Star Trek Legacy Xbox 360 Preview

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In terms of controlling the ships in Star Trek: Legacy, the Xbox 360 controller uses the left stick to move the ship up and down or left and right, with the right stick used for moving the camera around. The pad is used to switch in between control of the various ships under your command with the upper right trigger used to targeting enemy ships. You can use full impulse, or if a target is too far away you can warp more quickly to your target (although it will take a couple of moments to recharge the engines to warp again). Phasers and photon torpedoes are controlled by the main right and left triggers, respectively.

In our battles against the enemy AI in the game we were surprised to see enemy vessels actually warp away sometimes while they were being pounded by our team’s volleys. Overall the control seemed fairly smooth and instinctive in our play test of the game. We were worried that the Xbox 360 controller would not be the optimal way to control the game but were pleasantly surprised at how instinctive it became to switch between repair, power allocation, and weapons control. We hope that the PC version will also be as well handled.

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While the single player campaign is fun, most people will likely gravitate to the skirmish and multiplayer portions of the game. Star Trek: Legacy has four multiplayer modes; simple deathmatch, planet conquer (the name says it all) co-op wave (team up against waves of enemies) and escort (one team protects a ship moving to a point on the map while the other attempts to destroy the ship). It’s here that players will be able to play with lots of Klingon, Romulan and Borg ships in addition to the Federation. All the familiar ships from the TV series and movies are in the multiplayer/skirmish portion along with all new ship designs from Mad Doc. Have you ever wondered if Captain Kirk’s original Enterprise could take out a Borg cube? Well with this game, now you can.

The Xbox 360 beta build was playing on a TV with just a standard resolution so the graphical look of the game was a bit muted in our play test so we think that it will look a lot better on an HD resolution set (and of course the PC version will have even better resolutions). Still the ship models had a lot of details and visually the game is a treat with impressive weapons effects and explosions. Ships sustain specific damage to the hulls and engine nacelles in the game with plasma flowing out when under damage. Here we should also mention the music in the game which has a typical Star Trek operatic quality (unfortunately the familiar Trek movie and TV themes are not part of the game).

It’s been a long wait but our play time with Star Trek Legacy seems to be worth it. With an intriguing storyline that spans all of Trek history, a unique way to look at the space combat genre, solid graphics and fun multiplayer and skirmish gameplay. We will be checking out the final versions of the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game to give a final review when they both ship to stores in early November.