This game is the sequel to the good but painfully short Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (STV:EF). Just as STV:EF was one of the best Star Trek (ST) games of all time, so too Star Trek: Elite Force 2 (ST:EF2) avoids the TV/movie-franchise curse. Seriously, ST:EF2 is a good game for almost all players, though ST fans will get even more from the variety of references and certain environments.
Holy pixels, Data! Can this be the Quake III Arena (Q3A) engine?! It's truly difficult to believe that this is the same engine that gave us the original STV:EF. I guess the difference lies in the improved polygon counts and improved texture resolution. In my review of the original game I mentioned that the texture detail was positively amazing, but the increased detail present in ST:EF2 positively puts it to shame.
Of course I should probably admit from the outset that I've been a ST fan for a long time. When my parents wouldn't let me stay up late enough to watch the original series in syndication (it was on at 11:00 p.m. on channel 3 every night in my home town), I used to stay up anyway in my room with the little black and white TV that I used for my TI-99/4A home computer. I would watch the show with the volume turned down as low as possible, so that my parents couldn't hear. I just about wet the bed with excitement when I heard the first film was going to be made, and yes that's painfully embarrassing to admit.
That's how much of a geek I was, and things haven't changed all that much. Admittedly, I wasn't a huge fan of Star Trek: Voyager, I haven't been all that impressed with the last couple of films, and I can't seem to get interested at all in the most recent TV show, Enterprise. Nevertheless, Roddenberry's vision of the future still tugs at my sensibilities in several respects. In short, I still consider myself a fan; I'm just not the near-bedwetting-rabid fan that I used to be as a kid. I guess age can't help but bring at least some sense to a person, eh?
I make my confession to serious geekdom because ST:EF2 adds even more eye candy than the previous game. The environments are absolutely phenomenal. When I was wandering around the shuttle bay, for example, I couldn't believe it when I discovered that I could walk through a shuttlecraft! Sure, it was cramped, but it really seemed like I was walking through a real, Starfleet shuttlecraft. Visually, the game brings an incredible experience to life, complete with animated conduits in the borg vessel, huge buildings on the campus of Starfleet Academy, impressive ship detail, great animation, and utterly fabulous special effects. The result is powerfully immersive, especially for a long-time fan like me.
I can muster but one substantive complaint with the visuals: the stencil shadows are positively screwy. I loved the look of a crewman's shadow as he walked down the corridors, for example, but there were too many other situations in which the shadows made the tesselation of the various models obvious. It looks positively awful when various triangular patches on Picard's head are flipping between shadow and light, depending on where he's looking. I eventually had to give up on the high-quality shadows and stick with the "simple" setting. That's a pity too because my video card has the muscle to do the more advanced stencil shadowing.
A still more minor problem is that if I speak to a crewman who has his back to me, he flips around instantly, and I mean instantly. It's like the very next frame of that character's animation is rotated completely around the vertical axis. That's pretty jarring. It's also the case that teammates (and enemies) sometimes get stuck in ugly animation cycles when they get hung up on corners. Both of these manifestations of the problem are likely not due to the visuals, for I suspect they're both more of an AI problem. The visual effect is so jarring, however, that I must at least mention them here.
Again, it is darned hard to believe that the venerable Q3A engine is powering this game. It looks good enough to hold its own against all of the recent games using the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine. I guess that's a testament to John Carmack's ability to code an engine with some staying power. However you slice it, there is very little to gripe about from a visual standpoint. I've been playing the game at 1280 x 1024 x 32 bpp. with 8x anisotropic filtering and 4x full-scene anti-aliasing (quality mode), and I still get a butter-smooth framerate. Granted, I'm using an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card, but that's still pretty darned impressive with as good as the game looks.
And the audio is just as good. Besting its predecessor, the audio in ST:EF2 is as perfect as its visuals. All of the Paramount-approved sounds have been lifted right from the TV shows, so fans of the various series will be immediately right at home. The voice acting is top notch, the sound effects are spot-on, and the music is almost uniformly wonderful. Even the positional audio seems perfect, which is an improvement over STV:EF. Maybe my updating to an Audigy 2 card since playing the original game is responsible. I don't know. What I do know is that I can tell immediately from where each sound is emanating and that's great.
I have only one complaint about the audio and its very minor: during the opening movies the audio doesn't sound very impressive at all. It sounds like the developers used either MIDI-based recordings or perhaps DirectMusic-generated sounds. Suffice it to say that if it's pre-recorded audio they made a big mistake. The initial impression given by those opening movies is that the music is going to suck, but the music within the various missions is of much higher quality. Go figure. Still, this is a very minor complaint; I can't imagine many people getting hung up on the opening movies. I'm just fussy when it comes to audio.
Like its predecessor, the interface for ST:EF2 is an LCARS work of art. Read my comments about the interface for the original game for an explanation of the term 'LCARS'. As before, all of the ST:EF2 interface is perfectly themed in accordance with it, which makes it a joy for any ST fan to use. The main-menu graphic of the rotating ship is absolutely beautiful. The whole interface just oozes ST style.
Of course the in-game heads-up display (HUD) is pretty standard fare for a first-person shooter (FPS) game, displaying the amount of "armor" and health available, the ammunition type and amount remaining for the current weapon, and so forth. But I particularly like the numeric readouts that show precisely how many shots remain in the current clip for both primary and secondary fire. That's a nice touch, and it's especially useful in ST:EF2 because of the three different types of weapon ammunition used throughout the game.
Mapping keyboard controls, configuring the mouse, and all other such details are everything gamers have come to expect from a Q3A-powered game. The addition of the minimap in the upper-right corner of the view is helpful, and it is doubly so when the tricorder is in use. The ability to get a three-dimensional representation of nearby objects, enemies, allies, etc., which is updated in real time as the player moves his viewpoint, is surprisingly handy. As with the previous game the interface is well designed and works well.
The game mechanics, for the most part, are relatively straightforward as FPS games go. Movement, shooting, health and energy, secrets, and so forth are all quite like the previous game in the series, though there are several nice additions in the form of mini-games. I guess my one big gripe about the game mechanics is that the player has to collect goofy, golden ships to unlock secret levels.
Don't get me wrong; I'm all for having secret levels. But this is ST, for crying out loud, and I want to know what sense it makes to have these goofy, golden ships everywhere?!. It's not like the developers couldn't have chosen something that themes better with the whole milieu. They could have had the player collect bits of circuitry, credits, data pad (i.e., PADD) entries, isolinear chips, or pretty much anything else that fits in the ST universe. But no, they had to go injecting a freaky console-game element into an otherwise wonderful ST game. Heck, why not just have the player jump for golden rings or something similarly absurd? Sheesh.
Aside from that condemnation, however, the game mechanics all work nicely. The mechanisms within the game make sense, and the addition of the different tricorder modes is a beautiful way of making the player feel more like he's really in the ST universe. If anything, I would have appreciated even greater use of the tricorder, and perhaps the use of some other gadgets as well, but all the mechanics (save for that of the golden ships) are great. Even the romance idea, though barely utilized, works well.
The story has that authentic ST feel, and that's what matters most. The player gets pulled into a bit of a mystery, wondering how the exomorphs could possibly have evolved, getting into the conflict between the Atrexians and the Idryll, etc. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that the story and ending to this game make one heck of a lot more sense than that of the previous game. The end boss never made any sense whatsoever in the original STV:EF—except as a game-ending cliché of course—and I'm happy to say that that sequel doesn't fall prey to the same error. The final bosses and battles in ST:EF2 make good sense and are pretty rewarding, which is good in light of the fact that they're also near-impossible.
There's an awful lot to this game. STV:EF was universally faulted—and rightly so—for its painfully short length. Yes, it was a fun game, but it barely provided a couple of handfuls of hours of playing time. ST:EF2 provides at least twice as much straight-up gaming, and that's not taking into consideration all the interesting innovations in the sequel. In short, it seems to me that ST:EF2 fixes the main problem with the original game and provides the player with a good value for his money. I spent close to thirty hours of play on my first trip through the game, and that's roughly three times what I got out of the original.
Even better, the stuff of ST:EF2 is far more varied. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I loved almost all of the gameplay variants. The only exception was the goofy inclusion of a side-scrolling Nintendo-style level. It was bad enough that the chosen game mechanic for unlocking secrets was a bunch of goofy, golden ships; the side-scrolling mini-game was abhorrent. This is ST, for God's sake, not some stupid console game with Mario, Sonic, or some other lame character that only a pre-teen could appreciate!
Rant aside, re-routing power systems, modulating waveforms, controlling Enterprise's phasers, and so forth all provide welcome diversions from the straightforward FPS play. The addition of more mini-bosses was also a nice inclusion because it gave the player something new and difficult to tackle along the way. Even the missions vary pretty nicely in purpose including investigation, holding an area against assault, rescuing colleagues, etc. The variety in the game is pretty good.
My only serious gripe against the game's content is with its AI. I was able to say of the original game that one's teammates moved "well enough" but were "almost useless in a firefight". ST:EF2 takes something of a step backward, insofar as one's teammates are even dumber in their movement and remain almost useless in a firefight. It's no wonder they always yelled for help in combat, for they didn't seem to feel any real pressure to fire, and aiming their weapons clearly wasn't something their combat training had ever emphasized.
True, the AI doesn't block corridors and refuse to get into elevators like they used to—or maybe the game just forces their presence when needed—but it's really disconcerting to see a teammate doing the twist at warp speed (i.e., changing his facing a dozen times a second or more) because he can't get past the corner of some crate. And like I indicated, it sure would be nice if they'd fire more than once every few seconds when we're in danger. It makes the player feel like he's the only crewman with half a brain cell, rather than like he's in the company of a bunch of elite troops.
A more minor complaint is that the weapons are just too... well... "wimpy", for lack of a better term. I don't know what it is, but there's something about ST-style weapons that makes them feel wimpy. When I'm wielding a phaser, I can't escape the feeling that I'm carrying a dustbusting flashlight, which simply isn't very intimidating. "Hold still, you pernicious alien scum, lest I simultaneously illuminate and vacuum your carapace!" Come on, folks, how threatening can that be? It's not until the player gets some of the really advanced weapons that they start to have a beefy feel.
I suspect this is just a problem with the ST license as a whole—you know, the whole in-the-future-we're-enlightened-and-non-violent thing. Any way you slice it, I wanted a real shotgun, rather than the assault rifle. I wanted something that made my enemies howl in distress while bleeding profusely. I wanted weapons that would simultaneously make James T. Kirk grin lecherously and Jean Luc Picard hold his nose in disgust at their potential for violence. In the plus column, of course, there are quite a few different weapons to use, but I'm sorry to say that they aren't always available in each mission. It would have been a cool addition if the player got to select his arsenal.
I suppose I should also mention that the pacing is a little uneven in the final levels. Whereas I had no problems at all throughout any of the earlier missions, the last couple of levels seemed to jump up radically in difficulty. It was like going from wading through moronic and incompetent enemies to facing the nastiest creatures imaginable. I eventually made it through, but it would have been nice to have a more gradual ramp up to that kind of difficulty. This too is a very minor complaint.
In summary, the content is good overall. I wish the AI were a bit smarter, I wish the weapons felt a bit "beefier", and I wish the developers had not included any of the silly console crap (e.g., the ridiculous side-scrolling level and the goofy, golden ships). Nevertheless, ST:EF2 delivers a host of very detailed and sensible environments, a lot of different weapons to use, some really cool mini-games that help suck the player into the ST universe, a lot of neat enemies, mini-bosses, and a bunch of other nifty stuff as well. That's more than many other games deliver.
The multi-player aspect of the game is surprisingly neat. Unfortunately, it still suffers from the same two problems I mentioned in reviewing STV:EF: (1) holomatch feels terribly wimpy compared to deathmatch, and (2) there aren't enough people playing. Regarding the former complaint, the folk in charge of the ST license need to grow up and recognize that gamers like violent games. It's not because we're a bunch of bloodthirsty psychotics who could snap and go the way of the DC sniper in but a moment's notice; it's because the violence of video games is fun, unlike the violence of the real world. De-rezzing somebody just doesn't have the same "oomph" that blasting him to bits has, which is transparently clear from the success of games that focus on gibs, blood, gore, etc. The Star Wars franchise gets this right in giving the player a light saber with which to carve his enemies to bits; ST could take a lesson from George Lucas in this respect.
Which leads me to the second problem: at the time of this writing, both GameSpy 3D and the All Seeing Eye show me a whopping thirty-three servers on-line right now, twenty-nine of which are completely empty. I don't doubt for a second that the complete lack of any "oomph" in the mechanics of scoring a frag plays no small role in that pathetic fact. The maps and weapons in ST:EF2 are nicely done; a major part of what holds it back from being a great multi-player shoot-em-up is the distinct lack of reward for scoring. Honestly, I much prefer being able to blow some guy into bloody chunks in Unreal Tournament than cause him to flicker and fade out in ST:EF2. I'm sorry, but that's just the way most gamers like their games.
In the final analysis, I'd say that Ritual got it almost completely right. Not only did they do a great job of continuing with the characters and other intellectual property that Raven created for STV:EF, they also built a sequel that manages to outshine its predecessor in almost every way. The graphics are fabulous, despite relying on the aging Q3A engine. The audio is great. The gameplay includes all the FPS standbys, while adding a bunch of new and interesting stuff to hold the player's attention. The story is pure ST. And, finally, the game doesn't end in a mere few hours.
The lack of multi-player games is a real stumbling block, but because of the quality of the single-player aspect it's not a fatal flaw. On the whole, ST:EF2 is definitely a worthwhile FPS for any gamer except those who hate single-player games or despise the ST universe. All others should set their phasers to mild discomfort (the strongest setting allowed by the license holders) and pick up a copy.
10/15/2003