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Star Trek fans that also happen to own a 360 have only been up until now only able to combine their pastimes by watching their Star Trek DVD’s on their 360. That all changed with Bethesda’s release of Star Trek Legacy, a port of the PC game of the same name. The PC version was popular, but it had some issues. So now that Star Trek Legacy has warped onto the 360 much to the console Trekkies delight, is it enough to whet their appetite? Should phasers be set to stun or shun?

The main hook with Star Trek Legacy is its comprehensive coverage of all of the Star Trek series under one title. You start with Captain Archer’s ship from ‘Enterprise’ and progress onto Captain Kirk’s original series Enterprise, then to Kirk’s refitted Enterprise from the movies. From there it’s onto Picard’s first ship (the Stargazer) and finally onto the Enterprise E, Picard’s final (or some would argue, ‘current’) ship. No other game has tied all series together in such a manner before, and with a single underlying plot that spans the generations. Some serious credibility has been added to the era spanning plot by using voiceovers from all 5 Star Trek captains narrating the cut scene’s and having comments bound to certain actions, for example ‘Divert all power to weapons’. This aspect to the game is catnip for Trekkies, and it all links together very nicely to deliver a movie like experience.
The story starts with Captain Archer assisting a Vulcan scientist called T'Uerell. From there, events unfold with a handful of missions available to be completed under each captain further advancing the plot centring on T'Uerell, all the while battling Romulans, Klingons and eventually Borg opponents. This is a lot take on, so you need help when it all kicks off.

In Star Trek Legacy, help comes in the form of a small fleet that you get to control that consists of the command vessel, and 3 other starships. You don’t start off with a full fleet, you must complete some missions in order to get some new vessels. When you complete missions, you get awarded command points which are used to buy new ships. The range of ships available to buy depends on the Star Trek era that you are in. The command vessel is always Enterprise (with the exception of the Stargazer missions) and always gets upgraded automatically when the era is advanced. As era’s advance, the cost of the new hardware increases accordingly as does the technology. For example, moving from the Archer to Kirk era will see polarised hull plating be replaced with shield technology. The number of command points you get for a mission depends on how successful you are. For example, completing secondary objectives and gaining achievements for not losing an allied ship will score you more points than just completing the main objectives alone.

The missions are varied in their objectives, but the achievement of those objectives frequently involves battling some bad guy. Once you are in the battle, you quickly lose sight of the fact that you have done this for the umpteenth time. As the game progresses, you get the chance to do more scanning, hailing and tractor beaming which adds some welcome variety even if it is a little late. The game feels a lot like Star Wars Rogue Squadron in regards to mission structure, which is not a bad thing as you get to do things like protect transports and destroy asteroids, and objective updates are frequently added during a mission. The only issue is that the missions can sometimes be quite long, and with no in mission save feature or checkpoint system, you will occasionally see a 30+ minute mission with no ability to save.

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