Star Trek Voyager Elite Force

[SilentGamer]


Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force is a first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. The game was initially released on September 20, 2000 for Windows and Mac OS personal computers. Aspyr Media was responsible for porting the game to the Mac OS platform. Elite Force was later ported to the PlayStation 2 console by Pipe Dream Interactive and published by Majesco Entertainment on December 11, 2001.
The game is set in the Star Trek universe, specifically relating to the fourth Star Trek television series, Star Trek: Voyager. The dates in the game place Elite Force's plot late in Voyager's sixth season. The player assumes the role of Ensign Alex Munro, a member of the Hazard Team, a new elite security section created to deal with particularly dangerous and hostile away missions. The game's plot focuses on the USS Voyager being trapped in a starship graveyard, heavily damaged and under attack from a variety of hostile factions. The Hazard Team is tasked with protecting Voyager as repairs are made, and investigating the cause of their entrapment.
Elite Force was one of several Star Trek games announced after Activision secured the license to Star Trek video games from Viacom in 1998\. The game was one of the first to license id Tech 3, a game engine by id Software used by a number of video games during the early 2000s. Elite Force was a critical success, and is often praised as the first truly successful Star Trek video game, able to appeal to people who were not Star Trek fans. Raven Software released an expansion pack to the game in May 2001, whilst Wildstorm adapted the story for a short graphic novel in July 2000\. A sequel developed by Ritual Entertainment, Star Trek: Elite Force II, was published in 2003.

**Review:**

>! **Assimilation**
>! The Star Trek Voyager series has become a firm favourite with the Trek fans I know, who have mostly been bred exclusively on the BBC's Next Generation episodes up until now. Who knows quite what the attraction is; perhaps it's the abandonment of the Federation star system security blanket for a more perilous and unpredictable storyline, or perhaps it's the desirability of a larynjectomised Starship captain. Or maybe it's just Borg outcast 7 of 9 and her tight spandex outfit. Actually, I fear it's the latter. But whatever your inclination toward Voyager, you cannot fail to enjoy Elite Force. It's sublime, one of the best single player first person shooters I've played since Half Life. It's a mite short, but what you get is so entertaining it's ultimately forgivable. According to the prologue, you are Ensign Munro, be it Alexander of Alexandria (depending purely upon your gender-bending preference), second in commend of Voyager's elite Hazard Team, which has been formed at the behest of Tuvok to help deal with the most dangerous of missions. Your job is to deal with hazardous away missions and attempts to board the ship. The game is very much like an episode of Voyager. You start out in the thick of the action aboard a Borg cube fighting to save your fellow Hazard Team members, and at a suitable turning point in the action the introductory sequence kicks in, just as though you were in an episode of the series. Of course, the swab of credits smattered around the opening are changed subtly to reflect the game's creators..
>! **Beam me up**
>! All of Voyager's namechecked crew are present, including Captain Janeway, Chakotay, Tuvok, Ensign Kim, Tom Paris, 7 of 9, Nelix and the Doctor along with the usual array of red shirts. All take up their regular roles on the ship, although unfortunately only a few if any have their original voice actors. This wouldn't be such big a deal, but certain characters are very different as a result, particularly sofa-Trekkers' fave 7 of 9, who seems to have suffered an involuntary sex change. Another disappointment is Vulcan super-cool security chap Tuvok, whose usually cunning linguistic repertoire is done no justice here. I don't know what it was, but a lot of the lines seemed uncharacteristic. The characters do actually look very well done in the beautiful Quake III engine, and you can see why a certain female character emerges as Munro's love interest, right down to the way her thighs quiver as she adjusts something on a tricorder. Ahem. When you stop admiring the female player models, you wake up to find yourself a spectator on the bridge during an attack by an unresponsive ship, and watch carefully as Janeway gives the order to fire on it in defence. Its destruction triggers an isodimensional shift that leaves your heavily damaged ship in a starship graveyard, held motionless by a dampening field. Repairs get underway, but scavengers from a nearby ship decide to take the opportunity to loot you for supplies! The first of your missions is to dissuade them, which you do with remarkable pizzazz. From then on, you have to find a way to escape from your starry prison cell by making contact with other races and seeking a peaceful accord. Each mission is laid out for you in the Hazard Team briefing theatre with Tuvok and Chakotay, before tooling up and transporting out - the use of the transporter to move between missions is very adroit, and is a good example of Raven using the Star Trek universe to their advantage.
>! **Set phasers to stun**
>! The away missions vary in structure and intensity. Some of the early ones involve little more than a controlled use of your weaponry. With frequent health and weapon recharge points littered all over the place the general slog through the enemy-infested confines of one early level became very tedious. Thankfully things open up thereafter with some impressive stealth sections like the Scavengers mothership (a bizarre collection of different races, including classic Klingons and Federation crews from the Kirk era no doubt) and some truly intense battles on Borg cubes and elsewhere. Disregarding completely a lot of the ageing concepts of single player FPS titles, Elite Force is consistently exciting, and like a good book the pace and tone of the action varies and the player's emotional attachment to the characters is very strong. One advantage Elite Force does have over a book is the atmosphere created by its soundtrack. The melodious tingling that accompanies the creepy missions and the clattering thunder that flanks your Borg infiltrations is truly inspirational. It ebbs and flows with the mood of the adventure, too. If you've lost crew members after an unsuccessful away mission and morale is low, the music is downbeat and sad, whereas if spirits are riding high, the music echoes the sentiment.
>! **Conflicting views**
>! Just as with the music, your crew very much contribute to the mood of the game. If things haven't gone well, you'll hear them abruptly pause conversations as you reel into the mess hall, shutting you out, and will exchange glares with you as you pass. The AI of your marooned brethren aboard Voyager is very well scripted, although at times it does come apart. Having witnessed the disastrous failure of the "buddy system" in Ion Storm's Daikatana, Raven have decided that the best approach is to have your crewmates follow you by default, with heavy scripting. It works surprisingly well, with none of the caught-on-corners idiocy that dogs many other, similar titles. The only time that the crew comes slightly a cropper is when trundling around the ship on their daily business. The relaxed stroll seen on Star Trek is present, but unfortunately, if you have two crew members walking directly toward one another, they tend to start walking back and forward horizontally across the deck trying to pass one another. The sort of comedy normally reserved for busy city subways on a Friday evening ensues, and not until you butt in do the two part (shouting at you to get out of their way to boot). Regrettably it's not the only flaw that Elite Force has to put up with. The multiplayer mode (launched through a separate executable) is quite clever in execution, using the Federation Holodeck to simulate all sorts of locations, but the gameplay is very slow and unexciting, even with several players on each team. Although there are CTF, Deathmatch and Team DM options (the moniker "Holomatch" is used to denote what you and I know as Deathmatch), there really isn't enough fast paced action and the whole thing smacks of an afterthought. With a little work the multiplay could be fantastic, but Raven's naïve belief that giving everyone the same weapons wouldn't spoil proceedings has been disproved. An emphasis on co-operative multiplay would have been more exciting. Ah well.
>! **Conclusion**
>! Although it has its flaws and takes little more than a couple of days to complete, Elite Force is still an exceptionally enjoyable first person shooter and should not be discounted on the basis of its length. If you fancy a new first person adventure and already own Deus Ex, this is the game to buy.
>! 8/10
**Review By eurogamer.net**

**Gameplay Footage:**

>! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml8OV_B9U2w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laKFlC24LTc

[Murdoc]

Hmmm looks like a cool game, I'll have to try it sometime :)

[Anna Comnena]

Little trivia note, if anyone ever played Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, the player character version of Kyle Katarn has the entity name "munro" since they used the same engine as this.

I've played some of this way back in the day on my old BFs, it was pretty fun for a Quake game (I don't like Quake based games so much). The phasers and maps were interesting, but it overall it was just a generic sci-fi linear FPS with the Star Trek brand on it.

[Darkshot]

Great, great game.

[Kusy]


[Darkshot]

Nah, those lasers wouldn't go past that Constitution's NAVIGATIONAL DEFLECTORS!  :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFCBwob65Nw#t=1m31s

The only way Star Wars would win is the FORCE. And that's magic.

[Anna Comnena]

@Darkshot:

> Nah, those lasers wouldn't go past that Constitution's NAVIGATIONAL DEFLECTORS!  :P
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFCBwob65Nw#t=1m31s
>
> The only way Star Wars would win is the FORCE. And that's magic.

No, because in the Star Trek universe everyone is stupid socialist hippies and they have no decent martial doctine at all. Their personal weapons are horrid ergonomic nightmares, their entire military fleet acts as cruise yachts, they have little to no heavy infantry vehicles, and their operational logistics rely too heavily on transporters (which even by their own technologies are prone to problems – interference, blocking, wierd side effects).

Also as far as science goes, Star Trek is not any more realistic than Star Wars. In fact how it's shown is usually more harmful to the general public's view of technology, because it appears to be realistic.

Star Wars = Fantasy; Star Trek = Fantasy.

[Thorn]

Fun game, the end boss was kinda bullshit though.

Also, Star wars would totally win. While the big Trek ships were still trying to turn around naval-battle style, Wars would have a few teams of fighter craft zipping around and blasting the crap out of the Trekkers.

Mass Effect would wreck both of them though. Biotics, Heyoooo!

[DrNova]

@Anna:

> @Darkshot:
>
> > Nah, those lasers wouldn't go past that Constitution's NAVIGATIONAL DEFLECTORS!  :P
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFCBwob65Nw#t=1m31s
> >
> > The only way Star Wars would win is the FORCE. And that's magic.
>
> Now now Anna, calm down.
> No, because in the Star Trek universe everyone is stupid socialist hippies and they have no decent martial doctine at all. Their personal weapons are horrid ergonomic nightmares, their entire military fleet acts as cruise yachts, they have little to no heavy infantry vehicles, and their operational logistics rely too heavily on transporters (which even by their own technologies are prone to problems – interference, blocking, wierd side effects).
>
> Also as far as science goes, Star Trek is not any more realistic than Star Wars. In fact how it's shown is usually more harmful to the general public's view of technology, because it appears to be realistic.
>
> Star Wars = Fantasy; Star Trek = Fantasy.

[Kusy]

Star Wars = fun and action; Star Trek = cheese

[Darkshot]

Star Trek = the possibilities of mankind for the future

Star Wars = space opera with space-ships with 70s technology

I like Star Wars, but if the Empire fought the Federation, the Federation would win by a mile.

The Federation sensors combined with weapons range (over 100000 miles) would mean that they would attack first, and Phasers would rip straight through star wars ships, while it has been stated that laser-based weapons would not be able to damage even the navigational shields of a Federation Starship.

The death star due to sheer laser force, would do damage, but it could simply be destroyed with a few Quantum Torpedo bombardment.

And remember, all this time, lasers would do nothing against Federation Shields.

[Anna Comnena]

Shut up, fanboy. Kusy's job is to derail threads as our resident cranky old guy. Shrug it off and don't derail the thread any further with this idiotic debate.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/FiveMinutes.html

> First, Star Wars vs Star Trek normally means "could the Empire kick the Federation's ass". If it's a question of taste (ie- "do you like Star Wars more than Star Trek"), debate becomes impossible because the answer is subjective.

We get that you like Star Trek, that's fine – I like it too! In fact as a little girl I had a crush on Riker; and if Paramount weren't greedy money-grubbers about that franchise and had reasonable DVD prices for their TV series, I'd own them (DS9 and TNG are among my favorite shows).

**But it's not relevant to this game.**

[Thorn]

The fact is, both of them are straight up fiction. Frankly they're about as realistic as each other.
Appreciate them for what they are, and stop being so butthurt. It's really kind of pathetic that anyone would take that debate beyond straight up saying "I like Star X more than Star Y".

I like Star Wars more than Star Trek. I still think they're both great. I was a huge fan of Voyager, though I'm not totally sure why, and I grew up watching reruns of the original series.
Look on the bright side. Having both means that we have TWO epic sci-fi universes full of awesome instead of only one.

Also, people should learn that there's other Sci-Fi out there. You want an interesting and possible look at humanity in the far future? Look up the Foundation trilogy by Issac Aasimov. Honestly, it's a lot more realistic than Trek or Wars.
Also, Mass Effect is straight up unrealistic zany space-opera action goodness, and I love it for that.

[SilentGamer]

@Thorn:

> The fact is, both of them are straight up fiction. Frankly they're about as realistic as each other.
> Appreciate them for what they are, and stop being so butthurt. It's really kind of pathetic that anyone would take that debate beyond straight up saying "I like Star X more than Star Y".
>
> I like Star Wars more than Star Trek. I still think they're both great. I was a huge fan of Voyager, though I'm not totally sure why, and I grew up watching reruns of the original series.
> Look on the bright side. Having both means that we have TWO epic sci-fi universes full of awesome instead of only one.
>
> Also, people should learn that there's other Sci-Fi out there. You want an interesting and possible look at humanity in the far future? Look up the Foundation trilogy by Issac Aasimov. Honestly, it's a lot more realistic than Trek or Wars.
> Also, Mass Effect is straight up unrealistic zany space-opera action goodness, and I love it for that.

I hear that! I completely agree with you there. I posted this game because I have been playing it and knew it was old so I wanted to see if any of you have played and if you liked it.

I didn't want a Sci-Fi nerd off  :lipsrsealed:

[DrNova]

No kidding, Anna needs to relax most, she's taking this one awfully personal XD

[Kusy]

@Anna:

> Shut up, fanboy. Kusy's job is to derail threads as our resident cranky old guy.

Yeah… get off my lawn.

[ddunit]

@Kusy:

> @Anna:
>
> > Shut up, fanboy. Kusy's job is to derail threads as our resident cranky old guy.
>
> 
> Yeah… get off my lawn.

Kusy, bullets won't even scrap the paint of that fanboy's giant federation ship.

[Kusy]

Bets… you don't want to make them. But my job is done, let this conversation continue... or more likely never recover after my star warsy fanboy interrupt.