Elite Force 1
PRO
- Opening level was a great example of how to do the Borg correctly, with a good twist at the end of said level.
- Styled like an episode of the show, with the opening credits and an episode title flashing up afterward.
- Good cutscenes.
- All voice actors from show except Seven, but she was added by expansion pack.
- Voice of the Big Bad was the guy who played LeChuck in the Monkey Island series, and also Dr Silbermann in the Terminator movies.
- Multiple crew members can live or die due to your actions, and one can either be saved or end up assimilated and you will be forced to fight and kill them.
- Holodeck training simulations broke up the game with added variety.
- Expansion pack included a black and white Dr Chaotica program.
- Decent variety of weapons.
- Even managed to get TOS stuff into it with a mirror universe Constitution Class in the plot.
- Provided a decent explanation for where massive inventory of stuff ended up on a skintight suit.
- A heroic death scene from someone that makes you feel gutted when they are gone.
- Female romantic interest does not care whether you have chosen to play as male or female. +1 for Trekkian equality.
- Crew members on your squad are decently developed, character-wise.
CON
- Set on Voyager.*
- Due to engine limitations or developer lack of time and/or initiative, all characters are precisely the same height, so Neelix ends up being a lanky giant.
- Suffers from the same problem every single Raven Software game has had since Jedi Knight 2, ie; masses of cargo containers that could just be simple boxes or barrels, but end up with about six different colours of flashing lights all over them for no particular reason.
- A handheld photon torpedo launcher would have splash damage capable of levelling city blocks, not just leave a single small scorch mark on a wall.
- One mission has Tuvok haranguing you via comms about how you need to move faster because of the imminent threat bearing down on the ship. A ticking clock would have made that so much better, especially when there
had been at least three prior instances earlier in the game where failure to act in time carried consequence.
- While there is a bisexual female love interest, there is no bisexual male equivalent. -1 for not having guts enough to go the full equality range, Raven/Activision.
- Expansion pack adds very, very little to the point where it seems little more than a mod collection and easter egg hunt.
- In the aftermath scene, there is mention of a memorial. Show this, don't just talk about it.
- Last level is an exercise in formulaic, drab design.
* And that's a whole other rant for another time.
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Elite Force 2
PRO
- Provides an explanation for a slight mystery from the last episode of Voyager.
- Set largely on Enterprise E.
- Patrick Stewart as Picard, Dwight Schultz as Reg Barclay. Jeffrey Combs (Weyoun) appears as at least two new characters and Tony Todd appears as a Klingon, always brilliant. Robert O'Reilly appears as Krindo.
- Excellent job of depicting a wrecked Excelsior Class during a search and rescue misson. Really fucking good tension, and good attention to detail with the TOS movie style interior upgraded towards the more modern version of LCARS as though the ship had been undergoing refit.
- Far better use of tricorder, which changes from the older style to Post-Nemesis style tricorder which looks like a palm pilot.
- There is a scene on a space station that is an homage to the Star Wars cantina where Obi Wan and Luke were booking passage on the Falcon.
- Ability to use tricorder to call down orbital bombardment from Enterprise.
- A level on the hull of the Enterprise.
- A Borg super-drone who looks like he was created out of a nightmare scenario where the Jem'Hadar got assimilated.
CON
- Restricted to male this time, no option to play as female version.
- A character at Starfleet Academy is written as being such an absolute fuckwit that you wonder how the hell he's qualified to be in the uniform.
- Because it's Post-Nemesis, no Data.
- No explanation for lack of Geordi, Worf or Crusher. Why is Reg Barclay suddenly chief engineer.
- Tuvok, while played by Tim Russ to excellence, is shoehorned into the story in a contradiction of Pocket Books novel continuation material.
- Overly re-used NPC models roaming the decks of the Enterprise ad nauseum.
- Started development as a game version of First Contact, and it shows. Liscensing issues prevented this, so a Borg invasion of engineering only appears as a mod mission.
- Textures so badly designed that fans had to correct them. These would include updates for comm-badges, the hull of the Enterprise, the deflector dish, and the decals on the hull for ship registry and such.
- It's not
that much of an exaggeration to say that you can't turn a corner or step through a door without seeing a "LOADING" message.
- All races and vessels invented by Raven are excruciatingly awful.
- Characters given virtually no development, to detriment of returning old ones and worse for new ones.
-
Criminal misuse of a bat'leth. A karate chop or some strong language would be more effective.
- Where first one had CGI cutscenes, this one uses fucking terrible in-game models.
- What little plot there is takes ridiculous,
utterly nonsensical twists.
- The choice of romantic interests was pointless, as Kleeya was the most misogynistically written character in the history of gaming since the Leisure Suit Larry series.
No. Seriously.
That's what she wanders around the ship in. In her role as a scientist. Seriously.
