01-152026 |
Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force Review and Discussion |
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Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force is a first person shooter developed by Raven Software and released in the year 2000. Based on the Voyager TV show and taking place during the sixth season, you play as Munro, the leader of the newly formed hazard team, and are sent on dangerous away missions. These missions will take you to various locations fighting different races such as the Borg, Klingons, and some new species like the harvesters and Etherians. Raven Software is one of my favorite developers. They made some of the best FPS games including Heretic, Hexen, and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast. These games excel in their level design, pacing, and puzzle solving. Elite Force on the other hand, while I love the game, is lacking in all of these areas in my opinion. Some levels are quite unique with interesting level design. For example, the mission where you infiltrate the Klingon vessel searching for isodesium. This level can be played entirely stealthy if you wish, which allows for some interesting ways to navigate the environment. You have to be aware of the enemy patrols and use alternate pathways such as vents and other crawlspaces to get around. Stealth however is optional, the game won't stop you from blasting your way through if you wish. I'm not actually sure if there are consequences to being discovered, the mission seems to play out the same. Either way, it's nice to be given options for how to play, even if the stealth mechanics are rather basic. Another example is when on the Etherian ship. The ship is organic which leads to some interesting avenues for creative level design. The ship has transporters which will teleport you to different parts of the ship and there are also pods that create lethal energy fields on the ground, so you must destroy them to progress. Aside from these examples, there are the occasional platforming sections and backtracking, but for the most part, many levels are quite linear and narrow. The game does a good job with its visual aesthetic variety between levels, with all the different alien vessels and their different technology. However, despite the nice looking environments, most levels are just linear hallways. There aren't much in the way of puzzles either. There are occasions where you might have to think outside the box a bit to proceed, for example: On the Dreadnaught Gunship mission, there is a section where you must manipulate control panels to aim a laser at a door in order to blast it open. The control panels that you must use are hidden just out of plain sight and away from the main control panel in the center of the room. I admittedly was lost for a bit the first time I played and couldn't find the control panels. Other than that moment, there might have been only one or two other times I was Elite Force plays mostly like a typical linear first person shooter. Probably about 90% of the game is shooting. The other 10% is interacting with control panels and strolling along the Voyager itself in between missions. Speaking of the Voyager itself, it is recreated with remarkable attention to detail. I will get to that in a moment though. The shooting, which you are doing a lot, is... okay. There are really only two enemy types, maybe three. You have the close combat enemies that rush toward you. They may also fire projectiles, but will melee attack when close enough range. Then there are the ranged enemies that mostly stay still while shooting projectiles from a distance. You also have the occasional turrets, giant mechs, and the Borg who, depending on the mission, will be neutral until attacked. None of the enemies are very spongy, and they all, aside from the borg, can be easily killed with any weapon including your basic phaser rifle. The Borg's unique ability to adapt to any weapon is quickly negated by the infinity modulator, which is a weapon you get very early on in the game. There are a wide variety of weapons, which you acquire one by one throughout the game. However, again none of the enemies are particularly difficult, so even the more powerful weapons become quite underused. You also don't have to worry much about ammo either. There are only two ammo types which are shared across multiple different weapons, and they are found in quite abundance in each level. While the enemy variety leaves a lot to be desired and the level design is mostly lacking, Elite Force does a great job of capturing the look, feel, and sounds of Star Trek. The voice acting is excellent, with all members of the crew voiced by their original actors and the new characters such as those part of the hazard team, sound great too. Aesthetically, the game is beautiful. The menus and UI recreate the LCARS design from the show and make navigating the menus a joy. The new weapons, while pretty overpowered for what the Federation would need, fit well in the universe and are fun to use. Lastly, I have to talk about Voyager. They really knocked it out of the park with this. Practically every room, deck, corridor, and even the jeffery tubes used in the show are recreated here. It is really cool to visit the different places like going to the kitchen and meeting Neelix, or going to engineering and checking out the warp core, walking on the bridge, and going to the transporter room to beam down at the start of each mission. It's clear that there was a lot of love and care put into the ship and getting everything accurate. That is really where this game shines; it's attention to detail and care put into every aspect to capture the magic of Star Trek. The shooting mechanics are decent and the enemy variety is a bit lacking compared to past Raven Software games, but the gunplay is still enjoyable. The level design being very linear isn't a terrible sin either. I love a good linear shooter sometimes, I just wish there was more verticality and interactivity in the environments. Elite Force does occasionally shine in these aspects, and when it does, the true potential of this game is shown. Running On A Modern PC: STVEF is avaliable on GOG which includes compatibility fixes when you install the game. I never ran into issues when playing the GOG version. I did however, find the resolution was stretched to fit my 1080p screen despite the game resolution being set to 640x480. Changing the resolution to 1024x768 fixes that.
Red Alert! Links ahead Purchase the game here: GOG or get the PS2 version on Amazon You can also get the rom for the PS2 version at Vimm's Lair 
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