Reviewed: August 9, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
Ritual Entertainment

Released: June 24, 2003
Genre: FPS
Players: 32
ESRB: Teen

8
9
9
7
8.8

System Requirements

The original Voyager: Elite Force took the Star Trek franchise into the relatively unexplored world of the first–person shooter. Prior to Elite Force the closest we had come to an actual Star Trek action game was Klingon Honor Guard, which wasn’t entirely bad but with such heavy emphasis on Klingon culture it failed to capture the essence of “Trek”.

Elite Force managed to offer some exciting first-person action despite its roots in the Voyager franchise, admittedly one of the weaker spin-offs in the Star Trek universe. The game was also criticized for its relative shortness (about 8-10 hours for the average gamer); it’s unimaginative and contradicting storyline, and odd assortment of enemies.

Ritual Entertainment slips into the captain’s chair for Elite Force II, and while the overall effort is a major improvement over the original there are still a few areas that need improvement and some obvious concepts and gameplay elements that designers still refuse to explore. In all fairness, it’s hard to create a FPS game in the Star Trek universe. The very nature of the franchise is built around diplomacy first and weapons only as a last resort – hardly the mentality of any FPS game or the person playing it.

The first level of Elite Force II takes place inside the Borg sphere. Voyager is locked in a tractor beam and you are leading the Hazard Team into the sphere to destroy the power generators to release the ship. Naturally, there are a few hundred Borg who will offer minimal resistance (apparently resistance is futile). The Borg sphere is more of an extension of your holo-training than anything else. The adventure doesn’t really start until two years later…

Once Voyager is safely back on Earth the Hazard team is quickly broken up and scattered across the galaxy on various assignments. Apparently the concept of an “aggressive strike force” does not mesh with Starfleet’s non-violent directives – the same thing could be said for the FPS genre as well. Alex Munro (the character you play) is sent off to teach at Starfleet Academy until one day his impressive talents and aggressive skills are noticed by none other than Jean-Luc Picard.

Picard is a bit more of a visionary and can easily see the value of a tactical strike force for hostile away missions and assigns Alex to the Enterprise. Thus begins the grand adventure that spans multiple planets, space stations, and even a derelict Starship. The story is solid, even when it stretches the boundaries of fiction and the gameplay is unmistakably grounded in classic FPS rules and concepts.

Aside from the initial Borg and a few hostile humanoid enemies, Klingons, Romulans and some assorted thugs and gangsters, your main adversary in Elite Force II are a mysterious race of manufactured insect-like creatures that come in all shapes and sizes. Originally designed for slave labor, some of these creatures have evolved into sentient beings while others merely attack in wave after mindless wave in numbers that would have Serious Sam checking his ammo belt. By having insects as your primary foe the designers are able to skirt the violence issue and also explain away the spawning of these creatures as they burrow out of the floors, walls, or jet around the levels with their built-in Impulse engines.

To exact your specific brand of Starfleet justice you have a dizzying array of weapons at your disposal. You have your standard issue phasers and Federation assault rifles then things branch out into the absurd with Arc Rifles, Grenade Launchers, Pulse Cannons, Sniper Rifles, and many more, so many in fact that you will often have two or three weapons in each numbered slot, often making it hard to switch to the perfect weapon in a timely fashion. In one level you get to man the massive phaser turret on the bottom of the saucer section and in one of final levels you can use your Tricorder to call down the massive firepower of the Enterprise.

But fighting will only occupy about 98% of your game time in Elite Force II. Scattered about the game are various puzzles and environmental challenges. The puzzles come in two flavors, the first being a classic pathfinding puzzle where you must rotate pieces of conduit to bypass shorted circuits. These range in difficulty, both in the number of paths you must establish and how many shorted circuits you must steer around.

The other puzzle is visually more stimulating but terribly simple, even on the hardest levels. You have a certain frequency you need to match with your Tricorder. The Tricorder frequency is on the left and your match frequency is on the right and an overlay is in the middle. You can make slight adjustments to the amplitude, frequency, and offset until the width and sine waves match up.

None of these puzzles are terribly difficult although in a few instances some additional pressure is added when I timer is introduced. In one puzzle you have to bypass numerous circuits in a very short time to eject the warp core and failure means death and reloading.

The environmental puzzles are a bit more challenging and almost always involve your Tricorder and the various view modes it offers. You can scan for structural weaknesses that can be destroyed with phaser fire. These generally lead to secrets, but sometimes you need to eliminate structural obstacles to progress through the level. Other levels will have scanners that are invisible to the naked eye and you will need to use your bio-scanner to see and avoid them. The trace gas scanner will let you see invisible gas pouring in through narrow vents that you can spot-weld with your hand phaser.

Health and ammo are plentiful thanks to numerous energy and first aid consoles scattered about all the levels. Thankfully, all races and civilizations (even those totally alien to ours) all have these universal devices. They may look slightly different but they all share the same color-coding (yellow, purple and blue) and basic purpose, to keep you healed and fully armed at all times. These consoles are setup like those in Half Life where you can visit them as often as you like, but they do carry a finite amount of power and will eventually run dry.

If you think all of this sounds good you’re right, but there are a few things that just bugged me about the game (no pun intended). The first is that you are playing as part of the Hazard “Team”, yet you never have any control over the other members in that team. I would have loved to see even a rudimentary squad-based command system – something like the bot commands in Unreal Tournament. Instead, you find yourself either dodging friendly fire or trying to avoid shooting your own men, but most often there is some forced event that invariably separates you from the team. Locked door – no problem. Alex will explore the entire level to unlock that door from the other side. Beam down to the planet and your men get shot and have to beam back up – no problem. Alex will finish the level by himself.

Ritual has done a much better job of immersing you in the story this time. Between each of the missions you get to wander the Enterprise and engage in idle chatter. Most trigger-happy gamers will likely not have the patience to eavesdrop on all the wonderful conversations taking place all over the ship, but those that do lend their ears will be entertained and amused. There are plenty of “easter eggs” and nods to previous episodes, you even get to meet Scotty’s granddaughter. You also get to interact with various parts of the ship like the library computer, sickbay, shuttle bay, stellar cartography, turbo lifts, and the holodeck where you get to test out the latest in Starfleet weaponry before taking it into the field.

These “information gathering” missions also allow you to build (or destroy) personal relationships with the two female characters vying for our studly heroes heart. You have the established relationship with your female friend whom you’ve recently rescued from the Dallas, but you also have the sexy alien girl whose doe eyes and revealing attire could charm the girdle off Captain Kirk. The relationship with either girl unfolds in a series of conversation choices, about five choices in all and as one relationship grows stronger the other withers away. The sad thing is that it “just doesn’t matter” and it certainly doesn’t affect the outcome of the game.

Much like the relationship tangent, there are other places in the game where you get to make choices to direct the conversation. Most of these include an initial contact with a Ferengi and a subsequent interrogation in the brig where you spout off Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. I’m not sure if I got terribly lucky or if there is simply no way to screw these up. I achieved the desired results in both conversations my first try by simply making logical choices and when I did seem to make a wrong choice the conversation just looped back giving me another chance.

The single-player game is relatively short. On the normal difficulty mode I finished the game in 10h:48m (about two more hours than it took me to finish the first game). I admit I did invoke the “god mode” for the final two boss encounters, not because they were too difficult but I was simply tired and bored and wanted to finish the game and write this review. Much like the first game, Elite Force II deteriorates into a boss bonanza near the end where they throw every sub-boss at you in sequence, sometimes more than one at a time. Then just when you are beaten into submission they toss the “big guy” at you.

To its credit, Elite Force II offers an excellent multiplayer component for up to 32 players in any of several deathmatch and team-based game modes in exclusive multiplayer maps. Elite Force II is built on an improved Quake III Arena engine so you know the net code is solid. If you are looking to waste a few dozen Starfleet officers then this is the best place to do it.

The Star Trek theme is prevalent through all of the menus even before you get into the game, and once you start playing everything oozes “Trek” from the familiar LCARS HUD to the detailed environments of Starfleet Academy and the USS Enterprise. Even the Borg sphere is brought to life in chilling detail, full of pulsating green walls, glowing conduits, and plenty of creepy Borg wandering around.

The movies are all created with the game engine so they all blend with the gameplay, but they also show a few deficiencies in the Q3A engine when it comes to rendering people up close. Faces are a bit static and emotionless, mouths move but little else, and clothing appears to be painted on the skin rather than draped over it. These are all minor nitpicks considering the cutscenes make up a small fraction of the gameplay. Everything looks great when you are actually playing the game.

I was a bit disappointed in the overall palette. Most of the levels are very dark and created with textures and colors that made things hard to see. It was definitely a contrast to the brightly lit decks of the Enterprise. To make matters worse you often are exploring outdoor areas at night and indoor locations where the power has been shutdown. They designers may have been trying to “creep me out” by hiding the enemy in the shadows but instead they just bored me most of the time.

I must commend the artists on some excellent environmental texture work that brings a lot of the technical levels to life. Consoles are alive with activity and all of the LCARS terminals on the Enterprise are all color-coded and authentic (yes, I checked it against my Star Trek Technical Manual). Doors are all labeled correctly and even the decks in the turbo lift are labeled and color-coded.

Weapons are extremely cool with detailed animated models that pulse with energy or distract you with superfluous animated details that serve no real purpose other than to impress. One look at the I-MOD and its sinister green glow and you will be convinced. The Tricorder is highly detailed and offers multi-colored viewing modes and a slightly more detailed map insert showing color-coded targets. Scanning people or objects will bring up a HUD overlay with all sorts of information.

The rest of the cast if flawless with a macho-sounding Alex who delivers ultimatums as coolly as he recites Ferengi Rules of Acquisition or quizzes the local inhabitants about any “strange aliens” that may have passed through recently. The rest of the hazard team is well diverse in their personalities and it comes through clearly in the com chatter.

Weapons all deliver sound effects that are as creative and powerful as their appearance would indicate. The tiny hand phaser sounds suitably wimpy while the grenade launcher will rock your subwoofer. The screeching, hissing, and sometimes roaring aliens will send shivers down your spine and the entire bank of starship sound effects are in full use to bring consoles, transporters, and hissing doors to life.

The music is loosely based on some familiar Star Trek themes, but most of the time it branches off into some totally original scores that, while not entirely “Trek”, are all perfectly acceptable and fit the visuals and gameplay perfectly. I did notice that the music doesn’t cue to the action nearly as much as other games of this type. Normally when the action heats up so does the tempo of the score. In Elite Force II the music is more of a subdued atmospheric environment rather than an emotional motivator.

Your reward for finding these secrets, or at least the Gold Starships, are secret bonus levels that you can unlock. These are more like challenge stages than actual levels, but they are still entertaining. A few of these bonus levels are actually galleries that you can wander around and view artwork or interact with the entire cast of characters and trigger their favorite bit of conversation. Are they worth the trouble of finding all those secrets? Probably not, but anyone anal enough to find them all in the first place isn’t doing so for the reward but rather the satisfaction of actually finding them.

So if you like to shoot fancy lasers, beam, and pulse weapons, explore strange planets, bounce around the outer hull of the Enterprise, wade through murky swamps, jump across lakes of bubbling lava, or sneak through the gutted remains of a drifting Starship then look no further. Elite Force II offers all of that and much more.