Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force Expansion Pack (PC)

CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Greg Kasavin
• Reviewed on: 05/09/2001
• Released on: 05/09/2001

Last year's Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force was a surprise success--who would have guessed that one of the best first-person shooters of 2000 would also be a Star Trek game? Elite Force, along with a couple of other high-quality Star Trek games released during the same relative time period, helped Star Trek games recover from an old stigma--since, over the years, most games based on the TV shows fared poorly. But Elite Force was a great game on any terms--it looked and sounded excellent and offered a lot of variety in its interesting single-player storyline. However, a major criticism of the game was that it ended too quickly. In light of this, the decision by Activision and developer Raven Software to create an expansion pack to Elite Force seems like an obvious one. Ideally, it would give fans of Elite Force more of the same sorts of tightly scripted, highly varied single-player scenarios that they enjoyed in the original game. It would also expand upon the game's multiplayer mode, which was fairly simple. In reality, the anonymous Elite Force Expansion Pack does only the second half of this: It introduces a number of new multiplayer options. On the other hand, its single-player features are the antithesis of the original single-player levels. The open-ended "Virtual Voyager" option offered in the expansion simply lets you go on a scavenger hunt within a 3D re-creation of the TV show's flagship. Some aspects of this may be enjoyable to fans of the TV series. However, it's not likely to be of much fun or of much use to those who enjoyed Elite Force for any reason beyond its source material.

As noted, the Elite Force Expansion Pack divides its supplemental content between additions to the single-player and multiplayer modes of Elite Force. The five new multiplayer options offer some interesting variations to the standard deathmatch (or rather, holomatch), team holomatch, and capture-the-flag multiplayer modes available in the original Elite Force. Some of these are more successful, and a lot of the new features are similar to those found in other multiplayer shooters. The new options include the action-hero mode, in which one player packs more weapons, health, and overall power than other players in the free-for-all match. An opposing player who successfully eliminates the action hero earns five frags instead of just one and also gains the action hero's enhanced abilities. The basic problem with this mode lies in the fact that a relatively good player will most likely remain action hero indefinitely--the extra advantages given to this player include the ability to regenerate health, so unless other players successfully gang up against him, he'll reign supreme.

Assimilation is a team-based game mode in which one side plays as the Borg and must try to assimilate the opposing side. Assimilated players respawn as Borg, but the underdogs can still win the day if they manage to bring down the Borg queen--whose role is randomly assigned to one of the Borg players. The Borg play differently from regular characters--they move more slowly, have a teleport ability, and are limited to a couple of basic attacks. This mode lends itself to pitched battles, so it can be quite fun.

The new disintegration option and specialties option can be applied to any of the three types of multiplayer matches. In disintegration, all players are armed with a souped-up Federation compression rifle, whose shots will kill any other player instantly. You'll die quickly and frequently in this mode--whether that's fun is questionable, but there's no denying you need to choose your shots carefully if you're playing in a disintegration match. The specialties option lets you choose a specialization for your character, as in multiplayer shooter mods like Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. The six available specialties range from sniper to medic and essentially lock down the types of weapons you'll be able to use, as well as grant a few specific abilities. Enabling specialties can help make capture-the-flag matches more interesting--for instance, the fast but weak infiltrator class makes a great flag carrier, but it tends to require backup from players with more firepower. However, the specialties mode isn't so great for free-for-alls or standard team holomatches, as most players will simply opt for either the sniper or the heavy weapons classes.

The Elite Force Expansion Pack also adds an option called elimination, in which defeated players sit out for the rest of the round. A similar dynamic creates very intense team battles in the extremely popular mod Half-Life: Counter-Strike, but not being able to respawn just doesn't seem to fit in an Elite Force holomatch.

As a holdover from Elite Force (and Quake III Arena, whose 3D engine was used in the making of the game), you can play any of the multiplayer modes with and against computer-controlled bots. However, the bots are ill equipped to handle capture-the-flag and especially the new assimilation and specialties options. Still, it can be fun to hone your reflexes against computer opponents. Unfortunately, another holdover from Elite Force is that you must run a separate executable file to play the Elite Force Expansion Pack in multiplayer mode, which is inconvenient.

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