Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force

The Good
Raven delivers once again, and boy did they make a blockbuster this time!

Elite Force is the final proof of Raven's genius and understanding of action games and the fps sub-genre in general. These guys took a lame-ass license like Star Trek Voyager fit for anything BUT an action game, licensed the Quake3 engine instead of wasting time trying to code a lackluster clone and voila: They made the coolest fps to be released in quite a while.

Following the Half-Life school of thought the game puts an emphasis on scripted events and seamless levels that weave a large, cohesive storyline instead of splitting the action among different subdivided missions. The game fully immerses you in the game from the get-go as you take on the role of Alex Munro (either Alexander or Alexandria) second in command of the newly formed Hazard Team, a special ops version of the red-shirted cannon-fodder security officers that are equipped with enough firepower to, you know, not die so much!

After a kickass intro/training sequence which sets the stage early on (clasically displaying how our hero isn't as skilled as we think but setting the stage for his/her rise to the challenge and later display of courage), the Voyager encounters a nasty probe which transports it to an unknown galactic graveyard filled with scavengers of all corners of the universe all stranded in the location in the same way as our heroes. The quest is on, as the crew needs to find a way to escape their predicament and at the same time protect themselves from the assorted collection of desperate scavengers that see in the Voyager their ticket home. A good choice was taken by the designers to make the game as similar both in structure and storyline as a Voyager episode would be, you have the problem-establishing intro, followed by the Voyager show presentation (same one as on the TV show), the plot then resolves in standard Star Trek way with the entire crew chipping in from their area of expertise towards the succesful resolution of the problem, and finally everything ending with a lame joke and laughs as the Voyager speeds away. In this aspect the game will bring many smiles to Star Trek fans as it manages to believably cram many elements from the show in the game, including several races such as the classic Borg and Klingons as well as some nifty additions such as the alternate federation from the evil mirror universe, in a part of the game that takes place on an original Star Trek-era starship!

As you progress through the game you'll be sent away to all sort of hostile starships as you try to uncover clues as to how to escape, each location playing out as a mission of sorts with all manner of scripted events such as interacting with some aliens or infiltrating a hostile ship, stealing cargo by sneaking around and busting out and rescuing captured friends, etc. What's interesting here is that Raven also incorporated a series of branching events that can go either way depending on your actions, for instance, yeah we all had to infiltrate the Borg Cube, but did you save your about-to-be-assimilated CO or not? The game is sprinkled with small "decision time" moments such as these and while the game allows for only one ending, it's nice to replay it and see how the different decisions have their different consequences in the way the plot develops.

For those of you that are wondering by now if this is an adventure game fear not, the gameplay is definetively action oriented, and while there are some light puzzle/sneaking sequences in between the main objective of the game is to shoot the shit out of every enemy you encounter, and boy oh boy is it fun to do so! Raven made the right choice by not sending you alone in the missions (except for some specific sequences) and mimicking the actual away teams in the series you usually go at it with a group of squadmates to cover your rear and take care of special tasks (like hacking some system or interfacing with the Borg), while some reviewers qualified them as dumbass bots, I join the ranks of those that found their pathfinding excellent and welcomed their addition. Sure, they won't win the game for you, and they hardly make any sort of real damage, but they add a lot with their presence alone, making fights much more exciting and feeling more like co-ordinated, brutal assaults rather than a "one-man army takes on all comers" affair as it usually gets like in these games. Plus they add to the general vibe with their comments and in-mission dialogues, so another good addition by Raven.

The character development however, doesn't happen on the away missions, but instead on the Voyager. In another winning design decision, Raven borrowed some elements from the classic Wing Commander games, in which the gameworld doesn't stop between the combat sequences and continues to evolve via conversations and character interaction. Basically what you have here are breather sequences that add dynamism between the all-out fighting sequences and which take place in the Voyager, as you walk around it's corridors and talk to your various friends and companions. Interacting with them usually rewards you with an interesting, well written conversation which furthers the plot in some cases but mostly serves as a way of further developing the characters. Be it the bully/balls-to-the-walls general attitude of Biessman or the budding love interest between your character and Telsia (regardless of wheter you are male or female!! yay! Lesbianism in space!!). Anyway, at the end of the day these sequences provide more than just breathing room between the fight sequences, and give the entire cast of characters a more human touch that helps them become as memorable a cast as in any rpg game.

Going back to the action the game delivers quite an impressive arsenal of weapons, which while mostly being sci-fi versions of the standard fps arsenal manage to deliver some cool surprises with each weapon having alternate firing modes all with some kind of useful purpose. The weapon effects are simply astounding, triggering all sorts of colorful ray and particle effects that turn firefights into exciting lasershows just as you would expect them to be in Star Trek. This eye-candy however, comes courtesy of the Quake3 engine and boy does it get to strut it's stuff in this game! It might be the sci-fi setting, but quite frankly even after Medal of Honor and Return to Castle Wolfenstein I have not seen a better implementation of the engine. The character models are spotless, the lightning effects are incredible, the texture detail is awesome and the backgrounds... oh man, they are just incredible! From the green-glowing, intrincate interior of the Borg cubes to the bio-mechanical alien spaceships and the federation starships, every location in the game is rendered with lush detail (with the Borg cubes being the absolute winners). And the best thing about it is that you don't have to worry about performance hits! Since the entire game takes place on starships of varying size, the game maximizes the engine's preference for closed enviroments, thus you can have dozens of baddies battling a full squad of your friends with all those impressive lighting weapon effects flying around and still be able to run the game on a modest system! And that's with the amazing soundtrack and ripped-straight-from-the-show sfx thumping around in full surround audio!

If you do have problems however, you can always turn to the excellent detail-scaling options present in the fantastic interface that mimicks Star Trek's computer readouts and which also includes a small character/technical database for your perusal and easy access to the multiplayer component which delivers another homerun with a giant collection of models, skins and maps, as well as different gamemodes and a remarkably competent bot AI for when you just can't find anyone to play with.

The Bad
To the risk of sounding like a deranged Trekkie I have to admit that Elite Force has barely any flaws worth mentioning. As I perused through other reviews I noted how many people noted this or that, but bitching aside they are all personal considerations regarding how each one of us considers fps's to be (some people want to idly explore more of the Voyager, others want more control over your squadmates, etc.). The truth is that Elite Force is the best fps to come in a loooooong time, with it's only real flaw being that since it was probably aimed at action-allergic Star Trek fans, the difficulty and lenght of the game were kept simple and short. All you need to do to circumvent this is to turn the difficulty level up a notch and that's it.

The Bottom Line
A stellar fps about Star Trek? That doesn't make sense...Wait, a stellar fps by Raven? That's what explains everything! These guys know their shit and no other game proves this as much as Elite Force.

There's really not much more I can add. Excellently designed, action-packed, technically flawless and with plenty of innovative touches. Get Elite Force NOW.