Star Trek is a series that, like Star Wars, will always live on in some form. Though the media and books may not branch off as far as Star Wars content does, you can bet that for years to come developers will be creating new adventures for our favorite captains and crews. Marking Star Trek's 40th anniversary, Bethesda and Mad Doc Software are teaming up to deliver a space simulation game developed for both the simulation veterans and casual Trek fans alike.

Have they succeeded? Almost, as Star Trek: Legacy has a great idea buried underneath plenty of anti-user-friendly gameplay. For fifteen levels you take over the role of Captains Archer, Kirk and Picard, as well as their respective eras of ships and enemies, from Romulan, Klingon and Borg. Captains Janeway and Sisko make appearances as well in the later parts of the game, comprising all of the captains from the five Star Trek series, with sections from the various films as well.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward, but only after you come to terms with the stubborn and often unresponsive controls. Legacy allows players to control their fleet of up to four ships manually, or by simply setting courses with the 2D tactical map, or by looking at a point and pressing A. The problem is that the game will often take control of your ships for you, or you'll accidentally fumble with the controls, resulting in your ship slowly doing something other than what you want. It quickly becomes a problem to make sure all your ships are under the same orders, or splitting them up into groups and making sure they stay on their own course. It's an unfortunate necessity that you have to continually bring up the 2D map grid and look at the direction markings for each ship, just to make sure they're on the right track.

Before I get too far ahead of myself though, the core gameplay of Legacy revolves around your fleet defending or rescuing other federation ships and engaging enemies, although several missions change the formula; for instance, the first Next Generation mission, Revelations, has Picard and crew defending planets from a huge cluster of asteroids. One of the high points of Legacy is the fact that just about every ability found in the films and shows is usable in the game, including tractor towing, long range sensors, warp drive and even self-destruct.

The problem is that the linear structure of the missions doesn't really allow you to play with all these toys; only a small cluster of missions make use of the tractor tow, and the way to go about objectives is very scripted, but you are given free range of space to travel and approach them from any angle. While the layout and missions may be very orderly, you are also given free range of ships - if you can afford it you can buy and use it. Big time Trekkers will love seeing all their favorite ships from every era, and this includes ships for other species for the multiplayer mode. A very interesting and useful aspect comes with ability to transfer power around your ships; you can put full energy on shields, engines or weapons, as well as place it somewhere in between. Likewise you can also target specific areas of enemy ships with Sub-System Targeting, but this isn't very reliable and often doesn't even show up for some reason.

Legacy isn't a bad game by any means, but it has to be one of the most hard to grasp games I've ever played. Many times I simply couldn't understand why specific things were happening; I'd fight with the game for control of my own fleet, weapons wouldn't fire when I had full power and no damage to weapons, and many missions contain objectives that are confusing to the point that you won't really understand what to do until you've failed. This isn't helped any by the fact that the graphics aren't exactly what you'd expect for a next-generation space simulation. Many textures aren't nearly as detailed as we all know the 360 is capable of, and during explosions huge chunks of space stations simply twirl through each other to the point that it's embarrassing to watch. However, special effects such as warp drive and physical damage to ships is particularly well done, but too many times the feeling that you're simply playing on a 2D space backdrop overcomes you and it doesn't feel very alive out there.

On the sound front you can expect some quality voice acting from Patrick Stewart, and William Shatner in full Kirk mode. Dozens of voices from not only Star Trek but also Bethesda's Oblivion title also make appearances, though their lines for in-game events such as battling or responses to commands are repetitive to put it mildly. The ships luckily sound very good, with some classic Trek sound effects to boot, and hearing all the different races of characters and crew members yelling during combat is quite a treat.

Surprisingly Legacy also has some of the most difficult Achievements of any game to date. Many of them must be obtained by beating missions in a very specific way, leading to some strict gameplay that reduces the amount of freedom you have if you're going for them. The hard part here is that there's no ability to select specific missions, so if you miss one and you choose not to replay the level then you'll have to go through the entire game again to nab it.

Star Trek: Legacy is a fun game and a very good effort for a Star Trek space title, but controls that you will inevitably be fumbling with make things hard to get into. It takes a lot of effort on the gamer's part to understand everything going on and figure out what's needed to be done, but when you do get the hang of things it can be extremely rewarding and gratifying, especially if you earn those difficult achievements! At the moment there's definitely nothing else on the 360 like this and Trek fans will want to get onboard with this one no matter what series they're fond of - now put full power to the perseverance drive and engage!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).