"Star Trek: Legacy" boldly goes where no video game has gone before by including the actual voices of all five Star Fleet captains over the years — James T. Kirk to Jonathan Archer.
Too bad all that talent wasn't put to better use. Awkward controls and uninspired gameplay make this new E10+ rated, $59.99 title for the Xbox 360 and the PC a rather dull romp in the holodeck.
While "Legacy" will appeal to the worldwide army of Trekkers, the rest of us might be better off avoiding this game.
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"Legacy" is quite simple in concept: you control a task force of ships and battle Romulans, those pesky Borg cubes and other enemies in the Alpha Quadrant.
The gameplay, however, is cumbersome as you switch targets, adjust the speed of your impulse engines, beam away teams to derelict ships, redirect power to the deflectors or weapons systems, among other tasks.
Did I mention you have to do all of this while steering around and trying to destroy the enemy?
This complexity makes sense to a point — you are controlling an advanced, futuristic starship, after all.
But, with all that's going on, you rarely get a sense of the high-adrenaline space fights seen in the movies and the TV shows.
Battles generally unfold like some kind of slow-motion underwater lumbering dance between massive blue whales.
It quickly gets boring to watch this ballet of hulking metal interspersed with a few glowing phaser blasts and photon torpedo volleys.
There's a nice array of vessels to pilot, from the first NX-01 to the battle-ready USS Defiant from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."
Yet the three-dimensional graphics are fairly average for an Xbox 360 game. (It looked far better on my high-definition TV than the PC version did on my computer screen, however).
The spacecraft models are nicely detailed with glowing warp nacelles and other effects. Lingering fires and other damage from battles are another nice touch. Interesting backdrops include colorful, far-flung celestial bodies, dangerous nebulae and other astral anomalies.
So, yeah, "Legacy" includes the voices of Kirk (William Shatner), Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), Benjamin Lafayette Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Archer (Scott Bakula).
Perhaps it was all the developers could afford. The game has some fun moments, but as a longtime 'Trek' fan, this isn't the breathtaking legacy I was hoping for.
Two stars out of four.
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