Star Trek: Elite Force II

PC review by Matt Wadleigh, published on Monday 30th June 2003

A short time ago, in a galaxy not too far away, there were just a few good games based on the Star Trek license. ”How could this be?” cried Star Trek fans, who saw the ultimate potential for the Star Trek license to be manipulated. It certainly wasn’t from a lack of effort from developers. Over the years, different developers and publishers lost small fortunes on Star Trek titles that ultimately ended up bombing at retail, mostly due to cruddy gameplay or very buggy releases.

Enter Activision, who was able to pick up the license, and began working on a different type of Star Trek game: a first person shooter. Combining the squad based style of Rainbow Six with the trigger-happy nature of Quake 3, Activision created Elite Force, based on the rather unsuccessful Voyager series. Despite what it was based on, the game sold well and received critical claim, and a sequel was eventually made. Fortunately enough, Activision seems to have struck gold, because the sequel is just as good as the original.

Elite Force 2 begins with the Starship Voyager captured by the Borg. Fans of the series will realize that this was actually a part of one of the last episodes of the TV show of the same name. You play as Lieutenant Alex Munro, a member of Voyager’s Hazard Team, an elite force of security team members that deal with hostile situations that the ship faced on her rough journey through the Delta Quadrant. The Delta Quadrant was an uncharted, hostile territory Voyager was brought to in a freak accident, and because of the fact that the ship was 70,000 light years from Earth, the security team had to be created.

The game opens up with you actually inside a Borg Sphere. Voyager was manipulating the Borg by going into it, so that they could hitch a ride through an advanced Borg conduit in space that would bring them back to the Alpha Quadrant in minutes. The Borg are a species that are openly hostile to humanity and every other race in the galaxy, utilizing ruthless tactics to assimilate people into their collective, taking away their past and filling them with all sorts of technology instead of vital organs and blood. Because of the technology in them, the Borg are able to adapt to weapons fire, thus making direct battle against them often futile.

Because of this, the Borg aren’t too happy about Voyager using them, so they capture the ship and suppress it with a dampening field. It’s necessary for the ships survival that the dampening field be removed, so Lieutenant Tuvok, the ships head of security, calls on the Hazard Team to go in and find a way to take out the dampening field. Once inside, all hell breaks loose, and it’s up to the team to remain calm and controlled during the situation. After you complete the mission, you return home to Earth and receive your assignments. After a mission or two as a teacher, you get recruited by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. The Hazard Team is regrouped, and you begin missions helping save lives and investigate dangerous situations throughout the Alpha Quadrant. The story after that is filled with as much deception and intrigue as an episode of Star Trek, but it never comes off as over the top or geeky, which is a good thing.

The great thing about the game is that it’s varied. A lot of the tasks that you must complete as Munro are your standard tasks found in other games, such as finding a console and pushing a button, but because of the settings in the game, developer Ritual Entertainment was able to make this seem much less tedious and repetitive. Sometimes, you’ll need to crawl through mazes of Jefferies tubes to find a terminal. Other times, you’ll need to utilize the low gravity of a ship to jump over environmental obstacles, all coming together to make Elite Force 2 very fun and exciting.

One particularly cool feature with the game is the tricorder. For those who don’t know, these are the Palm Pilots of the future. They allow the user to do a lot of different things though. First, you can scan any object in the world and get some real-time statistics on it. Other times, you may need to see how stable a bridge or a platform is, so you can switch the tricorder to structural integrity mode and see where the weakest parts are and avoid them. Other abilities of the tricorder are to sense electricity and to see poison gas.

As the title is a team-based game, it’s very nice to see that Activision incorporated some very intelligent AI. There are several times where you’ll be relying on their firepower to protect you, and they do a nice job of doing it. One thing I liked, but others may not, is the fact that I don’t have to directly order my teammates into battle, it happens through cutscenes. This makes it much easier to play the game without having to worry about management decisions and such. Speaking of fire power, I’m also happy to report that all of the weapons in the game fit nicely. Nope, there are no bullets or anything here, this is set in the Star Trek universe, so all the weapons are energy based. You start off with just the traditional Star Trek Phaser, but soon you gain Compression and Assault Rifles, I-Mods, and a few other weapons depending on the current mission, of which there are eleven in total.

The Hazard Team’s AI is on par with the Enemy AI. The enemies that you encounter are all varied and will do a nice job of grouping up on you, flanking you, and sometimes even running for backup. And each enemy reacts differently to weapons. The Borg for example adjust to your weaponry, so you need to use the I-Mod to attack them so that they won’t adapt to it. However, Romulans that you battle are susceptible to practically anything you shoot at them. This system helps you constantly utilize all of your weapons, instead of relying on one very powerful weapon like in some FPS games. The only thing wrong with the weapons is the bizarre, nearly mind-boggling fact that you can’t shoot while leaning, something most FPS games have allowed you to do for years.

Graphically, Elite Force 2 stumbles a little bit. The game runs on an enhanced version of the Quake 3 engine. I was hoping for a bit more from the title, but sadly, the game doesn’t look as good as it could. At least the character models look pretty good, with their lips synchronized to the voice-overs done, with solid animations to boot. The game didn’t even stutter when set up in high resolution with all the settings cranked up, but even then all of the games features looked a bit subdued. A lot of the games basic textures repeat over and over again and the starships look a little grainy. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not an ugly game at all, but it most certainly could look much better. Another graphical feature, one I actually liked, was that the in game cutscenes were done in real-time using the game engine.

For the flaws in the graphics, the game makes up for it with some stellar voice-overs. Patrick Stewart voices Captain Picard, and Tim Russ was kind enough to voice Tuvok. Both were regulars on the TV show, and it’s really nice that they were secured for the video game. The other voices in the game are equally well done. Especially impressive is the dialogue, as it’s not nearly as stiff and boring as some of the dialogue found in the televisions shows. The music is fitting for the game, but a little weak at times. Often during the game you hardly notice it playing.

But what good would a team-based game like this be without solid multiplayer support? Nothing, and fortunately, Activision recognized this. Using GameSpy Arcade, players can unite to do battle in a variety of modes. There is your standard Deathmatch mode, as well as Team Deathmatch, both of which are a blast to play. There is also the standard Capture the Flag mode, and various other modes that are all pretty fun. My favorite mode would have to have been Disintegration, where every player is equipped with a sniper rifle, and its one hit and you’re toast. Everyone is jumping around and trying to kill everyone, and the chaotic nature makes it really fun.

Overall, Elite Force 2 is a blast. You’ll probably be able to finish the single player mode pretty quickly considering there are only 11 missions, but there are a lot of different secrets that you can unlock by finding objects during them. In the end though, it’s the finely tuned multiplayer that will keep you coming back for more action. Pick it up if you’re in the mood for some good FPS action set in the Star Trek universe, but don’t fear the license if you aren’t a fan of the series.