 | |||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Star Trek Legacy Xbox 360 Preview October 04, 2006 John JCal Callaham |
|
 |
|
| |
Summary: Mad Doc Software's hard at work polishing up Star Trek: Legacy for a Nov release. In this article JCal takes a look at the latest beta and gives us his first impressions...
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 2 ) |
To recap briefly, Star Trek: Legacy isn’t an RTS game and it’s not exactly an action shoot-em-up in space either. In some ways it’s kind of like a Rainbow Six title where you select your ships in your mini-fleet, upgrade them with different abilities, and then control them in a tactical action-like format. The result is a space based game that contains all of the cool action stuff you can handle but just enough strategy and thinking to keep the hardcore gamers occupied.
[image]
| <% print_image("01"); %> | <% print_image("02"); %> | <% print_image("03"); %> |
The single player campaign, as stated before, roughly goes through all of the time periods of the various Star Trek TV series and movies, ending after the events of the last Trek film Star Trek: Nemesis (we don’t want to give away too much about the storyline here; you will have to see how it uses the Trek timeline for yourself).
[image]
| <% print_image("04"); %> | <% print_image("05"); %> | <% print_image("06"); %> |
Much has been made of the voices of all five TV Trek captains in Star Trek: Legacy and indeed they are here in this game. It’s a good thing too because the cut scenes in our build were nothing but ship scenes with voice overs. Overall the actors do a solid job with their voice work although William Shatner does seem to not be putting 100 percent of his role as Captain Kirk (the final game will have video interviews with all five Trek captains but these interviews were not in our Xbox 360 beta build).
[image]
| <% print_image("07"); %> | <% print_image("08"); %> | <% print_image("09"); %> |
As we said, the game gives you up to four ships to command and in the single player game you have your choice of ships from the Federation as you go through the timeline of the storyline, from the original NX-01 commanded by Captain Jonathan Archer all the way up to Voyager’s Captain Kathryn Janeway.
[image]
| <% print_image("10"); %> | <% print_image("11"); %> | <% print_image("12"); %> |
As you move through the campaign and accomplish the missions ( destroying enemy ships, escort missions and so on) you get points that you can use to purchase new ships or upgrade your existing ships with better weapons, shields and more. In battle you can use the controller to repair your ships, altering the default setting to concentrate on, say, repairing your shields more than your engines. You can also alter where your ship’s power source can go for your ships under your command, putting more power to the engines, Captain….they canna take much more…oh, sorry…switched into Scotty mode for a second there.
[image]
| <% print_image("13"); %> | <% print_image("14"); %> | <% print_image("15"); %> |
| Page 2 | Page:: ( 2 / 2 ) |
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.
[image]
| <% print_image("16"); %> | <% print_image("17"); %> | <% print_image("18"); %> |
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.
[image]
| <% print_image("19"); %> | <% print_image("20"); %> | <% print_image("21"); %> |
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).
[image]
| <% print_image("22"); %> | <% print_image("23"); %> | <% print_image("24"); %> |
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.
[image]
| <% print_image("25"); %> | <% print_image("26"); %> | <% print_image("27"); %> |