"
What you want is irrelevant, what you have chosen is at hand."
- Spock in The Undiscovered Country
When writing a review, often times you sign up for a game that you particularly enjoy or a genre that intrigues you. There are other times when just the name of the game will spark not only curiosity, but also a genuine desire to play and evaluate. For me, the latter was the case for Star Trek: Legacy. I am not a “trekkie” in so far as; I have not nor will I ever be going to any Star Trek convention. I do not know the physics behind transporters. I am not quite sure if a photon torpedo contains anything larger than a coffin or how anything physical could withstand being shot out of a space ship at that speed for that matter. I am however, a fan of the series. My personal favorite was Star Trek The Next Generation. I realize that puts me in a particular camp of Star Trek fans. I must however mention that Star Trek the Wrath of Khan is I think the best movie, edging out First Contact but not by much. Why do I mention all of this? From what I remember from watching the movie Trekkies, there are numerous and heated battles between those whom like Picard and those that like Kirk. I like them both and my review here will mention and quote them both. Star Trek Legacy has connections with all five of the TV series.
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Perhaps "because it is there" is not sufficient reason for climbing a mountain."
- Spock in The Final Frontier
Star Trek Legacy is a third-person-view space action strategy game. As you start up the game and are introduced to the story, you begin playing as Captain Jonathan Archer from Enterprise. Captain Archer attempts to assist the Vulcan’s and more specifically a scientist named T’Uerell. It would be easy to spoil this game getting into specifics so I will not elaborate much more. I will state that T’Uerell is paramount to the story and your encounters with her span generations. Each of the captains Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway get several missions. You will get to battle all of the classic Star Trek enemies including The Borg, Klingons and Romulans. This bring us to one of the first problems in Star Trek Legacy, a lack of in-mission saves. Missions can get extremely long and if you fail your mission you start over. This is unforgivable and truly an aspect of games that I would like to see erased in this generation.
The controls in the game are moderately intuitive and after the first mission you will gain an understanding of the controls and the interface. The use of the left analog sticks controls the star ship. The controls are accurate and attempt to simulate real aircraft. By pressing forward your star ship will nose drive and by pushing down your nose will go up. The right analog stick is the camera view and you can look around the entire ship. A quick click down on the right analog stick and the camera is re-centered back behind the star ship looking forward. It must be stated however that just because you have knowledge of the controls that doesn’t mean that you won’t get frustrated and annoyed by them. It takes some time and your learning curve (every review must have the words learning curve in it) will expand beyond a mission or two. In the heat of battle you will find yourself endlessly looking around for the enemy and slowing your ship. Once you locate your enemy you have to maneuver your ship first into range of your weapons and then in order to fire, you must have the correct orientation. Let me emphasize something here, this is not a typical “find the enemy in front of you and shoot” game. Maneuvering using your ships in 3D with the ability of multiple speeds makes battles interesting and very challenging but also confusing and exasperating. By pressing the B button you can choose from full impulse power, half impulse power, one quarter impulse power or a full come shoot me as I sit stop.
