Star Trek Legacy Review (X360)

Issues

Not everything is perfect about it, though. Mission objectives aren’t always as clear as they should be and the tasks you have to complete in order to activate a cutscene or advance to the next stage of a mission aren’t always obvious. You can find yourself flying around and killing enemy ships for 45 minutes with no end in sight when all you had to do to advance the mission was to fly to a specific area of the map, for example. This makes the game somewhat frustrating. Once you learn what you have to do, it is fine, but things aren’t as clear as they should be. Another annoyance is that there isn’t any sort of ship to ship impacts in this game. When you run into another ship, or space station, or even a planet, you just bounce off. Surely, this is to keep people from just slamming into everything and blowing up on purpose (though, you do have a self destruct option available if you want to use it …), but it sure seems lame to see your massive ship just bounce off of things. Another issue is that you can’t save mid-mission. Some missions can take close to an hour, and having to restart because you fail at the end is frustrating.

Other Modes

In addition to the main story mode, Star Trek Legacy has a few other ways to play. In skirmish mode, you can set up any battle scenario you want, whether that be a free for all with up to four players or a team game. When you have full fleets fighting it out and the screen is filled with ships and explosions and weapons fire, Star Trek Legacy is truly at its best. You can also hop online and play in a deathmatch or a co-op style game where you fight wave after wave of enemies. Fighting it out with real people is a lot of fun because humans are a heck of a lot smarter than the AI. You can use some pretty nifty tactics such as hiding behind planets or setting up ambushes that make the game very, very satisfying.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Star Trek Legacy looks nice, but it won’t exactly floor you. The ships are all nicely detailed and the battle damage looks good. When larger objects blow up, it isn’t so good looking, but for the most part the special effects and explosions are well done. The backgrounds you’ll be fighting in are usually made up of just the blackness of space with some stars, but occasionally there will be an interesting looking planet or a nebula to look at.

The sound is also fairly good, but a little underwhelming. All five captains from the various television series did voice work for the game, but a lot of the time they sound pretty flat and uninterested. The sound effects for everything you do sound pretty good, and the music is pure Star Trek goodness.

Bottom Line

Overall, Star Trek Legacy is a fun game that fans of the series will enjoy. It isn’t perfect, but it does a lot of things right and there is a lot of fun to be had here. I don’t really think that it is good enough on its own to satisfy you if you aren’t a big Star Trek fan, but if you are a Trekkie you’ll love it. I’d recommend renting it first, but it is a good game that is worth owning if you are a fan.