The Trek Anomaly
Written: Nov 07 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Perfect Star Trek delivery, graphics, voice acting.
Cons: Short, a few hokey elements.
The Bottom Line: A great Trek game and a good FPS with an equally entertaining plot- this isn't supposed to happen.
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| billservo's Full Review: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force |
Star Trek games aren't typically held in high-regard. They're generally associated with the worst that movie licensing brings to the game industry: bad plots and worse gameplay. But it's a trend that's been steadily turning around for this particular license with the last few Trek titles put out. And now with Elite Force, Raven proves that it's possible to make a top-notch game set in the Star Trek universe.
Elite Force is presented as your typical Star Trek Voyager episode. As the game starts off Voyager is pulled into a subspace anomaly called "The Forge". Trapped with Voyager are the carcasses of thousands of other ships- it soon becomes apparent that Voyager and her crew are in danger of being stranded. It's classic Voyager storyline, to be sure, but it still feels new thanks to the introduction of new aliens and locations. The plot doesn't religiously stick to episode elements, though, and some decidedly "gamey" twists are thrown in. For example, the presence of a single nemesis (read Final Boss) isn't usual Trek fare and the fact that The Borg can be fought head on with ease will have some Trekkers swearing Klingon obscenities at the screen. You couldn't have a game without a little artistic license, though, and Raven surely didn't go overboard.
Where the story's presentation did fail is in the new characters developed for the game. Instead of putting you into the jumpsuit of one of your favorite characters like Chakotay or Paris, Raven casts you as one of the doomed anonymous "red shirts". Alex Monroe, the main red shirt, is part of Voyager's elite force, the Hazard Team. His character is your typical testorone charged "let's take 'em on" type, but made a bit more digestible since he's watered down for the 24th century. On the other hand you have your fellow crewmen all of who are about as original as the wheel. You've got your gung-ho jump in the fire maniac, the tough as nails sergeant type, the level-headed love interest (which goes nowhere), and the shell-shocked weenie ("game over, man"). The clash between the well-formed Voyager characters and the "made for PC" starts off bad and gets worse as the game progresses. Thankfully, missions are mostly made up of red shirts so you don't have to put up with it often.
Once the missions are underway the game takes off. Based on the Quake 3 engine, Elite Force is almost your typical FPS. Gameplay is still run and gun but being a Trek game there's added focus on exploration. Missions aren't run through at full speed because the objectives are never limited to just killing an enemy- in fact, with the exception of the last mission death is never an objective. You're usually looking for items, rescuing crewmen, or getting engineers to specific waypoints for repairs.
Puzzles are kept to a minimum, though, which was surprising. I fully expected to have to do a little engineering puzzle myself , but it doesn't happen. There are jumping puzzles, though. I'll admit that I absolutely hate these, but there's not too many and they aren't overly difficult. In fact, they usually have some significance to the mission. One such challenge has you crawling on rafters above a squad of enemy soldiers to avoid detection. Another has you doing a space walk outside of a space station on rafters- a false step here and you drift out into space.
Actually, Raven exploits the fact that you're in space. Certain missions play with gravity giving you lofty jumps and a little wall crawling ability. This sets Elite Force far apart from the FPS crowd, convincingly recreating the feel of the deflector dish scene in "Generations". You almost hate turn artificial gravity back on in these missions. In fact, gravity missions how just how good the Quake engine's control is. Elite Force has the same tight control but it's bent around the different gravity settings well. When the gravity's back on it's a natural change back to normal.
Raven also has a little fun with the holodeck. When new weapons are developed you get to try them out in the danger-free holodeck. Instead of recreating an old mission you're set in Wild West or Medieval scenes. The change of pace is refreshing, but the holodeck is still challenging.
Weapons are a bit of a disappointment, though. The game features three basic weapon types. The phaser is the most basic, with unlimited ammunition. It's much too weak for any real damage, but good on air vents and barrels. The next type are other federation types. These all work on the plasma power. The last weapon type are "Forge" types- alien weapons that work on a different power type. The advantage here is that you don't have to waste time picking up all sorts of ammunition. The disadvantage is that your weapons run out of ammo all at the same time for any given weapon type. Later in the game it's easy to find yourself switching weapons only to find you've run everything dry. Then certain missions only offer up one ammo type making it impossible to recharge some weapons.
The weapon variety is OK, but I found myself relying on only four of the nine featured. The standard rifle shown in the movies ends up being the most effective for speed and consumption. One of the later weapons is the Personal Photon Torpedo Launcher- hilarious and deadly, but your basic rocket launcher. A grenade launcher gives you an advantage around tight corridors and an alien plasma welder round out the bunch. The only other weapon worth mentioning is an alien weapon which seems to be alive, but it does little damage.
Elite Force's "gimme" weapon lets you take on The Borg. While the weapon itself is a pretty cheap gimmick, the Borg levels make it worth while. Borg missions are beautiful and capture the Trek saga better than any other. The insides of the ship are amazingly huge, complete with fog effects and organic touches that make The Borg so freaky. Other missions also impress with equal lighting effects, but can be bland. One mission has you on an alien ship which has about a 16 color limit in every room. The most unimpressive mission takes place on Voyager herself. While the graphics are completely true to the look of the show, it's just too clean. Some red alert emergency lighting would have helped.
But enemies are well done. Most enemies are non-humanoid types, but The Borg and Klingons look amazing. Human characters are ok at best, the worst of them being the actual Voyager characters. The facial texture mapping just didn't fit right for most of the characters giving them inhuman angular profiles. Some bad meshing between body and head make them look even worse.
Sound is better except for some bad audio level mixing. Effects are suitably Trek-ish. Data pads, control panels, plasma streams, etc. come across cleanly and are placed exquisitely. In fact later levels have so many enemies transporting in that sound placement is all you have to go on in order to survive. In level music sounds good, mostly providing some emotional backdrop. However, Raven didn't get the rights to the show's theme song, instead offering up a lousy mangling of what it should sound like.
Voice acting, of course, is superb. Without the original TV show's talent it could have been a total disaster. Some of the scripting isn't that great, but a lot of lines are saved by the actors. Even the game-only characters have decent voice-overs. Once in a while you'll be able to tell that the Hollywood crew and the Raven crew didn't tape together, but it's rare and still very hard to tell.
Trek and FPS fans have a lot to like, though. Trekkers/ies will enjoy simply being in a convincing Trek world while FPS fans have an atypical entry to the genre. The single player game is definitely a little short, but the expert delivery of the story takes some of this blame- good plot-driven and licensed games are too hard to come by to pass this one up.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
billservo
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Member: Bill Saez
Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 98 members
About Me:
Lifelong game freak. Recently got to work with Sega and THQ in developing cellphone games.
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