| Star Trek: Legacy | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Mad Doc Software |
| Publisher(s) | Bethesda Softworks |
| Composer(s) | Jason Graves |
| Version | 1.2 |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Xbox 360 |
| Release date(s) | Windows: Xbox 360: |
| Genre(s) | Real-time strategy action-adventure Space Simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) |
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| Media/distribution | DVD |
Star Trek: Legacy is a video game released by Mad Doc Software for Windows-based PCs and Xbox 360. The game, a strategy/action and space combat game, was published by Bethesda Softworks. It was originally planned for release in the fall of 2006 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Star Trek.
In the game, players control a fleet (up to four ships) of various Federation starships through three different Star Trek eras in combat against various races from the Star Trek universe. It was released for the PC on 6 December 2006 in North America, and was released on 22 December 2006 in Europe. The Xbox 360 version was released on 15 December 2006[1] in the US and December 22, 2006 in Europe.
Game rankings indicate that fan and critical response to the PC game was strongly negative[2] while reviews for the Xbox 360 version are higher.
The PC version received an average vote of 4.8, and an average score of 58.0% on the GameRankings website.[3]
Contents |
The three eras of Star Trek: Enterprise, The Original Series and The Next Generation make up the single-player campaign. In each era, the player utilizes a fleet of Federation ships from that era (fleet size is up to four ships). The Federation goes up against the Romulans (ENT), Klingons (TOS), and the Borg Collective (TNG). The Next Generation era is inclusive of material from Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and TNG movies.
The eras that are covered in single player mode are:
An article on Eurogamer, posted on 7 August 2006, revealed that Derek Chester has collaborated with original Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana on the scripts of Star Trek: Legacy and Star Trek: Tactical Assault.[4] Fontana and Chester gave an interview on IGN, posted 29 November 2006, in which they reveal that the storyline incorporates the split between the Vulcan and Romulan races, known as the Sundering.[5]
The Enterprise Era
Episode I: Those in Need
The story begins with the player taking the role of Captain Jonathan Archer approximately four years after the conclusion of events in the Star Trek Enterprise television series. He is ordered by Starfleet to search for a missing Vulcan scientist in a nearby solar system. The Enterprise arrives at the solar system and begins searching the planets for clues when it is attacked by Romulans. It destroys a Romulan ship and forces its wingmen to disengage. Enterprise then finds a crippled Federation starship, the U.S.S. Coto, in a nearby nebula. After repairing the ship, the two vessels set out for a dead moon, where the Coto's captain last heard radio traffic. They arrive, and find a Vulcan ship under attack from a small fleet of Romulan warships. After the 3 ships fend them off, the Vulcan reveals that she is Commander T'Uerell, a researcher. She insists that Archer and the Enterprise follow her back to her research station, which she suspects is under attack from more Romulans.
Episode II: Breakwater
Two other Starfleet vessels join the Enterprise and Coto as they head to the research station, Gravenor. As anticipated, they find the station under attack from Romulans. After fending them off, T'Uerell docks with the station to evacuate her people, while the Enterprise and the rest of the fleet hold off the incoming Romulans. After numerous waves attack, Archer asks T'Uerell what is taking so long, but she doesn't answer. He asks again when an Armada of Romulan Warships bears down on them, but again she doesn't respond. Miraculously, they survive the onslaught. But then Archer notices T'Uerell's ship leaving and hails her again. Suddenly, Gravenor explodes, with the full crew compliment still on board. As T'Uerell departs, she tells Archer that she thanks him for defending her while she stole advanced technology from the station, but that she will not have mercy on him should they meet again. Archer gives chase, but his damaged ship quickly falls behind. Frustrated, he heads back to Earth.
Episode III: Be my Shepherd
A little bit later, the Enterprise and its fleet are ordered to escort three medical ships through a system where a viral epidemic had broken out. Several times the Romulans attack, but they are repulsed. The medical ships are able to deliver the antidote, and the epidemic is cured. They confirm, however, that this virus is artificial, and was deliberately put on the planets.
Episode IV: Poisoned Well
The Enterprise and its fleet then set out to find where the virus came from. They search a system which has an inhabited planet, but are shocked to find that the virus was put on that planet as well, and that all life has been wiped out. They continue searching the system and find ships harvesting the virus from gas giants. Suddenly, Romulan ships decloak and attack. The fleet destroys them, and then discovers several harvesting stations orbiting nearby planets. They destroy them, but one harvesting ship gets away with the toxin on board.
Episode V: Stirring the Hive
The Enterprise and its fleet are heading to a nearby starbase for another assignment when they are informed by Starfleet that there is a large-scale attack being mounted near Earth by an armada of Romulan warships. They divert course, and arrive just in time to stop the Romulans from destroying a starbase. They learn that the ship with the toxin had its contents distributed to three ships, and that the trio are being escorted by the Romulan fleet. After holding off another wave of ships, the base commander hatches a plan to stop them. He proposes using the nearby mining facilities, which still use nuclear fission, to overload and disable the Romulan ships. The Enterprise and its fleet successfully distract and lure the Romulan ships. As the ships with the toxin approach, the Enterprise and its fleet engage them from behind and disable their engines. The starbase then easily destroys the motionless ships. The remaining Romulan ships disengage, and the battle ends.
The Original Series Era The player then takes the role of Captain James T. Kirk in command of the Constitution-class Enterprise from the Original Series. In the heat of a war with the Klingons, Kirk is tasked with stealing a prototype Bird-of-Prey whose cloak is undetectable in order to investigate and destroy a Klingon super weapon. Kirk discovers that a Vulcan called T'Uerell is behind the Klingons' advanced super weapon but is unable to apprehend her before she escapes.
In TMP era, now-Admiral Kirk again encounters T'Uerell as well as some strange Klingon vessels. The Klingon ships have assaulted the Keteract Research Station which has been studying the mysterious Omega Particle. Upon engaging the Klingon ships, Kirk discovers the Klingon ships have actually been assimilated by the Borg. The warp signatures from the Klingon ships are backtracked to T'Uerell's base, where she has successfully installed the Omega Particle onto a Borg Sphere, granting the vessel immense power. Although Kirk is able to dispatch the Borg ship, once again T'Uerell is able to escape. As he contemplates his failure to capture T'Uerell, Kirk states, "Hopefully the next generation will be better."
The Next Generation Era During the final part of the story, the player takes the role of a young Jean-Luc Picard as acting captain of the USS Stargazer. The young Picard leads a small task force to protect a star system from stellar debris that threatens to destroy three inhabited planets. After successfully concluding those missions, the story skips forward in time to when Captain Picard is in command of the Galaxy-class Enterprise. The final missions take place later still, after Kathryn Janeway has returned from the Delta Quadrant with the USS Voyager and has been promoted to Admiral. Picard, now in command of the Sovereign-class Enterprise, and Janeway meet with T'Uerell who is accompanied by a pair of Borg Cubes and destroyers. T'Uerell's own ship has taken on certain Borg-like qualities and she reveals that she has taken control of the Borg collective in an effort to bring order to chaos. She demands the Federation's surrender, which Picard and Janeway refuse. T'Uerell then commands the Borg to attack Deep Space Nine, where Picard must first protect the station and then rally the Klingon and Romulan defenders into an allied fleet. After repelling another wave of Borg attackers, Picard and the allied fleet pursue T'Uerell where the final confrontation takes place. Eventually, T'Uerell's ship is destroyed after Picard collapses a wormhole through which she was summoning Borg reinforcements.
Players control a squadron of between one and four 3D modeled starships, and engage in battles against other starships. Starship movement is controlled with pitch, yaw, and forward propulsion (as well as a straight-line "warp" capability for rapid movement across a map environment), and movement occurs in a fully 3D "pizza box" shaped environment. The player operates a single starship at a time, controlling weapons fire, movement and repairs, and can switch between each of the starships in their squadron. Players also have the ability to change from a 3D display to a top-down 2D tactical display where you can issue specific commands to ships within a task force. For example, a player is able to order a ship to warp to a specific point for defense of a station or ship.
Viewpoint is controlled in several ways, with players able to "lock" onto an opponent to ensure that the opponent is always centered in the screen, to look straight forward, or to rotate camera around the selected ship. Starships are classified according to weapons strength and maneuverability, and assigned a set number of points that roughly corresponds to the strength of the ship. The player earns 'command points' through performance and progress through the game missions, and can select new ships to add to their squadron by expending these points.
In addition to the linear campaign there is a customizable skirmish mode. Players select the 'map' on which they play, the number of ships per squadron, the number of command points allowed, the race and allegiance of each AI player, and the make-up of their own squadron of ships.
Bethesda has released a Mission Editor tool allowing users to freely customize missions, available for download on the Bethesda website.[6]
Responses to the Xbox 360 version were mixed.[7] The Official Xbox 360 Magazine giving the game 8 out of 10 and saying Legacy is the "best space combat in ages." Game Informer gave the Xbox 360 version a 7.75 out of 10 saying Legacy is "...a great direction to take the Star Trek gaming franchise."
The Xbox 360 version also does not contain some of the perceived control difficulties of the PC version, which had resulted from mapping the Xbox controller onto a keyboard, and also the issues with game compatibility encountered by some users in the PC version. The reviews for the Xbox 360 version are higher because of the easier gameplay. Game Chronicles gave the game a 9.1/10 (the highest rating for the game). "The command interface is incredibly intuitive, which totally surprised me. I was expecting some massively complicated command structure (like in Lord of the Rings), but it only takes one mission (the tutorial) to catch on".[8]
GameSpot gave the game a 7/10 "All five Star Trek series and captains tied together into one game; captures the grandeur and feel of Star Trek combat; iconic starships are modeled in good detail."[9] The biggest difference between the two versions of the game is "The Xbox 360 controls are quite a bit more convenient than those on the PC. For one thing, the controls are actually all accurately documented in the manual and the game dialogues. The left stick controls the pitch and yaw of your ship and the right stick controls the camera. After just a few minutes of play, you'll find the whole arrangement very easy to manage."[10]
Although the only substantial difference between the Xbox and PC versions of the game were access exception issues and simplicity of controls, critical response to the PC game was often even more negative than the lukewarm response to the Xbox version,[11][12] with some reviewers unsatisfied with the control system,[2][13] only one camera setting that cannot zoom in or out, an inability to save more than one campaign at a time and inability to save within a mission. Complaints found in many reviews cite a buggy and slow multiplayer mode, the inability to set the exact make-up of AI fleets in skirmish mode, a 3D universe without a large z-axis, an inability to change the control scheme, and AI allies that will not automatically assign repairs.[13]
Although graphics were touted as a major selling point of the game by Bethesda,[14] glitches included mouse disappearing at random intervals during attempts to re-allocate energy, initiate repairs and choppy shadow images, and damage model errors. There are also camera problems. The player cannot choose captains or upgrade ships. This feature was advertised on the game's home page as late as a week before release, which claimed that "Customizable fleets, ships and captains: Victories earn Command Points, which are used to personalize your fleet, ships, and captains."[14]
Many gamers found the control problems especially galling, as there was considerable hype by the developers saying "Star Trek Legacy would be an epic game with easy to use controls." [15] Indeed, the game controls cannot even be reassigned to different keys on the keyboard. Nearly all reviews of the PC game have lambasted the controls: IGN called the game's controls "the first and most frequently occurring aggravation,"[16] while Action Trip said "one of the most annoying aspects of the PC version of Star Trek Legacy. [Is that] It suffers a great deal from unresponsive and unintuitive controls".[13] GameSpot noted that "What will make you pound your head in frustration are the controls, which are a nightmare to learn".[2] Players who are left-handed and use a left-handed mouse or use peripherals for disabled gamers have that much more difficulty or simply cannot play the game.
As the simulated environment is a 3D "pizza box" shape, the game creates the illusion that ships "stall" as they go too high.[16] Ships also cannot traverse the edge of a map. Reviewers complained about the inability of ships to crash into in-game objects. GameSpot referred to the game's "bumper-car physics," saying that "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".[2] IGN noted that "objects that collide simply repel each other, sometimes sending each other off in oblique directions, sometimes autopiloting to a new heading, and sometimes simply warping to a new facing altogether."[16] Indeed, although Bethesda's website claims that Legacy features "fully realized nebulas, wormholes, planets, and stars",[17] the "pint-size planets"[16] are almost the same size as the ships, and when ships collide with planets, they simply bounce off of them.[16] Action Trip said in its review that "Another mystifying fact about Star Trek Legacy.. is the painful lack of more solid collision detection.. Seeing the Enterprise bounce off a nearby planet like it was made of rubber...killed the ambiance".[13] Players are unable to move their ship in any direction but forward (i.e. reverse is not possible) and motion was restricted to five preset speeds: All Stop, 25%, 50%, 100% impulse engine speed and warp speed.
One indicator that the AI for friendly ships is inadequate is reflected in the fact that ships will not repair themselves no matter how much damage they take. Only after the player takes control of the ship can the ships repair themselves. Even so, the player must hold down the repair key, which sometimes causes players to lose their cursor. Mouse sensitivity is another problem; in the combat modes, even small touches make major shifts in the camera, which causes players to lose their view of an enemy ship. If mouse sensitivity is lowered, it becomes extremely difficult to use the strategic map. Settings also can not be changed within a campaign. To change the settings the mission has to be exited, the settings changed at the main menu and the mission restarted. Settings cannot be saved in the game in any way and must be reset each time the game is started.
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