Keeping the galaxy at peace isn’t easy. Trekkies and sci-fi fans in general know this very well. In Elite Force 2 you play as Alex Munro, who is a prominent character in the Federation largely because of the infamous Hazard team that we were introduced to in Elite Force 1. The beginning of the game takes place where the first game ended; at the Borg collective where the Voyager is trapped and a whole lot of goons want to assimilate you. After some old fashioned gun fighting you and the crew manage to escape, leaving the Borg base a smoldering ruin. The problem is, a brief moment afterwards your superior announces that the Hazard team isn’t needed anymore and that the individual members are to be relocated to various stations. This obviously comes as a shock to Alex, Korben and the rest of the gang but after a couple of years Captain Jean-Luc Picard is so impressed with Alex’s skills in a hologram simulation that he recruits the former Hazard members to the Enterprise, where their skills would certainly be needed.
I don’t want to spoil too much, but throughout the game you run into most of the races you (hopefully) know from the show but also some new nasty alien / insectoid races - who are definitely up to no good. The re-established Hazard team has to investigate some mysterious new beings, figure out why they’re so pissed off and hopefully find a way to stop it. The plot takes a few interesting twists here and there but what really makes the game interesting for sci-fi fans is the way it’s elaborated by the use of cut-scenes. These cut-scenes add a lot to the cinematic feel in this game because even though they’re all rendered by the engine the directors got to dictate the camera use as they pleased. Even if the pixels were replaced with a real-life recording and combined to one long piece of footage you’d still have one good episode – the story and direction really is that good! Additionally, when you play the game you may have to escort some not very important character to safety. If you fail to do so, then the cut-scene will reflect that and the story will progress - just as the cut-scene will reflect happiness if you do manage to escort the person. Throughout the game you’ll also get a few choices that deal with how Alex relates to other people on the Enterprise (women to be specific), so it’s interesting to be able to dictate the story a bit yourself. I’m convinced we’ll see more of this in future games.
Excellent direction isn’t enough to make a pretty game with even nicer looking cut-scenes – you need a hefty engine to make it all happen. The Quake 3: Team Arena engine was chosen, which is an updated version of what “The Carmack” made in 1999. You could be surprised that such an “old” engine was chosen, considering how other recent games that have used it could be characterized as outdated but that’s by far not the case here. Numerous features have been added to the engine. The two you will notice the most are the use of stencil buffered shadows and improved character physics by the addition of the Havok engine. You shouldn’t expect shadows or physics up to par with Doom 3 because the enemies are pretty much the only things that are affected by your gunfire and the stencil buffering technique isn’t fully up to par with the volumetric ones used in future games. However, the stencil buffered shadows are also used to “self-shadow” the characters, which adds a very interesting, yet somewhat limited effect. Implementing shadows that are created by for instance a Klingon’s nose, or lips is admirable, but the algorithm works per-polygon, so you’ll often get VERY strange, and edgy-looking shadows. This feature gives us a glimpse at what we can expect in future games, so it is in my opinion a worthwhile addition. Freelancer is another game that exploited the fact that a cinematic feel can add a lot to a game. It had, like Elite Force 2, very realistic facial textures, and models that could make fairly realistic expressions. Freelancer did have better animations, because the characters ran in a less jerky way, and the individual bones were used more freely. Elite Force 2 does come very high up on the list of awesome looking characters but it will undoubtedly fall down a notch when Half-Life 2 hits the shelves with its incredible shader programs, eyes that move, and spot-on lip-sync.
The excellent graphical presentation continues with the levels, the monsters, the cool weapons and all the objects that are scattered around to make everything realistic. In my opinion the first level in the game is the worst one but once you pass that you start realizing what group of talented people were put to work in this game. The levels are usually nothing but less than awesome in terms of architecture and texturing because you never really get stuck and have no idea where to go and the textures never make you stop and think “that sure looks crappy”.
A good sci-fi shooter must have a good set of weapons. In Elite Force 2 you start with a very limited number of weapons, but as you progress in the storyline you either steal new weapons or the researchers on the Enterprise make new ones. The Phaser is your first weapon – with stun, and kill mode, as expected. You also have fully automatic energy rifles, a shotgun, a minigun, a sniper rifle, a rocket launcher and some rather exotic ones that you should discover on your own. Each of these have secondary modes, so one thing the game doesn’t lack is the number of ways you can kill. Surviving in Elite Force 2 depends largely on your ability to figure out what weapons are best for the given situation, to aim accurately, and to use the surrounding to your advantage, just like most other shooters. The gameplay is luckily a bit more complex than that because you’ll get to use a huge turret on the Enterprise, use various view-modes like structural integrity mode, gas mode, night vision, bio sign mode, etc. Changing view modes is done by using the Tricorder – a gadget you need on most missions. This gizmo can do more than just change view modes, because you’ll use it to transmit data, modulate shields so they open, or start mini-games of sorts where you need to rotate pieces on a “circuit board” so it doesn’t short circuit, thus opening a door, or another where you have to change amplitude, frequency and offset on a electrical wave so it matches a different wave, thus usually opening something or starting something.
I’ll have to admit that I like watching Star Trek, but for me none of the older or newer versions compare to The Next Generation. Sadly Jean-Luc Picard is the only “old” character in Elite Force 2 but Patrick Stewart does a great job on the voices. The rest of the cast also do a great job although none are as famous as Patrick Stewart. Alex Munro is voiced by Rino Romano, who played in ‘The Scorpion King’, did voices for Eternal Darkness, and a long list of other games. Korben (the Elite Force 2 equivalent of Worf) is voiced by Tony Todd, whom you may have seen in Final Destination 2 as Mr. Bludworth. The musical score is fully up to par with the music used in the show, and for once I’m not going to complain about lack of diversity! Turning the volume up high should almost be mandatory in this game because by doing so you should have a blast with the many firefights. The sound effects do a very nice job, although they’re dominated by the sound of weapons, explosions and such.
And for once, a sci-fi shooter that doesn’t rely completely on the single player mode to sell copies. The multiplayer part of the game is surprisingly good, sporting more options than many recent shooters. You can choose between Holomatch (like deathmatch), Team Holomatch, Capture the Flag, and Bomb Defusion, which are all fairly self explanatory. You can choose between 13 maps and like in Unreal Tournament 2003 you can add nine modifiers. Some examples are Disintegration (like insta-gib), Action Hero (one person starts with all weapons and regains health, but loses the title once he or she is killed), Auto Handicap (the game automatically balances the game based on frags and/or eliminations), Weapon Score (higher score for weaker weapons), and Elimination (you’re dead until one person or one team remains). There are also four other modes that can be unlocked. Speaking of which, throughout the game you may run into secret areas, and find golden miniature ships, and when you have enough of these you can unlock up to six additional maps.
The bots are surprisingly skilled, so you should find a challenge almost regardless of your skill-level in first-person shooters.
Conclusion:
I’m convinced that making this game wasn’t especially cheap. Even though you can finish the single player part of the game in somewhere between 7 and 9 hours you’ll most like have a good time fighting through the seemingly endless hordes of aliens, goons, and bad-guys. The gameplay does add a few new things to the genre that may not be groundbreaking, but at least keeps the game from being as repetitive as Unreal 2. It’s amazing how much the developers managed to squeeze out of the Quake 3: Team Arena engine but the fact remains that it’s somewhat limited compared to newer engines. The artistic effort makes up for some of this however, not to mention the excellent cut-scenes.
You probably won’t be playing the single player part of the game for all eternity but the multiplayer part should interest most people who are getting bored with UT2003 etc. There are already plenty of servers running, so you should have no problem at all finding people to play with.
This game may not be groundbreaking - but if you’re a fan of shooters then this should be a title to investigate. If you’re both a fan of shooters and Star Trek then this is without a doubt a ‘must-have’.