you beat it you can only make it a more difficult path. The voice acting and storyline are good quality, but you’ll probably wait a few weeks before you get the disc off the shelf.

Multi-player may save this title, but I had no one with which to give that a try. Nowhere have I read yet that says is a worthy feature.

I was very excited to get my hands on this game. While I installed it, my foot wouldn’t set still. The intro had me riveted, but once I started playing I was reasonably disappointed. I have not played this on the 360, but clearly the game is built for that platform. The port to PC seems to be half-hearted at best and no thought was put into the versatility of PC controllers. I was very happy to hear the Captains of the Guard of old, and I hope they thought the experience was worthwhile. That was my favorite aspect of the game. It’s very pretty, and it sounds pretty good as long as you turn the volume way up so as not to hear the rest of the vehicle coming apart around you.

Gaming Trend Score

59

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 40
4. Gameplay: 40
5. Value/Replay: 60
6. OVERALL:59