Star Trek: Elite Force 2

Star Trekking a merry first-person course onto a PC near you. Richard enlightens us.

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"Through its actions and inactions, Viacom has let the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay," states Activision. As we reported recently, these hurtful truths came from a lawsuit filed by Activision against Viacom concerning the future licensing of Star Trek games. The franchise is indeed in a terrible state. The last film, "Nemesis", performed poorly at the box office and there are no current plans for another. After all Patrick Stewart has said he won't be returning and who would replace him? The TV series has fared worse. Despite constant criticism from the fans Voyager churned out the same old garbage week in, week out. Now that the new series, Enterprise, seems happy to do the same, even the hardcore fans are abandoning ship and it's slowly becoming the ratings graveyard it deserves. Activision for its part is not entirely innocent. The quality of the games they've produced since 1998 have varied somewhat between good (Starfleet Command 3) and bad (Away Team). I don't think that it's unfair to say that Star Trek is going out on a whimper rather than a bang. What this all means is that Nemesis is probably going to be the last film, Enterprise the last series, and Elite Force 2 the last game. As a diehard Trekkie I must ask you now to pause for one minutes silence and contemplate this loss. (Oh the humanity!)

If you survived that rather lengthy introduction you'll want to know if Elite Force 2 is worth buying. The answer is a hesitant yes. It is a good, if at times rather generic first-person shooter. In a strange way I'd almost call this game old school in that it eschews the current fad for god awful stealth missions and just ensures that enemies keep on appearing around every second corner. This probably comes from the use of Quake 3 engine that lies under the hood. While it may not be the most advanced engine available it can still render some impressive levels. The added bonus of course is that the game seems very stable and should be compatible with a very wide range of system configurations. If you've played the original Elite Force, or any recent FPS, you should be immediately at home.

The game begins where the previous outing left off. You play as Alex Munroe, a member of Voyager's Hazard team trapped in the Delta Quadrant. Well trapped for the first few missions anyway. You begin on a Borg ship that you must infiltrate in order to free Voyager. As you might imagine this entails a bit of sneaking around and copious amount of shooting. A nice touch in this part of the game is that the Borg will adapt to your different weapons like in the show. So you can only kill a few Borg drones before they become shielded to that particular weapon. 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. These early mission allow the game's story to fit into the arc of the TV series before branching forward. This is done using the classic cliché technique where the screen fades out to subtitles of "2 years later" and there you are.