Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent! Resistance to this game is futile!
Review: Imagine, if you will the perfect Star Trek game. Beautiful cut scenes seamlessly integrated between pulse racing action scenes, faithful ship recreation, crafty puzzles and interactive environments. The list goes on. *This* is the Trek game everyone's been waiting for!

This game is a dream! In single player mode, it really is like playing the TV show. Whereas only a couple of Star Trek games in the past have come up to this standard (e.g. Armada) most like Klingon Honour Guard have falled slightly short of the mark. The gameplay is Identical to Half Life / Quake 2 etc. The use of the Quake 3 engine fully recreates the starship Voyager's decks in stunning detail. The sound effects are also lifted straight from the show and most of the actors it seems have contributed their voices to their 3D counterparts. The icing on the cake is the cut scenes linking your character of Ensign Monroe into the story line and the command chain.

Quake 3 style weaponry? You bet! From the simple phaser to the anti Borg gun, these pack a real punch! Raven have done a great job!

If you like Quake, Half Life and Star Trek: Voyager you have no reason not to order this NOW! :)

Rating:
Summary: Review of the Demo
Review: It is great! It has awsome graphics, weapons, effects, etc... It (the demo) let's you fight the Borg, walk around on the ship, and stop a warp core breach. It includes two death-match levels for internet or solo play. If this is any representation of the full game, and you are wondering about it, order it now! See for yourself, go to the website and download the demo today!

Rating:
Summary: Voyager!
Review: I can't wait till this game comes out. I'm glad a Voyager game has finally come out. I will be buying this game when the price drops down a few bucks. I hope this game is good.

Rating:
Summary: Seems to look good
Review: From what I've seen of ELITE FORCE it looks very good, However I personally believe that I would wait until the game has been out for a while and has patches to get all of the kinks out. but when it is finnaly publically released I'm sure it will measure up to everyones expectations.

Rating:
Summary: Best Star Trek game ever!
Review: Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force is the best Star Trek game EVER made! It is very fun. When I started playing it, it was 4:00 pm. When I finally got off, it was 12:00 PM! This game is awesome! If your thinking it is too expensive your wrong. It is well worth the money! I think that everyone should buy this game! If you are worried because it reguires a 3D accelerator card, don't worry. It runs fine without it!

Rating:
Summary: generic shooter in star trek wrapper, w/ some goodies n btw
Review: Unlike a lot of other good story-driven FPS games around like Half-Life, Thief (not an FPS, but whatever), XIII, NOLF, and the like, I found Elite Force to be highly disappointing given the fact that it took place in the highly intelligent Star Trek universe. All the away mission levels had basically the same pattern: walk about 20 feet, fight off a horde of baddies, walk another 25 feet, fight another group of baddies, and so on. Raven even intelligently replaces the mindless key hunt in so many other old games with the mindless control panel hunt, as so well shown in the Etherean and Borg levels. And speaking of the borg, they were portrayed horrendously, they never run and you, they always slowly trudge toward you but always corner you and get you as in the show, and in the show more than one can always trounce you. While I admire the effort of the developers, it just ended up feeling like Doom with Borgs when a good 20 borgs were on my tail on I was mowing them down with the shotgun-like I-Mod. But the implementation of the Borg adapting to other guns (dying first, then others adapting) was great. Also, the stealth mission on the Scavenger ship, while an admirable attempt, was laughable after playing such stealth-based masterpieces as Thief and Splinter Cell, and even stealth missions in games such as XIII are much, much better.
The end really sucked. Unlike Half-Life's haunting movie-like cliffhanger, you end up encountering this giant slug who tells of how the ship you are in (it has some special name, I forgot it) will enslave the universe. When Munro tells him/it that the ship is about to be destroyed, he laughs and tells them that it can multiply! HAHAHA! Then who comes to save the day but the mysterious Etherians, who quickly blow up a nearby panel, destroying its multiplying capabilities! What a twist! The slug is a boring-a$$ boss too.
I'm not saying this game sucked, I liked it, but it didn't live up to the Star Trek legacy. Blasting the baddies was fun, especially the repair droids (good explosions), but repetitive and unintelligent. Also, while character interaction lacked during away missions, it was outstanding on Voyager, where you could watch off-duty teammates playing poker, listen to Chakotay and Paris discuss their plight in the mess hall, and even practice gunplay in the holodeck. The rendering of Voyager was great and the interaction of other NPCs in the background was very Half-Life like (in other words, awesome). Unfortunately, it was very linear exploration. Most of the doors on the ships were locked, which really, really sucked.
In short, buy this if you'd like a short shoot-em-up in a Star Trek universe and if you'd like to do a little exploring on Voyager itself, this is the game for you. But be warned: this is not the best Star Trek game ever, as said. Most people saying that are Quake fans who hate Star Trek and other Star Trek games for being too "geeky." It's their loss, older Star Trek titles such as Generations, A Final Unity, 25th Anniversary, and others are much, much truer to the Star Trek universe. (I should know, I'm a ST fan). Generations (which was panned by most critics by the way....) even had FPS styled portions but they were coupled with graphic adventure-like environment interactions, making it a much fuller experience.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome game and a great buy
Review: I bought Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force about a year ago, and I still play it every now and then. To put it simply, Elite Force is just one of those games you can really get into and have a lot of fun playing.
For starters, it sets itself even with the competition with standard features that every FPS should (but sometimes dont) have, such as instant save, completely customizable controls, etc...
The graphics, while not top notch, are still running off the tried and true Quake III engine and add to the excitement of the game. Character models are decent but to be honest, graphics are not my main interest. Generally, I care about the gameplay (or lack of) and Elite Force has plenty of fast-paced exciting action. You start off immediately in the middle of a mission inside a Borg cube and the gameplay takes off from there. There are plenty of weapons, each with a secondary fire to choose from and the environments are extremely fun to fight in (my favorite is running through the halls and cargo bays of Voyager). In hostile territory the battles are fast and furious, requiring good choice in your combat skills. Little things like the mini-Holomatches or the occasional non-violent assignment make the game enjoyable.
Another awesome option is the Holomatch, which also has the same fast-paced fighting in the game, against not-so-terrible bots too. Again, the maps are well-designed and the weapons are awesome.
Finally, I think any aficionado of FPS's would definitely like this game for its gameplay and graphics: but if you like or watch Star Trek too, you'll like it even more. Even though its rather ironic how in most episodes the crew shoots at most 3-5 aliens and you kill 3-5 aliens in 3-5 seconds, I was almost giddy at being able to run through Voyager at psuedo-will and shoot bugs at the same times. In summary, buy this game, its worth the money and lasts a long time.

Rating:
Summary: A real Star Trek game
Review: This 1st-person-shooter game has you taking on the role of Alexander Munro (or the lovely Alexandra) an ensign aboard Star Trek�s USS Voyager. When Voyager was catapulted into a distant corner of the galaxy � far beyond any hope of reinforcements � Tuvok, the ship�s executive officer, formed the Hazard Team, an elite corps of Starfleet commandos capable of facing any threat. Armed with a variety of weapons and trained to operate equipment on any alien starship, the team stands ready against whatever the Delta Quadrant can throw at it. Unfortunately, Munro is a bit too impulsive (as s/he proves at the end of the first level), and stands to be kicked off the team. Instead, fate intervenes and the team is forced to take Munro along when the ship is snared by an alien ship and brought through an �iso-dimensional� rift into a vast graveyard of other alien ships. With Voyager too severely damaged and drained of power to escape, the Hazard Team is pressed into duty - boarding other ships in a desperate attempt to learn the secret of the aliens that hijacked their ship, and to find the means to escape. The game relies on both alien races both familiar (Klingon, Malon, Hirogen and Borg) and new. The levels aren�t too long or complicated, and a tight storyline beautifully keeps the game running. Between the missions is a mix of cut-scenes (using the game engine, ala JK2) and interactive scenes in which you prowl the halls and lounges of the Voyager and mingle with its crew.

There�s a lot to love and to be disappointed with in this game, which is nevertheless the king of Trek games (at least until EF2 debuts later this year). Level design is a mixed bag of great and bad � with my clear favorite being the Scavenger ship, a huge space station composed of salvaged starships like a Klingon Warbird and an early 23rd century Constitution class starship (that level excels because it�s such a mishmash that you never know what you�re going to see next). The game wisely starts its action aboard an Etherian starship, whose wondrous insides resemble less that of a space-going vessel than an acid trip. Unfortunately, those are the early levels. The game maintains its edge with an infiltration mission on a Borg cube, only to lose it afterwards, when you find you must infiltrate other alien ships manned by either sentry robots or the harvesters and reavers - vicious and robot-like aliens. The game also has a wonderful design engine that gives some of its non-player characters a wonderful individuality (whether it�s your team mates or the aliens). However, that tool, embedded within the �Icarus� engine, is barely relied on for the aliens � and most of the aliens you�ll meet are faceless and uninteresting hordes. (The exception being that set aboard the Scavenger ship � where we hear Klingons complaining about their food, Hirogen discussing their latest hunts and humans playing an unending game of 3-D chess). Gameplay is hampered at all levels by the game�s simplicity � though lightyears past �Wolfenstein� much of EF has you prowling the hostile corridors of enemy territory, pretty much blasting whoever you meet, and finding the exit. (Again, the Scavenger level is best because it�s a stealth mission, requiring extra precision; even so, you spend so much time hiding, that you can�t afford more than quick glimpses of the scenery). The designers probably felt like they could only make a game that was either a fragfest or a thinking man�s RPG, and that we�d be grateful whenever it was both, for even a second.

This is actually my second review of this game, though I had to do a follow-up after having played �Jedi Knight 2� which is also based on the QIII Arena engine. Though older than JK2, Elite Force (EF) holds up pretty well. It�s not as long as JK2 (you can easily finish the game in a week after playing a level a night) nor as difficult (the enemies aren�t quite as overwhelming as in JK2, and the game relies on far less counterintuitive puzzles than that game). On the minus side, it�s not as challenging and the simplistic game play gets annoying really quick (instead of puzzles, you have to locate control panels, which your PDA will ID on any alien ship, and throw their switches). There are two genuine boss-levels in the whole game, and maybe twice as many true frag-fests. Echoing the differences between the Trek and SW universes, EF probably sees itself more as a thinking-man�s shooter, but won�t make you think too hard. Though you won�t need to be any kind of Trekkie to get through or even enjoy the game, fans will appreciate how the QIII engine renders their ship.

I played this on my P4 (2Ghz) XP machine without any hick-ups. I haven�t tried multi-player yet, but managed to get by without downloading the 20mb patch (which I eventually installed for the heck of it � the only difference I�ve noticed is that Seven is actually voiced by Jeri Ryan). EF isn�t as finicky about your choice of accelerator cards, accepting my S3 Savage4 card. In short, a great Trek game, and one not to be missed before �Elite Force 2�.