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This thread has been linked to the game 'Star Trek Legacy'.
What annoys me about Star Trek: Legacy is not so much that it's a bad game - it isn't. In fact, what irks me is that there's clearly a good game in there, it's just massively marred by some annoying bugs. The premise behind the game is sound - you're put in charge of a fleet ships from the Star Trek shows Enterprise, The Original Series and The Next Generation. Not all at once, mind you - instead you play through eighteen or so missions, each set during a different era.
These missions generally involve shooting the living daylights out of other ships, or perhaps protecting a particular location from enemy invaders. You start out with the one ship in your armada, though as the game progresses you're given more 'command points' so you can add up to four different ships to your fleet. The missions feature voice-overs by Scott Bakula, William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and other 'Trek stars, although you never see the characters on-screen. Instead, the 'cutscenes' just have you watching your ship move along. Which is a tad odd, but it doesn't ruin the game.
Ship to ship combat, which is the meat of the game, is a fairly uncomplicated but enjoyable affair. You don't view the action from inside your ship, but from outside - the left joystick being used to move your ship, the right moving the camera. Attack an enemy is a matter of getting your ship pointing towards the enemy - or away from the enemy if you have rear weapons - and firing your phasers or photon torpedoes at your foes. Complete with sound effects from the movies and series. You can also target individual systems if you like, a technique that comes in handy in the game's multiplayer mode if you want to take your opponent apart piece by piece. Combat is usually fairly slow and paced, since the ships you fly aren't that maneuverable, although smaller ships do have an advantage over bigger ones in that they can zip around a bigger ship and take it apart.
The AI usually does a decent job of controlling your other ships - you have the choice of either having them attack your own targets and follow your movements, or to go about their own devices. Strangely, the one thing the AI captains aren't good at is repairing their own ships. If you see them being damaged, you have to take control of them and order them to repair their craft. Quite why a starship captain would see flames coming off ship and not think to repair it is never explained. Maybe you've been lumbered with recruits from the Starfleet's Very Special division. But it's only one of the many bugs and bugbears that stop Legacy from reaching it's potential.
Want another? Well, Legacy sports some excellent graphics - even on a standard definition TV the starships look excellent. Any damage to your ship is also shown - bits of your engines come off, holes appear in the ship and so forth. The odd thing is that you rarely see any of the enemy ships showing damage. The PC version - which is apparently considered worse than the 360 version - has a configuration setting to enable enemy ship damage. But there's no way of enabling it on the 360.
'But', you might think 'that's hardly a game-ruining bug' and it isn't. Butit's just one of many flaws and bugs to be found in the game. Aside from the ones I've mentioned so far, the 360 version of the crashes on a regular basis. I know that 360 games sometimes do crash, but I've only had one other game crash on me, Saints Row, and that's only happened once during the six months I've had it. Star Trek: Legacy on the other hand, has crashed four times in the week that I've rented it. And given that the game doesn't auto save, a crash means that you have to replay the whole mission, no matter how far you were into it. Oh, and there's the multiplayer. The multiplayer game is enjoyable when it works - not least because, as in Legacy's skirmish mode, you can pit ships from different eras against each other. But it takes about six attempts to get a multiplayer match going - sometimes the host gets disconnected, or the program throws up vague network error messages. And no, this isn't a problem with my connection - I've had no problems with playing any other 360 or XBox game online.
Star Trek: Legacy is a game that, if properly patched, could be really suck up your time. It's fun when it's working, but just when you're having fun, a nasty bug crops up and you find yourself wanting to smash the disc into a million tiny pieces. There has been one patch so far, but it's still not fixed the game's problems. In its current state, this is worth renting, but until the bugs are fixed I can't advise you buying. It's just a shame this game got released in a buggy and unfinished state.
These missions generally involve shooting the living daylights out of other ships, or perhaps protecting a particular location from enemy invaders. You start out with the one ship in your armada, though as the game progresses you're given more 'command points' so you can add up to four different ships to your fleet. The missions feature voice-overs by Scott Bakula, William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and other 'Trek stars, although you never see the characters on-screen. Instead, the 'cutscenes' just have you watching your ship move along. Which is a tad odd, but it doesn't ruin the game.
Ship to ship combat, which is the meat of the game, is a fairly uncomplicated but enjoyable affair. You don't view the action from inside your ship, but from outside - the left joystick being used to move your ship, the right moving the camera. Attack an enemy is a matter of getting your ship pointing towards the enemy - or away from the enemy if you have rear weapons - and firing your phasers or photon torpedoes at your foes. Complete with sound effects from the movies and series. You can also target individual systems if you like, a technique that comes in handy in the game's multiplayer mode if you want to take your opponent apart piece by piece. Combat is usually fairly slow and paced, since the ships you fly aren't that maneuverable, although smaller ships do have an advantage over bigger ones in that they can zip around a bigger ship and take it apart.
The AI usually does a decent job of controlling your other ships - you have the choice of either having them attack your own targets and follow your movements, or to go about their own devices. Strangely, the one thing the AI captains aren't good at is repairing their own ships. If you see them being damaged, you have to take control of them and order them to repair their craft. Quite why a starship captain would see flames coming off ship and not think to repair it is never explained. Maybe you've been lumbered with recruits from the Starfleet's Very Special division. But it's only one of the many bugs and bugbears that stop Legacy from reaching it's potential.
Want another? Well, Legacy sports some excellent graphics - even on a standard definition TV the starships look excellent. Any damage to your ship is also shown - bits of your engines come off, holes appear in the ship and so forth. The odd thing is that you rarely see any of the enemy ships showing damage. The PC version - which is apparently considered worse than the 360 version - has a configuration setting to enable enemy ship damage. But there's no way of enabling it on the 360.
'But', you might think 'that's hardly a game-ruining bug' and it isn't. Butit's just one of many flaws and bugs to be found in the game. Aside from the ones I've mentioned so far, the 360 version of the crashes on a regular basis. I know that 360 games sometimes do crash, but I've only had one other game crash on me, Saints Row, and that's only happened once during the six months I've had it. Star Trek: Legacy on the other hand, has crashed four times in the week that I've rented it. And given that the game doesn't auto save, a crash means that you have to replay the whole mission, no matter how far you were into it. Oh, and there's the multiplayer. The multiplayer game is enjoyable when it works - not least because, as in Legacy's skirmish mode, you can pit ships from different eras against each other. But it takes about six attempts to get a multiplayer match going - sometimes the host gets disconnected, or the program throws up vague network error messages. And no, this isn't a problem with my connection - I've had no problems with playing any other 360 or XBox game online.
Star Trek: Legacy is a game that, if properly patched, could be really suck up your time. It's fun when it's working, but just when you're having fun, a nasty bug crops up and you find yourself wanting to smash the disc into a million tiny pieces. There has been one patch so far, but it's still not fixed the game's problems. In its current state, this is worth renting, but until the bugs are fixed I can't advise you buying. It's just a shame this game got released in a buggy and unfinished state.
Nice review. I was disappointed too, hopefully they'll listen to the complaints and create something far better next time.
What annoys me about Star Trek: Legacy is not so much that it's a bad game - it isn't. In fact, what irks me is that there's clearly a good game in there, it's just massively marred by some annoying bugs. The premise behind the game is sound - you're put in charge of a fleet ships from the Star Trek shows Enterprise, The Original Series and The Next Generation. Not all at once, mind you - instead you play through eighteen or so missions, each set during a different era.
These missions generally involve shooting the living daylights out of other ships, or perhaps protecting a particular location from enemy invaders. You start out with the one ship in your armada, though as the game progresses you're given more 'command points' so you can add up to four different ships to your fleet. The missions feature voice-overs by Scott Bakula, William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and other 'Trek stars, although you never see the characters on-screen. Instead, the 'cutscenes' just have you watching your ship move along. Which is a tad odd, but it doesn't ruin the game.
Ship to ship combat, which is the meat of the game, is a fairly uncomplicated but enjoyable affair. You don't view the action from inside your ship, but from outside - the left joystick being used to move your ship, the right moving the camera. Attack an enemy is a matter of getting your ship pointing towards the enemy - or away from the enemy if you have rear weapons - and firing your phasers or photon torpedoes at your foes. Complete with sound effects from the movies and series. You can also target individual systems if you like, a technique that comes in handy in the game's multiplayer mode if you want to take your opponent apart piece by piece. Combat is usually fairly slow and paced, since the ships you fly aren't that maneuverable, although smaller ships do have an advantage over bigger ones in that they can zip around a bigger ship and take it apart.
The AI usually does a decent job of controlling your other ships - you have the choice of either having them attack your own targets and follow your movements, or to go about their own devices. Strangely, the one thing the AI captains aren't good at is repairing their own ships. If you see them being damaged, you have to take control of them and order them to repair their craft. Quite why a starship captain would see flames coming off ship and not think to repair it is never explained. Maybe you've been lumbered with recruits from the Starfleet's Very Special division. But it's only one of the many bugs and bugbears that stop Legacy from reaching it's potential.
Want another? Well, Legacy sports some excellent graphics - even on a standard definition TV the starships look excellent. Any damage to your ship is also shown - bits of your engines come off, holes appear in the ship and so forth. The odd thing is that you rarely see any of the enemy ships showing damage. The PC version - which is apparently considered worse than the 360 version - has a configuration setting to enable enemy ship damage. But there's no way of enabling it on the 360.
'But', you might think 'that's hardly a game-ruining bug' and it isn't. Butit's just one of many flaws and bugs to be found in the game. Aside from the ones I've mentioned so far, the 360 version of the crashes on a regular basis. I know that 360 games sometimes do crash, but I've only had one other game crash on me, Saints Row, and that's only happened once during the six months I've had it. Star Trek: Legacy on the other hand, has crashed four times in the week that I've rented it. And given that the game doesn't auto save, a crash means that you have to replay the whole mission, no matter how far you were into it. Oh, and there's the multiplayer. The multiplayer game is enjoyable when it works - not least because, as in Legacy's skirmish mode, you can pit ships from different eras against each other. But it takes about six attempts to get a multiplayer match going - sometimes the host gets disconnected, or the program throws up vague network error messages. And no, this isn't a problem with my connection - I've had no problems with playing any other 360 or XBox game online.
Star Trek: Legacy is a game that, if properly patched, could be really suck up your time. It's fun when it's working, but just when you're having fun, a nasty bug crops up and you find yourself wanting to smash the disc into a million tiny pieces. There has been one patch so far, but it's still not fixed the game's problems. In its current state, this is worth renting, but until the bugs are fixed I can't advise you buying. It's just a shame this game got released in a buggy and unfinished state.
These missions generally involve shooting the living daylights out of other ships, or perhaps protecting a particular location from enemy invaders. You start out with the one ship in your armada, though as the game progresses you're given more 'command points' so you can add up to four different ships to your fleet. The missions feature voice-overs by Scott Bakula, William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and other 'Trek stars, although you never see the characters on-screen. Instead, the 'cutscenes' just have you watching your ship move along. Which is a tad odd, but it doesn't ruin the game.
Ship to ship combat, which is the meat of the game, is a fairly uncomplicated but enjoyable affair. You don't view the action from inside your ship, but from outside - the left joystick being used to move your ship, the right moving the camera. Attack an enemy is a matter of getting your ship pointing towards the enemy - or away from the enemy if you have rear weapons - and firing your phasers or photon torpedoes at your foes. Complete with sound effects from the movies and series. You can also target individual systems if you like, a technique that comes in handy in the game's multiplayer mode if you want to take your opponent apart piece by piece. Combat is usually fairly slow and paced, since the ships you fly aren't that maneuverable, although smaller ships do have an advantage over bigger ones in that they can zip around a bigger ship and take it apart.
The AI usually does a decent job of controlling your other ships - you have the choice of either having them attack your own targets and follow your movements, or to go about their own devices. Strangely, the one thing the AI captains aren't good at is repairing their own ships. If you see them being damaged, you have to take control of them and order them to repair their craft. Quite why a starship captain would see flames coming off ship and not think to repair it is never explained. Maybe you've been lumbered with recruits from the Starfleet's Very Special division. But it's only one of the many bugs and bugbears that stop Legacy from reaching it's potential.
Want another? Well, Legacy sports some excellent graphics - even on a standard definition TV the starships look excellent. Any damage to your ship is also shown - bits of your engines come off, holes appear in the ship and so forth. The odd thing is that you rarely see any of the enemy ships showing damage. The PC version - which is apparently considered worse than the 360 version - has a configuration setting to enable enemy ship damage. But there's no way of enabling it on the 360.
'But', you might think 'that's hardly a game-ruining bug' and it isn't. Butit's just one of many flaws and bugs to be found in the game. Aside from the ones I've mentioned so far, the 360 version of the crashes on a regular basis. I know that 360 games sometimes do crash, but I've only had one other game crash on me, Saints Row, and that's only happened once during the six months I've had it. Star Trek: Legacy on the other hand, has crashed four times in the week that I've rented it. And given that the game doesn't auto save, a crash means that you have to replay the whole mission, no matter how far you were into it. Oh, and there's the multiplayer. The multiplayer game is enjoyable when it works - not least because, as in Legacy's skirmish mode, you can pit ships from different eras against each other. But it takes about six attempts to get a multiplayer match going - sometimes the host gets disconnected, or the program throws up vague network error messages. And no, this isn't a problem with my connection - I've had no problems with playing any other 360 or XBox game online.
Star Trek: Legacy is a game that, if properly patched, could be really suck up your time. It's fun when it's working, but just when you're having fun, a nasty bug crops up and you find yourself wanting to smash the disc into a million tiny pieces. There has been one patch so far, but it's still not fixed the game's problems. In its current state, this is worth renting, but until the bugs are fixed I can't advise you buying. It's just a shame this game got released in a buggy and unfinished state.