Wish fulfillment in a bottle, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force puts you in the magboots of Alex Munro, a Man or Woman of your choosing, who has been assigned to Lt. Commander Tuvok's "Hazard Team" - an Away Team with extra steps! This is a pretty logical thing to do, given the perils that Voyager faces day in, day out in The Delta Quadrant. The game feels authentic. Almost the entirety of The Voyager is accessible through the prominently displayed "Virtual Voyager" experience on the menu, which actually places you at the penultimate point before the final level (spoilers beware if you enter VV!). The entire crew is present and all have prominent roles, and you will fight alongside them as well, which is very thrilling! Every weapon has a purpose and none of them feel useless or redundant. Even the most basic Phaser has utility to it. The characters are fun, the writing is consistent and tight, and the game pulls a few cute tricks here and there that'll make you feel like you're in a particularly action packed episode of Voyager. Unlike the Sequel, STVEF wasn't hit with the "2000s Action Hero Game" stick quite yet, and Munro never really loses sight of the fact that they are a starfleet officer. Which is very important to the feeling of being a Star Trek game. The only downside at the end of it all, is that one, the game is very dated and two, it is just a bit too Weapons Hot for Trek, which while full of action in the Kurtzmann era, needs to let itself be more cerebral, which STVEF doesn't have any investment in being outside of the first away mission. Nonetheless, if you're a Star Trek: Voyager fan, I honestly consider STVEF a must-play, if for no other reason than to understand the frustration Captain Janeway feels dealing with Tuvok's nagging on a regular basis. 4/5. Not quite Quintessential Star Trek, but pretty damned good for a First Person Shooter, which is about as far away from Trek's heart as you can get. So that's impressive.
Star Trek: Elite Force II is probably one of the most disappointing Star Trek games I've ever played. Capitalizing on none of the successes of Elite Force, STE2 puts you on The Enterprise with a skeleton crew made up of Picard, Barclay and Tuvok. Tuvok on The Enterprise is weird, for one. For two, this contrasts very unfavorably with the authenticity of Elite Force, which included almost the entire Voyager cast in prominent roles, some of which even went on away missions with you. You will not swing a Bat'leth with Worf against an alien menace, the way Seven of Nine stood back to back with you deep inside a Borg Cube's heart. It's a shame. The weapons don't feel as good, the ammo system is nebulous on what uses what, and you have to reload now, which feels like a 2000s Obligation. Worse still, Elite Force II takes away the choice to play as a woman, which is strange, as most sequels build your options over time, rather than take them away. What's worse still is that you are forced into a Romantic subplot with Tarsia or another addition to the crew, both of which are women. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with this, until you realize they did this to avoid writing an LGBT relationship, echoing the Producers of the TNG era's cowardice at the time as well, when the Actors knew damn well what chemistry characters had (Deep Space Nine fans know this feeling, and so too do they know what it's like for LGBT coded characters to get Hetero romances pushed onto them, and Lower Decks felt this to be such an issue, that Garak and Bashir *are* together in another universe.) The gameplay itself is littered with unclear and peculiar mechanics, some of which are novel, like the free aim button, and others of which are simply unwelcome after the first go, like the tricorder minigames which simply aren't fun, even if the attempt to work the "It does what we the writers need it to do" device into the game is appreciated. 2/5. A simply lesser experience altogether.
