14 DAY TRIAL // I’ve played The Last Federation for about 10 hours before I finally understood that the science-fiction series it reminded me of the most was the old Andromeda series, which was constantly on TV when I was younger but which I never followed in detail.
The universe was based on an unpublished story from Gene Roddenberry, who also developed the initial version of Star Trek, and featured Kevin Sorbo as the main character, leading a crew of very different personalities across worlds as he sought to rebuild civilization and deal with a series of threats that could engulf the entire known universe.
It ran for five seasons and never became mainstream because of a somewhat convoluted mythology and poor production values that sometimes affected the strong premise, which had Dylan Hunt as the only survivor of an organization that once maintained peace across three galaxies.
Andromeda had a lot of politics and diplomacy intertwined with the inevitable action and ship combat sequences, and those were the ones I was mostly interested in when I watched an episode or two.
The Last Federation is a game about a fractured solar system where eight races compete for supremacy and one member of a race that has been wiped out needs to create one last federation in order to make sure that no one else suffers the same fate.
The game has ship-based combat, but I spend most of my time trying to deal with the needs of the various factions, improving relations and spreading tech around in order to try and reach the final goal.
The Last Federation is a little more constrained than Andromeda but it has much more depth when it comes to the races and the ways they interact with each other and the player himself.
But the main element that links the two space fiction universes is a feeling that it takes a lot of work to be an idealist.
Both Andromeda and The Last Federation see the protagonist strive to create a sort of utopian political setup, an organization that can protect all its members and make sure that no other atrocities can take place.
But the video game, by actually allowing the player to choose how to approach the objective and how to deal with the various races, manages to clearly show how much work is involved with such a lofty goal and how small mistakes can scuttle the entire effort.