Star Trek™: Voyager - Elite Force

Raven Software + old school Quake engine = will get me every time. I am just an average fan of Star Trek, but I love Quake II/III engine games, and every game Raven has ever made, before they joined Activision. Soldier of Fortune and Jedi Outcast come to mind. If you like those, you'll like this. It's a fun story-based romp with a lot of old school FPS corridor shooting, good characters and charming cut scenes, both in-game and out. I appreciate the graphics for what they are, the environments are really well done, and the character models are funny, mpaped Quake models that were cutting-edge at the time. The level puzzles are all very intuitive and just clever enough to not be frustrating. Some of the story elements can be puzzling, but I don't care, the arch is fine. Must-play game (as well as the sequel) for classic era FPS fans.

Being an avid fan of Star Trek AND turn-of-the-century-era FPS games, I feel like this game was made specifically for me. How did I only find out about it a few days ago? While the first level is a bit of a slog, you'll soon find yourself sneaking around a Klingon bird of prey, fighting space pirates on an original-series-era Federation starship (with all the right props and sound effects), and infiltrating a Borg cube, among other things. The story is fun, with a surprising amount of character development. Voices are provided by the Voyager cast, while the main character (if you play as a male) is voiced by the actor who voiced Kyle Katarn in Jedi Outcast. While the combat is never particularly challenging, the arsenal is satisfying and varied. Perhaps my favorite thing about it is the continuity. Levels are not simply bridged by expository cutscenes (not that there aren't any of those). Rather, after you finish a mission, you are free to roam around the ship and interact with your crewmates until you are assigned your next mission. It really is just kind of a day in life of a Voyager crewman. Just a solid, engrossing experience all around. My only complaint is that it's too short. Takes about 7-8 hours to beat the campaign. Short but sweet. Can't wait to play the sequel.

This game might be one of the best Star Trek games that was ever made. When it came out, I bought the big Borg Cube edition. Game play, level design and voice acting were all more than average. Not excellent, but very good, just what we would expect from Raven software. Overall it was just fun to play. The one thing we were missing was to be able to walk around the ship ... and then came the expansion that gave us exactly that. With a few tweaks it's still possible to run the original version from the CDs, but haveing a installer that's made for modern system and not worrying about CD keys is a lor more comfy, so it was a instant buy.

Despite being 20+ years old, this is probably one of the best Trek games ever made. The main draw here is to role play as a member of the Voyager crew, inhibiting the Trek universe with its eclectic mix of alien species - and there are plenty of the latter, pulled from across the multiple TV shows (think Klingons, Humans, Borg, Species 8472). The game is fully voiced by the actors from the TV show, which lends more credence to the believability of the setting. As a shooter, it's fine; nothing outstanding. Yes, it's linear and over within a few hours, but that was the common game design of shooters back in the 2000s. But those hours will be filled with nostalgia from a time when Trek was actually Trek. Besides, where else can you wield a handheld Photon torpedo launcher? A great gem of a game.

It's kinda funny to imagine the stuff that takes place during the gameplay actually happening in an episode of Voyager because it would make it one of the bloodiest pieces of television of all time, and the main characters would seem like they came from a mirror universe with the amount of carnage that they commit over the course of the game. I guess making a first person frag-fest instead of a more thoughtful adventure game was a more bankable choice considering the genre's popularity at the time, but regardless, it's just fun to think about and it's not a jab at the game's quality anyway. The developers still made concentrated effort to emphasize the storytelling aspect and properly immerse you in this setting, which really does feel like you're on the set and playing out a role in an episode of Star Trek. The fact that all of the members of the original cast make an appearance to voice their respective characters adds to the immersion as well. All the shooting an mayhem is simply a bit of a ludonarrative dissonance that doesn't exactly align with the show's ideals but serves as a fun diversion in between the plot dumps. As for the gameplay, this is definitely an early 2000s Quake engine FPS action at its finest, and Raven Software doing what they did best at the time by delivering an extremely fun shooting game. Thanks to the clever story setup, there's enough variety in enemy and level designs to keep things fresh as time goes on, the controls and character movement are tight, precise, and satisfying as you would expect from a game made by this studio, and there's enough light puzzling and platforming to pass the time in between shooting galleries in a satisfying way. All that goodness served on one of the finest FPS engines at the time, with all its audio and visual bells and whistles that still hold up to this day with a very unique, timeless aesthetic to it. It's a great game and I heartily recommend it to any Star Trek or FPS fan.