Welcome to first Retro-Replay. In these blogs I will review older
games that I've recently replayed and see how they stand up against
the test of time.
Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force
Released: September 20, 2000
Platforms: PC, PS2
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
My Last Replay: August 2, 2013
Introduction
I first heard of Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force while in High School
in early 2000. This was back in the days when 56.6k dial-up was
still pretty much king and downloading the 115 megabyte demo took
several hours. When the game came out many months later in
September, I bought it right away. At the time I was blown away by
the great graphics, fun weapons and gameplay and excellent storyline.
Compatibility
Technically the game still holds up fairly well. The Autorun on
the CDs is not compatible with Windows 7 64-bit and I had to run the
Installer (which I manually located) in Compatibility mode (set to
Windows 98), but once installed the game itself loaded fine. The
only other issue I had was the game's CD check (old school DRM)
failed a few times – I'm guessing a compatibility issue with my
Blu-ray drive – but it was fairly easy to find and install a NoCD
patch.
Despite being over a decade old, Elite Force's visuals hold up
pretty well. The game is powered by the Quake 3 graphics engine.
The character models are a bit blocky, but the textures on them look
acceptable. The environments are imaginative and still look
fantastic. Elite Force has a wide variety of weapons that are
nicely rendered and fun. I didn't find myself using the same weapon
over and over. Some weapons seemed more fun or effective to use on
certain monsters than others, so I changed up as I went.
Annoyances
One of the most glaring signs of the game's age is the friendly NPC
AI. Your team mates tend to often run into your line of fire. If
you hit them too many times they'll start firing back or you'll kill
them. In either event you automatically lose and have to restart at
your last save. Fortunately there is an autosave feature if you
forget. The friendly NPCs also tend to be a bit on the rude side –
if they are walking and you are in their way even in the slightest
for a second they'll yell “GET OUT OF WAY” at you. Seems
silly, but it gets annoying pretty fast. There are also some
scripted sequences in certain maps where your entire team has to get
on an elevator or moving platform. After you run on, your team mates
will walk on too – one by one. Walking slowly. Be sure to stay
out of their way. I had to wait a good 20 seconds in one of the
areas for my 4 team mates to board the elevator. They also don't
seem to do much damage. I always finished killing what was attacking
me then had to run around and kill my teammate's enemies too. I
think the only usefulness they had was to advance the story and draw
fire from me. By the end of the game I felt absolutely no sympathy,
indeed I felt a bit of happiness when one of them died.
Fights can be fairly simple and repetitive in certain parts of the
game. You go into a room. A bunch of enemies spawn or come out of a
door. You kill them and move to the next room. Rinse and repeat.
Standard FPS fare for those days. The boss fights were about the
same. Avoid taking fire and just dish out a lot of damage. Sadly
there were no health bars, so just keep shooting till it dies.
The Good
The developers intended for the game's story to make it feel like
you were part of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager and they largely
succeeded. The opening and closing credits mimic a TV episode.
There were also quite a few in-game cinematics and cut scenes that
added to the storytelling and immersion. You could choose to be
either a Male or Female character and played the part of either
Alexander or Alexandria Munro. Clever on part of the developers as
either name could be shortened to “Alex”, so they only had to
make one set of voice overs for the most part. You and your team
were sent on missions and spent the in between time on the Voyager
either socializing with the crew or training in the Holodeck.
Unfortunately you did not have the ability to freely roam most of the
ship, but that would come later. The cast of Star Trek: Voyager
voice all their own characters, except for Seven of Nine who was
unavailable. The later Expansion Pack added new Voice overs by Jeri
Ryan for Seven of Nine.
The storyline itself was fun and I could easily have seen it being a
2-part episode taking place somewhere in the 6th season.
We see a few familiar faces return in the form of Klingons, Malon,
Hirogen, Borg and even Species 8472. There's even an old Original
series era Constitution-class ship from the Mirror universe that
makes an appearance. The new races added for the game – the
Ethereans and Vorsoth seemed pretty believable. The Etherean ship
has these little sparkly firefly things that fly around and repair
the ship. You can blast a console and then watch them come and
repair it. This becomes a gameplay tactic in those levels.
On the Multiplayer side of things, Star Trek:Voyager Elite Force
offers “Holomatch”. You must launch a separate program for
Holomatch, and re-input your CD key and settings (how archaic....),
but once in you can either launch a Solo Holomatch and fight against
Bots or a Multi Holomatch. The official master server appears to be
gone, but there's a number of fan servers up here and there if you
search around. Naturally you can start your own server. Having
never played the Multiplayer portion much, I can't attest to its
balance, but the few minutes I played against bots was amusing.
Expansion Pack
A little more than half a year after release, Raven Software
released an Expansion Pack called the “Star Trek: Voyager Elite
Force Expansion Pack”. Creative, I know! It did not add a new or
extended story, but rather added a “Virtual Voyager” mode whereby
you could freely roam around the Voyager. You could travel to most
of the decks, visit all the well known parts of the ship. There was
even a mini game to collect little figurines scattered around the
ship. And if you found the security codes hidden you could access
the other crew's quarters and even transport to the lower decks of
the ship and visit the lonely man on Deck 15. The pack also added a
few Holodeck mini-missions, the most enjoyable one being Captain
Proton.
Conclusion
All in all, I would still highly recommend playing this game –
especially for any Star Trek fan. Quality Star Trek games are rare
and this one is a gem. Sadly none of the major digital websites seem
to carry it, but it is still listed on Amazon.com, eBay and other
sites. Make sure to grab the latest patch too after installing.
