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