Star Trek: Legacy (PC)

Reviewed by

Jason Ocampo

on 12/13/2006

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Page 2

Legacy also shipped with a number of game-killing bugs, though some of the worst ones were fixed in a day-of-release patch. Still, when a game releases with a bug that locks the entire game when you access the options menu, you have to seriously wonder whether it was even presented to testers. Even postpatch, there are all sorts of issues. Multiplayer is a mess. Trying to join a server is an exercise in frustration, as connecting is mostly impossible and even making the attempt often results in the game crashing. The skirmish mode might have presented some decent replay value, but it feels tacked on. For instance, skirmish mode isn't very user friendly, and there's no way to replay a skirmish game, so you end up having to create a new game again. Meanwhile, there's not much here in terms of variety. There's a deathmatch game, which you can play in teams, or a co-op wave game where all the players have to survive as long as possible against a wave of endless enemies, and that's about it.

You're almost willing to forgive Legacy of its many issues when you glance upon your favorite Starfleet vessel floating in the void. If you're a fan of the original Enterprise, the Enterprise-D, the Defiant, or any one of the many iconic starships from the show, you'll be satisfied by the level of detail that's achieved in the game. It looks even prettier during the large-scale battles, as Federation, Borg, Romulan, and Klingon starships trade fire and explode. However, even here there are issues. Smaller vessels break apart nicely, but the artists should be embarrassed by how badly anything large, like a space station or a Borg cube, explodes. The Borg cube literally breaks apart, and then a fresh cube appears in the middle of the explosion and breaks apart, and then another cube appears in the middle of that crack-up and breaks apart, before the large chunky pieces spin in place like a top twirled at high speed. Then there are the bumper-car physics. If a starship runs into anything, such as another vessel, an asteroid, or even a ridiculously out-of-scale planet, it just rubs against it and then moves on. It's these kinds of oversights that ruin the otherwise solid presentation.

Skirmish mode lets you explore Federation-on-Federation violence, but there's not much depth to it.

Considering that Legacy boasts the voice-acting talents of all five Star Trek captains, you'd think that all the stops were pulled for the game's audio, but for the most part the efforts seem wasted, as a number of the actors sound like they're dialing it in. William Shatner does his best to infuse his unique delivery, but he also sounds every one of his 75 years at times. Only the captains' voices make an appearance, as the story is told in overly long, drawn-out voice-overs while the camera pans over ships and space stations. Riveting viewing it is not. The music is typical Trek, which means noble orchestral themes for the most part, and the sound effects are fairly authentic, though some of the phaser fire seems off. However, only hardcore Trek fans should notice these details, though they live for this kind of critiquing.

The pity is that Legacy could have been a good game if it wasn't so rushed out in such an unfinished state. The combat can be very cool at times, but the game does everything possible to undermine any goodwill that it generates. Hopefully, the developers will continue patching the game until it morphs into something more enjoyable, but as it is, Legacy isn't the great step forward that Star Trek fans were looking forward to.