Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force

April 23, 2002

Price: $10 (full retail packaging)

The bridge of Voyager

Elite Force was given rave reviews upon its release--high marks belying the fact that the game never really met with popular approval at the cash register so the release of an expansion pack and an upcoming sequel (based on the same Quake III technology) almost makes sense despite its limited market appeal. Almost.

While many gamers who never played Elite Force remember it as a good game because of the press, that, and an already over-exploited franchise tie-in are not exactly great odds in favor of churning out a popular hit. Indeed, the expansion pack was a portent of this.

Instead of continuing the single player game, it catered to die-hard Trek fans by delivering an interactive "fact-sheet" where fans could navigate around the starship Voyager and read technical specs and the crew's personal logs (as well as play some very specific mini-games that revolved around a single episode of the show, tantamount to an inside joke). Such a product would have been acceptable if sold as a stand alone game and marketed as such, the latest and prettiest piece of digitized Trek lore, rather than an expansion to Elite Force.

As a game, Elite Force is divided into two distinct parts--so much so, that there are separate icons for the single and multiplayer games placed on the "desktop." This causes a minor annoyance at installation because the game needs to be configured twice though it does allow the user to easily set faster (lower detail) graphic options for the more frantic multiplayer gaming.

The single player game has an impressive story line that not only manages to present a credible new threat but to weave in all the various species that inhabit the Trek universe, whether they originate in the Delta Quadrant or not. Klingons, Borg, Species 8472--not only is everyone accounted for, it is done very seamlessly and with style.

Though sometimes hailed as the best shooter since Half-Life, as the player can occasionally interfere with scripted events, these are fairly inconsequential, and at times, frustrating to the point where the player does not care to get it "right" because of it.

Expect to spends a lot of time in the transporter
-room waiting for your team to show up

Early in the game, there is a scene where [something technical sounding] is going explode and the player has to get to a console and press a button to activate a force field, lest Voyager be destroyed. If you wait to nearly the last second (and indeed, you have a second or less to press the button), the force field will go through its various initiation cycles (which last a second, if not longer) and shield the explosion, you can achieve the "good" path: allowing a crew member to escape to safety a split second before the force field goes up, rather than being vaporized--and just in time to save the ship. It took me many quick saves and reloads my first time through to accomplish this, as the timing was far from intuitive. I let him die on subsequent games as there was no real reward for your luck or persistence--if I wanted to play that kind of game, I would have bought the old Laserdisc classic, Dragon's Lair.

In fact, more often than not, it resembles the old "rail shooter" (a game type where the player has no control over movement and merely had to point at targets as they appear) because of the Star Trek era of technology. Though the sometimes highly interactive environments allow for puzzles a few steps more complex than other games of this kind, this only alerts the player as to just how linear Elite Force is. While there is one level in the game where stealth is advised (though the mission can be accomplished more easily with brute force, with no penalty for doing so), enemies tend to beam in, randomly and all around the player--meaning that not only is enemy AI or artificial intelligence unnecessary--so is PI, or player intelligence, as there is no need or advantage to trying to position yourself or your teammates strategically.

Teammates were hailed as the best addition to Elite Force, probably because the ones those of Daikatana, released about the same time, were so horrendously bad. In Elite Force they move and fire well (though their weapons do only a fraction of the damage that yours do) sometimes employing a variety of weapons, themselves, which is adds to the visual appeal of the effects, at least. They do make for more interesting missions (though the routine of having to free them after they have been captured grows tiresome), but the presence of dozens upon dozens of elevators in the game often makes them a liability. To Elite Force's credit, they all manage to get on the elevator without colliding, but this is because prior to getting on, they all freeze in place and slowly walk, one at a time, to take their place on the elevator. This can take over a minute, in some cases.

Worse, teammates apparently never die, no matter how many times they are mauled by Borg or how many photon grenades accidentally land on their heads--unless the game has scripted for them to die. This is confusing because going into the game, you are not aware of that (friendly fire on Voyager will end the game, prematurely, friendly fire on an away mission will make a teammate complain, and complain some more, though players might be hesitant to test it because of the earlier precedent). Although some of the scripted events for teammates' deaths are preventable, and obviously so, in other cases, players might be loading and reloading to play the same sequence over and over again in a futile attempt to save a teammate fated to die, regardless of the players actions. Misleading cues and hints abound in Elite Force: the final enemy of the game implies that you need to outsmart it, when the fact is, that you just have to survive long enough to pour every round of available ammunition into it--though most players will spend several minutes inspecting the level, looking for a heavy object of some sort and discovering that there is no way to make it collapse onto the foe below.

Cut scenes are rendered real-time and are letter-boxed

Weaponry in Elite Force is a mixed bag. There are the standard nine weapons, however, there are only two types of ammo for them--energy consoles that replenish the Federation phaser and photon weaponry, and crystals that power the alien weapons that you find. The Federation stock are far more entertaining to use because they result in the classic Trek "vaporizing" special effect, while only one of the alien devices manages to be that visually appealing, a bizarre arc-welding tool that leaves residual sparks wherever the player aims it. However, the use of two ammo pools discourages the use of many weapons after newer ones are found, as many of their functions are similar if not identical and seldom does it appear that one weapon is more effective than another.

This all changes in the multiplayer game where each weapon has its own ammo source. As Elite Force uses the Quake III engine, there are a variety of "Holomatch" options (before a level begins, you can select an option to have it fade in from a "holodeck" environment with the classic yellow grid--a nice visual touch) for gaming on the internet, with a variety of team and capture the flag type activities. Bots, computer controlled players, can also be added (or even allow for a multiplayer game run by yourself, without an internet connection) and they manage to play adequately, if not be particularly able flag runners. It is easy to select from a myriad of games on the internet, all though convenient in-game menus.

The Elite Force crowd tends to not have the skill of the Quake III community, and the weapons are far more forgiving than those of Counter-Strike--as here, even an aimed headshot from a compressed-phasor rifle will not result in an instant kill. This makes Elite Force an excellent online game for beginners who would otherwise feel hopelessly outclassed.

Elite Force is a beautiful looking game and runs admirably on most hardware--in fact, many users will be able to play it in high resolution with full screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) when games using less efficient engines than that of Quake III would balk at doing that. Strangely, the multiplayer levels are often more beautiful and complex than their single player peers, though it seems that the "gamma" brightness levels are locked in that half of the game (perhaps a clumsy method of keeping some players from gaining an unfair advantage) that render some of the Borg levels a bit too dark.

Player models are done generally well, as was the crew of Voyager--although special attention was given to the Seven of Nine character's model. Despite having probably twice the number of polygons as any other character, and a great attention to detail (all other female crewmembers share the same lower half of their anatomy, while Seven was constructed individually), she walks like a mincing satyr; there is just no other way to describe it. I mention this, because Jeri Ryan (who plays the character on Voyager) did not originally do the voice for Seven in the game. Later, she did record the lines and the new "voice pack" was touted as a feature in the expansion pack--although later released in a 20mb patch for all owners of Elite Force. This preoccupation with Seven has led to some very odd remarks by reviewers over the past year, such as this one at GamesDomain.com:

Is Elite Force a great game? No, it is not--at least not to the degree that many reviews would lead people to believe. Is it a great game for $10? YES! No arguments there. It might not be worthy of a sequel (as the genre does not appeal to the majority of the Trek franchise's fans), but your money would be well spent on this bargain bin gem. Although the single player game is on the short side, it is long enough to be a fun diversion and the multiplayer options are varied enough to amuse a veteran, for a time, but is an especially good beginning for those new to the "fragging" scene online.

by Richard Leader

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