Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force

A romp to remember and a multiplayer taste to acquire and savour.

Not just a great Star Trek game, but a really great game in general.

As a fast-paced and intense gameplay title, it is appealing to those who have no idea what Star Trek Voyager is.

The most important thing, though, is that Raven seems to have actually made the world of Star Trek: Voyager -- dare I say it? -- fun; an impressive task in and of itself.

Overall, Elite Force screams quality gaming, though perhaps a little short of quantity.

The varied mission types, scripted events and engrossing storyline made it great fun to play, an "experience" more than just a game.

The main reason Elite Force works so well is that it combines not simply the Voyager license with the "Quake III" engine, but merges a well-written story with an incredibly solid first-person shooter.

Voyager elite force stays true to its source material and offers a good dose of high quality FPS action.

Star Trek Voyager Elite force remains faithful to the original TV series even infusing a sense of charm on it's own. However the gameplay may not have aged as gracefully as it could have.

Star Trek fans have it pretty rough. If it isn't a terrible show being cancelled, then it's the legacy of a better show being ruined by Picard, or fans praising Star Trek Voyager when it's not only a boring show, but has easily some of the worst written first season in the entire shows history (just don't tell star trek fans). Sure, it picks up eventually, though never nearly getting to the quality of the next generation or deep space nine, but I digress. Star Trek Voyager, "Elite force," is a pseudo-mini-episode-spin-off action video game where the actual cast lended their voices, background music from the series and it's a pretty straightforward embarassing forray into what could've been a tighter script all-around, but nevertheless- this is a first-person science fiction shooter set in the star trek universe. So obviously it goes without saying, some caveats had to be made. Techonology-wise, I think the in-game models are just okay, even by the standards of the time. The weapons, environments, and most of the recreated set-dressing is pretty good (when you squint your eyes and pretend you're watching an episode of the show or something). All things considered, it isn't the worst looking Star Trek video game by 2000 standards. It is however, extremely dull in terms of game play. Walk down a hall, find yourself in a room shaped like a box, shoot enemies until they stop spawning in, and then proceed down next corridor to similarly shaped room. It's so hum-drum and boring you'll embrace every moment the crew is actually spitting out voice lines or every musical sting that feels like it's about to jump to a commercial break (but it's just a load-screen for a cutscene segment or a load-screen for the next area). I'm particularly vexed about how stupid the ammo sharing is when the game has the gall to give you some interesting weapons, but you have to decide which two seperate (broken and overpowered) laser guns to annihilate the copies of the same enemy in every level with. It doesn't seem well designed and on higher difficulties you seem to run out of ammo quite often, requiring pointless alternating between red or blue ammo weapons. Another contentious issue is the squad AI constantly waltzing into your line-of-sight every time you are trying to kill enemies (who are basically stacked right on top of each other or directly behind another in every firefight). This leads to a lot of wasted ammo, which leads to a lot of me shouting "get the **** out of the way," which leads to a lot of me wishing that they just weren't even in the game to begin with if they don't even do any damage to enemies. Which is another puzzling issue, why are they there? To break up the monotony of traipsing from room to room doing the same thing in every level? Probably. The one point in the game's favor is the infiltration mission, but even that seemed to be built around firefights, as every area of the ship has ammo or health refills for some odd reason (probably because the stealth mechanics are non-existent and the whole area relies on trial/ error to get through or something). I found myself basically falling asleep as the game went on as there is just no variety to what you're doing. Nothing intriguing about this stupid farcical bad Star Trek episode featuing cameos from actors that had no idea what the point of anything they were doing even was. Is it nice that they got the original cast? I mean sure, but it's entirely meaningless- this was 2000 and the show was coming to a close like a year later. Why not get another paycheck for a few voice lines in some generic sci-fi video game with the Star Trek license? Playing "Elite Force" only makes me believe that whoever made it had no idea that Star Trek the show isn't actually about going into every situation phaser shooting. It's mostly about the crew talking stuff over with aliens (usually anyway). The fact that it pales in comparison to stuff like Half-life or the original Quake only goes to show that in terms of gameplay, it's milquetoast, generic, and formulaic to a point where the only positives are things it references from the television show. As a game? It's a remarkable failure, but so are most of the Star Trek video games.