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Star trek: Elite Force2
THE Star Trek material has been utilized to its maximum in TV shows, movies, toys and so forth. But when it comes to PC games, it has not been able to live up to expectations. The only game that has remained faithful to its Star Trek heritage has been the Raven Software’s first person shooter, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. Although I do not consider myself to be a Trekkie, I still enjoyed playing the game, not due to its tie-in but because it remains faithful to its first person roots. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force is a fast paced shooter with an exciting story which unfolds through the game with good scripted sequences and interesting characters.
I was really excited when I first heard that a sequel was in the making, though I was a bit sceptical about the capability of its project developer, Ritual Entertainment, which, as far as I know does not hold a proven track record.
Anyways, upon booting up the game I came across the same old menu interface which hardly seems to have changed from its predecessor. The game apparently started with a cgi cutscene, at least that is what I thought of it at first, but I later realized that it was actually an in-game cut-scene. I was surprised at what Ritual had done with the Quake 3 engine. So before I discuss the graphics, I would like to provide you with some insight into the background story, which most Star Trek fans might be interested in.
More like a sequel, the game begins from where the last adventure left off. You play as Alex Munroe, a member of the Voyager’s Hazard team trapped in the Delta Quadrant. You begin on a Borg ship, which you have to infiltrate in order to free the Voyager. This entails a bit of sneaking around and copious amount of shooting. The cool bit in this part of the game is that Borg will adapt to your different weapons. So you can only kill a few Borg drones before they become shielded to that particular weapon.
The first few levels will give a strong deja vu’ feeling to returning gamers who have played the first installment. However, after a bit of running around, some well-placed phaser bursts and a fight with an uber Borg, Voyager breaks free and heads back to the Alpha Quadrant. Just in time for Janeways’ court martial. Once back in Federation space you get to visit Starfleet Academy for your debriefing only to be told that the Hazard is being disbanded and your next assignment is as a teacher for plucky new cadets.
After some classic cliché techniques, where the screen fades out to subtitles of “two years later,” and due to some fortunate (in this case anyway) sequences you are rejoined to head the Hazard Team and most of its members are back on duty. What happens next? You can find that out by investing some time and a few moolah to the game.
The gameplay is the regular shooter fare, with more emphasis given to exploration and action. Most of the levels are in your face action set pieces with aliens popping out of walls, air ducts and anyplace they can wriggle their way through. This keeps the suspense and unpredictability of your next encounter.
The aliens that litter the game world range from the innocent friendly NPCs to hungry flesh eating creatures who will try to grab a bite if you don’t fill out the space between you and them with a gunfire. As I have a small case of arachnophobia — the fear of spiders, I was shaking in some levels. The yellow-colored aliens may seem sweet to some of you, but I was blasting my phasers at them with no regard to the number of ammos.
Anyways, as you progress through the game the enemy AI (artificial intelligence) also keeps getting better and better, as your enemies are not just dumb predators anymore but also humans and other forms of highly developed alien races including Idyrlls and Romulans.
In some open areas you get the opportunity to control your artificial intelligent teammates, but the most they do is scurry along behind you and as soon as you enter an indoor area you get disbanded due to some unforeseen circumstances, or what you call in gaming lingo, some scripted sequences.
Interestingly, Ritual has excelled in creating the Star Trek universe with as much dedication as the crew on the sets of the actual TV shows. Getting the atmosphere and ambience right in a Star Trek game is integral, as there are fans who will be nit picking every little detail they can get their hands on. Still, the level design completely submerges you in the Trek world.
Exploring strange new worlds is an understatement as far as this game is concerned. You are continually bouncing between starship levels, starbase levels, industrial planets, and arctic colonies all through the game and sometimes you even double back to a place you’ve already been.
Ritual has also added new elements and weapons which remain true to the Star Trek universe yet they offer enough diversification to keep the gamers happy. You get to fire at will with Enhanced Compression Rifles, Assault Rifles, Tetryon Gatling Gun, Quantum Burst and many more.
A new innovative item called a ‘Tricorder’ has also been added in your arsenal. It’s a very useful piece of gadget which you can use to check weakened walls, find traces of gas in booby-trapped rooms, and hack consoles that open up new areas or trigger some sort of machinery which will help you in proceeding through the level. These are mini games to break free from the action and quench your thirst for a brainy puzzle. You can also use the Tricoder to find information on various items and characters. Though its purely a value added feature, the Star Trek geeks will get a kick out of it.
Between missions you’ll spend a lot of time on the Enterprise; NPCs are quite chatty, and you can overhear conversations about all sorts of things. Some have to do with the actual story, while others do not. And speaking of conversations, you will get the chance to occasionally pick what Munro has to say, although none of it really affects the linear nature of the game — it’s more academic, really.
For the graphics, I would like to pay tribute to John Carmack for creating one of the best 3d game engines ever for the PC genre. The Quake 3: Arena engine has already given us fabulous titles from some outstanding first person shooters, such as Medal of Honour, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Jedi Knight 2, Soldier of Fortune 2 and Star Trek: Elite Force to excellent third-person action/adventure games, such as Alice and Heavy Metal FAAK 2. And there are at least five more games in the pipeline which are utilizing the Q3A engine. Not too shabby for an engine that is four years old, huh?
Elite Force 2 is the best incarnation of the Quake 3 engine to date. The textures look sharp and colourful and the character faces are finely detailed. The lip sync looks to be on target as there is a lot of spoken dialogue in the game. The best thing to come out of utilizing the quake 3 engine under its hood, are the system requirements. Elite Force 2 can be run on lower-end machines with some marginal hiccups in heavy graphics scenes. On my Radeon 9700, the graphics were offered at their optimal imaginable details.
The sound is also on par with the graphics with the voice acting ranging from good to excellent. The music and the sound effects are an exact replica of its bigger cousins, that is, the movies and the TV shows, and hence they sound quite convincing.
Ritual were facing a do or die scenario with Elite Force 2. They were in a dire need of a chart topper. Although Elite Force 2 does not succeed on such a level, still it manages to keep the ship afloat, and now Ritual has another shot to justify their standing as a serious developer. What might help their cause is that due to some controversies between Activison and Viacom this might be the last Star Trek game to hit the gaming world for a while. So the Star Trek fans will try to make the most out of this opportunity till they wait for another outing in the galaxy far far away (pun intended).
Beside the game’s bare minimum cost in Pakistan, the lasting appeal for the gamers does not come into play.
Hardware specifications
Minimum requirements: PIII 600MHz or equivalent; 128MB RAM; Video Memory: 32 MB VRAM HDD Space: 1.5GB
Recommended requirements: P4 1GHz or equivalent; 256MB RAM; Video Memory: 64 MB VRAM; HDD Space: 1.5GB
Reviewer’s machine: Athlon XP2400+; 512MB RAM; Radeon 9700 128MB; Viewsonic 17” Monitor; SB Audigy;
Configuration used: 1024x786x32, 4X Anti-Aliasing, 16X Anisotropic Filtering, EAX
DSDC Rating: 81 per cent
The writer
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