Star Trek: Elite Force
As summer draws to a close it’s time to look ahead to what will be gracing computers across the country as the brisk fall weather edges out the summer heat. From the looks of it, it’s going to be a good time indeed.
The folks at Raven have another ace up their sleeve slated for an early fall release. It’s Star Trek: Elite Force. The premise is simple. It’s a first person shooter that takes place on the Star Ship Voyager. You control an ensign as you fight to find your way home, from the dark void of the… well, wherever it is they are. The only things that seem to stand in your way is every race that you encounter (Janeway just seems to upset them), a bucket full of system problems on board, and ohh yeah, the Borg are after you too. But other than that, it should be a piece of cake, right?
The game itself, from what I have seen in the demo, is beautiful (it’s based on the Quake III engine). Like any other first person shooter, your missions usually consist of completing objectives, keeping friendly NPC’s alive, and not getting yourself killed in the process.
The demo takes place in several different areas. You start off in what appears to be a Borg vessel trying to rescue your comrades that have been taken captive and are slated for assimilation. Of course, the only thing standing between you and them are a few hundred Borg. Once you pick your way through the dark, haunting ship and meet up with your crewmates, you discover that it was all a holodeck exercise. And–being the trigger-happy ensign that you are–you managed to screw it up and piss off Tuvac to boot. From there it’s off to the bridge for a little cut scene, then it’s time for the second part of the demo. To close out the demo all you have to do is prevent a warp core breach. No big deal, right?
While there’s not as much gunplay in this part, it does give you an excellent opportunity to run through the main corridors and Jeffries tubes into the bowels of the ship. You can also interact with the NPC crew that you encounter along the way. And if you’re paying attention you might be able to save a few lives along the way.
The detail in Elite Force is incredible. While I am not a huge Trek fan anymore, (because Picard was the best captain of all time), I still watch from time to time and the feel is truly Star Trek. While wandering the halls it feels just like you’re in the show, running an important errand for someone or another. There are turbo lifts, cargo bays, holo decks, bridge consoles, and lots and lots of crew members that you can interact with and get information from.
While this is a typical FPS there are times when resorting to phaser fire isn’t always the best solution to a problem. There are some puzzles, but nothing to difficult. Mostly they consist of the standard finding of door or power switches in one area to gain access to another. But as with many good shooters, the single player game is only a small portion of the actual game play. The rest comes from multi-player action, either in a LAN game or Internet play. Both can keep gamers glued to the game long after the single player missions have been completed.
Elite Force doesn’t disappoint here either. The multi-player included with the demo is excellent. There are a few different maps and a bunch of different skins to choose from (after it goes retail expect many more from both Raven and individual skinners & mappers). There are lots of games being played on the net and joining is a snap. In the multi-player games you also have access to a wider array of weapons to use than in the single player demo. All seem to have a regular fire and an alternate fire mode that you can map to any mouse button or key you like. Of course, you can select from most of the weapons in the show and a host of others to round out your arsenal.
While it’s going to be a hard wait for the next couple months till this game makes its debut, I think it is going to be well worth it. And hey, you have the demo to tide you over till then. It is 105 meg’s so if you don’t have a DSL or Cable connection, try to find a friend that does and beg them to burn you a copy.