Put on your black tights, and make sure the batteries for your phaser are charged. Because it’s time to kill an endless line of alien bugs, and a few humanoids. The prime directive is secondary this time around! Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force is an old school first-person-shooter in the style of the arena shooters of the past, seeing as it’s made in the Quake 3 Arena engine. However, it feels fairly “modern” in the sense that the mission structure is linear, with a touch of the cinematic, aka cutscenes that propel the story forward. Let’s get into it.
Technical things
Before we dive into the story, let’s go over a few technical things. Since the game has a few years to its name, the default way of playing is in a 4:3 resolution. To fix this, I downloaded the Star Trek Voyager Elite Force remaster fan edition of Moddb. While it fixes the issue of resolution, the mod came with a couple of problems for me, even after following the instructions. To fix these difficulties, I first had to remove the file ZHD.pak from the mod. This part of the mod supposedly increases the detail of the textures, but it also messes up some textures of the Borg, turning them white. The standard textures look fine regardless, to me, higher resolution or not.
Another problem was that it would crash when starting a new game. This is memory related, and was easily fixed by downloading the 4GB Patch, and applying it on the mod-exe file. With these two solutions, Elite Force ran and looked fine in widescreen (16:9). However, I got very noticeable tearing when moving. This was easily remedied by turning on v-sync in the Nvidia settings. I also forced 4x anti-alias while I was there, which reduces the jaggies by a lot. And that is all I had to do. The game most likely runs without any issues if you have the GOG version, but then you have to suffer the 4:3 resolution, or a hideous aspect ratio if you force it widescreen. The mod fixes this, and makes it more enjoyable playing on a widescreen monitor.
Voyager
Elite Force takes place during the later stages of the show, and has a genius way of turning the otherwise talky slow-burn of Star Trek to an action filled FPS. For those of you that have seen the show, know that the ship Voyager with crew is in a constant state of distress, after being thrown into the unexplored Delta Quadrant. When they ended up there, there was only one thing they could do: prepare for a long journey home that would take years through unknown territory with no way of reinforcements. After much hardship, it was only natural to form the Hazard Team. A team made up by the finest marines Voyager can muster – to take on the most dangerous missions that require a team with tactical finesse. This was the invention of the game. Yet, it plays into the lore of Star Trek so well, it could (and should) have been a mainstay of the series. Sadly, Hazard Team was not recognized as canon outside the game.
You play as Munro, a member of this newly specialist group called Hazard Team. Your mission is to do what the regular red-shirts won’t do (because they always die). One day, when Voyager is cruising along normally in space, the ship suddenly gets attacked. The assault is repulsed in a close call, but when doing so, something drags the ship into some kind of warp, which ends up with Voyager finding itself in the middle of a ship graveyard many miles away. Things are not looking great. With the risk of spoiling the mystery, I won’t go into many more details beyond that. It’s a pretty good mystery, in the veins of a satisfying TV episode, albeit much longer. Nothing felt out of place, and all the expected characters are there to make it feel as authentic as possible.
Diplomacy is not for us
However, there isn’t much choice here. Just like the linear maps for gameplay, the story is nailed down too. Elite Force lets you run around on the ship between missions, and if you are a Trekkie like me, this will be appreciated. Don’t expect much extra content, or extensive dialogues with fellow marines. Most of the crew will make excuses to get away from you. It’s a fun addition nonetheless, because things look right, which is great for the immersion factor. Where the game shines is as said how authentic it feels to the show, and how atmospheric it is. Especially on away-missions.
You will not be scanning or forming diplomatic relations with green aliens, as for the most part your job is to disintegrate them. Yet, it still got that feel of exploring something unknown together with your crew. These come in two forms: the made up ones by the developers – the ones in Hazard Team, and the legendary crew from Voyager. Both parts are great, since they blend together well, and feel true to the spirit of Star Trek. I can say that I really enjoyed the missions working with Tuvok. He is one of my favorites from the TV show. The mannerism, and other things you will come to expect is there, like the snarky holo-doctor, and Paris with a comedic line for every situation.
Set phasers to annihilate
Since Elite Force is an older game, from an era now long-lost, the gameplay, aka the shooting feels pretty good. It’s fast and snappy, having you darting around and between cover to plant phaser beams into alien faces. However, this also means that in general, it’s rather simple, as this is the only approach, beyond one mission that wants you to do stealth. And that is not even required. I wouldn’t say this is bad, per se, as the blasting is entertaining enough when you fight those that use weapons. Unfortunately, what drags it down is the level design at places, the friendly AI, and the worst issue – that at least 70% of the aliens consist of melee monsters that just run at you screaming with their scissor hands held high.
Let’s start with the level design. When it comes to the shooting of aliens, it’s very linear. All these segments, when it’s not interrupted by some light platforming, is incredibly straightforward, much more than even modern games. There is zero exploration, as the off-beaten path is often just one room, or a corridor that ends after five seconds of walking. I expected at least some keycard hunting, but alas… not even that. To be fair, the platforming is entertaining, but these areas are rare.
The second issue is the squad mates. These are fun to have around for the most part, and fits the theme of the game. Yet, more often than not, they will move in front of you blocking the shots. It happens on such a regular basis that it gets extremely annoying, and has me wondering about their mental health when it comes to their self-preservation. The red-shirts that follow you also do very little damage, and for the most part they don’t even exist for the aliens. The wailing melee based creatures will ignore your team, and make a beeline for you. I understand why, from a gameplay perspective, but it looks immersion breaking every time. Like when Borg drones push past perfectly fine humans to assimilate, just to get at you.
And then the final and worst issue: the close combat monsters. When you fight Klingons, or other humans with laser and projectile weapons, Elite Force is excellent and damn fun. However, for some unknown reason, they decided that the main enemy would be hordes like insect-like aliens that run at you screaming, often in big squads too. Sure, they are scary when you first encounter this type of enemy, but it gets old very fast. All these skirmishes consist of you running backwards to take potshots at a horde of aliens hellbent on eating your legs. Well, when your team is not blocking your shots, or hindering your retreat. It’s dull and frustrating as hell gameplay, especially when you have a direct comparison in the game with something so much more enjoyable: humanoids with weapons.
The Star Trek aesthetics
What can I say? The id Tech 3 looks and plays fantastically still. And specifically for Elite Force, the art direction is impressive. Things just look right, even if the textures are low, with rooms looking a little sparse. It’s just something about the aesthetics. It’s a very charming look that holds up well. Characters, and animations are also good, beyond the environments. I really like the facial animations. They might be simple in this day and age, yet, they work great, and have their own nostalgic appeal. The animation also manages to convey a surprising amount of emotions, for being “simple”.
Music, and voice acting has also seen immense effort. All the famous crew members have the correct voice actors from the show, and the new characters sound perfect, meaning they fit in like a glove to the world. Music is also very Star Trek-esque. The easy way out would be to just use tunes from the show, but I heard a lot of new music composed for the game alone. It sounds great, and also fits the theme entirely.
Conclusion
While I had a good time in Elite Force, I expected more from the level design, considering the time it’s from. It’s just way too linear. Fighting dudes with phasers of their own is awesome, but that’s not the main foe. As said, making the focus be melee aliens is such a strange decision, and sadly, it drags the game down from a four to a three on the entertainment scale. There are just so many of them. One or two levels would have been okay, but this many? Someone must have had a fetish for hordes rushing you from the hills screaming maniacally. I can’t come up with any other explanation. Regardless, much of everything else is cool. The story is engaging, and it sure feels like Star Trek, both on away-missions and when relaxing on the Voyager. But yeah, when the shooting is 95% of the gameplay, you have to make that right. And fighting endless waves of bugs is not that captivating, especially when the friendly AI can’t handle it that well either. It’s going to be interesting to try Elite Force II (which I have never played) to see if they fixed any of these problems!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
| System: | PC (GOG) |
| Played with: | Mouse & keyboard |
| Mods/fixes: | Widescreen Mod 4GB Patch |
| Enjoyment rating: |  |
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