I Was a Teenage Adventure Gamer
Elite Force: A Shooter That Plays Like an Adventure Game

By Matthew Desmond

Since the day the original Quake was released, the Quake engine has been used for a lot of games. Then Quake II came out, and the Quake II engine was used with many, many games, such as Sin and Kingpin: Life of Crime. After Quake III came out, several games were announced that were going to be using the Quake III engine. The first non-Quake III game that was released using this engine is Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

The Voyager series hardly gets any recognition these days. All other Star Trek series had a game made about the series at some point (the original series had several decent computer games made about it after the show was canceled). The Next Generation crew had games made about their adventures while the show was still running; the same was true for Deep Space Nine. October 4th, 2000 marks the start of Voyager's final season. And, to help kick off the season, about three weeks before the season premiere, Activision and Raven Software released Elite Force.

Elite Force places you in the role of either Ensign Alexander Munro or Ensign Alexandria Munro, a member of Voyager's "Hazard Team." The best way to describe the Hazard Team is a 24th Century Starfleet SWAT team. The team members are some of the best security personnel on Voyager, and each has a specific background in one of the departments on a starship. For example, Chell has an engineering background, another officer has a medical background, while another one is a good, all-around officer who knows his stuff.

Munro happens to be the team's second-in-command. Lieutenant Foster is the team leader, and Lieutenant Commander Tuvok oversees the operations and helps with the briefings. Munro has a short fuse on his/her temper, but he/she manages to keep his/her cool out in the field. Most of the time.

With that out of the way, it's time to discuss what it feels like to wander around Voyager, a Borg Cube, and several other places.

Wandering around the different areas of Voyager has to be one of the most incredible experiences ever to be put into a game. I was amazed at the amount of time that the Raven Software crew spent on making each area of the ship look exactly like what we see on the show; it must have taken months. And I am not kidding. One of my favorite areas on the show that we don't get to see enough of is Sickbay. And wouldn't you know, one of the first areas of Voyager we get to see is Sickbay, although it isn't until after the first official away mission as a Hazard Team member.

Wandering around the Bridge and jumping into the captain's chair was pretty darn cool. It's one of the best experiences that this game has to offer, it really is. Wandering to each console and trying to make small talk with people is ... a challenge, to say the least. The only time we get to be on the bridge is about midway through the stages we saw in the demo. And you can only stay on the bridge so long before you get thrown into the brig. So you are a little rushed to get to your next objective (Engineering, which was recreated perfectly). Aside from those minor setbacks, wandering around Voyager is a good experience.

Crawling through the Jefferies Tubes is also an experience. We've only been given a small glance of the Jefferies Tubes on Voyager. And, even in TNG and DS9, we rarely caught a glimpse of these crawl spaces. But in Elite Force, we get to go through the Jefferies Tubes several times. It's really cool.

Going through the Borg ship was okay. It's a scary experience because you don't know what will pop up next. The game creates a good atmosphere as well.

Now, for the weapons, these are incredible. I will mention a few of them, the Type III Phaser Rifle (seen in Insurrection and First Contact), a Type II Phaser (seen in just about every episode from TNG to Voyager), and my personal favorite, the personal Photon Torpedo Launcher. The personal Photon Torpedo Launcher is, of course, a weapon that we have never seen before. It fires a miniature version of the Photon Torpedo, and most enemies will be instantly killed by it. It's a great weapon.

Character interactions are pretty good as well. You can go up to people and press the space bar, which is the use/talk key, and you might say something like "Hey," and they will respond with, "Sorry, Alex, I'll catch up with you later," and stuff like that. It's a pretty good system that they worked out for this.

There is absolutely no need to brag up the graphics. It's the Quake III engine! What can be better than the Quake III engine? I don't think there is anything that can stop this game, graphics-wise. It's truly amazing. The weapons look exactly like their Trek counterparts. Oh, and the characters from the show ... they look just like they do on the show. This game makes Captain Janeway (who is good-looking in the first place) look good.

The voice acting is pretty good as well. There is a ton of dialogue in the game. The only true disappointment is that Jeri Ryan did not play the voice of 7 of 9. I'd put a frowning face in there, but I'm not allowed to. It's really sad that she couldn't do the voice acting. The woman who replaced her sounds a lot like Seven, though.

Some people have complained about bugs, but so far, I've only had one crash and that was my fault. I was multitasking at the time. Anyway, to make a long story short, I went to check the EF message boards, and when I came back, I kind of messed things up. But other than that it was fine.

Overall of course, Voyager is going to be a contender for game of the year. One thing that is safe to say is that it's finally broken the Star Trek game curse.

And this game might be classified as a shooter, but it definitely plays like an adventure game.

If you liked Elite Force:
Watch: Voyager
Read: A Voyager novel
Play: Deus Ex or SWAT 3