Set phasers to zzzzzzzz…. Review

Set phasers to zzzzzzzz….

Editor’s log, stardate 011802: The crew aboard the Starship GR has just received
a faint message coming from the parking lot outside. A UPS craft has crash landed
and an automatic distress signal has gone out. Lieutenant Brian Gee triangulates
the transporter coordinates and Commander Ben Silverman orders me, Lieutenant
Shawn “Itchy Phaser Finger” Sanders, to beam down and investigate.

Upon
arrival, I thoroughly check to make sure all my atoms have been put together
correctly – you never know what’ll go wrong with those things. Once, we had
a red shirt beam down and, due to some weird atom rearrangement, he had actually
lost his ass. He said it didn’t hurt; it just tingled a bit when he walked.
But man, you gotta be careful with those transporters.

After assessing my wholeness, I begin to inspect the UPS craft. Surprisingly,
there is nothing onboard but a disk titled Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.
After arriving back on the Starship GR, I quickly pop the disk in our code deciphering
unit, or what the rest of you call a PS2. There is no information regarding
the UPS craft; but there is more evidence to substantiate our theory that some
games just don’t translate well from PC to console.

The “trek” begins with the Voyager answering a dummy distress call
only to be whisked away to some alien location by an unknown force. There you
find a veritable sea of derelict ships and since the Voyager’s engines have
been disabled, you’re completely stranded. The story is very Roddenberry with
plenty of Star Trek-born voice talent to appease all our Terran trekkies. Not
bad at all.

Having Voyager stranded in an unknown quadrant prompts the introduction of
Commander Tuvok’s hand-picked Hazard Team. These officers are your Star Trek
special forces, or rather, the Elite Forces. And since the Hazard Team handles
unknown and extremely hostile events just like this one, it’s time to go to
work.

Elite Force is essentially a status quo first-person shooter with a
very familiar Star Trek twist. You assume the guise of either Ensign Alexander
or Alexandria Munro, depending on your preference. From there, you and your
computer-controlled Hazard Team must shoot a lot of Borg soldiers and other
alien oddities as well as solve very obvious puzzles. Not the most thrilling
gameplay you’ve ever seen, but hey, it’s still Star Trek.

The puzzles are lame and almost always involve gaining access to areas so you
may progress through the game. You must find ways to lower shields, open doors
and locate access tunnels and shoots. Since the answer is always really obvious,
they end up being more of an annoyance than a challenge.

Just so you aren’t spitting and cursing at the enemy, the Hazard team has nine
weapons with two firing modes apiece (a la Red Faction)
to beef out your offensive abilities. You’re given the standard issue hand phaser,
the phaser compression rifle (best for distance), Infinity Modulator (frequency
changes to confuse the Borg), a couple enemy weapons that can be pilfered and
a few others that I don’t want to spoil for you. The guns are very typical for
Star Trek and help to immerse the player into the mythos. The firefights are
what this game is all about.

It’s too bad the graphics threaten to pull the player right out of that immersive
feeling. The textures and colors are washed out and run together. Also, the
textures can be unforgivably grainy. The levels stay true to Star Trek, with
sterile ship interiors and other hi-tech scenery, but many of them look the
same. Weapon effects are decent but not amazing, particle effects are poor and
the character animations are pretty bad. It’s a weak visual experience all around.

While I’m on a tirade about the bad, let’s talk stupidity; in this case, the
enemy AI. Baddies are as dumb as an inebriated possum caught in a set of headlights.
They have no desire to preserve their own life, and instead they’ll make vested
efforts to the contrary. I can’t count how many times Borg soldiers would come
right up to my character’s face and just stand there waiting to be ‘un’assimilated.
Occasionally you’ll see your life bar diminish , but for the most part, the
Borg will stand motionless before you, dishing out some unseen punishment. Again,
terrible animations (because you never see the attack) and even worse AI make
for a bad voyage.

At least your NPC compatriots are a little better equipped in the brains department.
They will dispatch enemies quickly and with impunity, which is always nice to
see, but you can’t issue orders of any sort. I guess you’re just the low man
on the totem pole

In addition to the main mode, Elite Force offers a very forgettable
multiplayer mode called the Holomatch. You are offered several maps to choose
from that are all very boring. Furthermore, you can only play one on one and
there is no bot support at all. At least the lackluster Soldier
of Fortune and the Geomod-errific Red Faction offers bot support.
Elite Force multiplayer is just a hard pill to swallow after seeing a
monster such as Halo totally blow-up
the console FPS multiplayer scene with a plethora of options and settings to
tweak, even without bot support.

Since the story and gameplay are linear, the fun is left to the moments of
frantic firefights and futuristic weaponry. Sadly, those moments are far and
few between. Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force for the PS2 is a mere shadow
of its PC counterpart and will barely please even the most hardcore Trekkies.
The wise officer should always rent before plotting a course for the unknown.