Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force expansion pack (Windows)

The notion of expansion packs is always exciting; they're add-ons that traverse perilously lawless territory. There's no rules, no strict guidelines! An expansion can be standalone or require the original. It can be in-depth or a shameless cash-in. Innovative or completely status quo. Even the price, though usually in the budget range, can be unpredictable. So what can be more thrilling than examining the new expansion pack for last year's fantastic shooter Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force... okay, okay, it's a very slow news week, but there's still a valid question here. Austerely entitled the Elite Force Expansion Pack (EFXP), it might not inspire hopes of creativity, but let's not forget the sage proverbial advice about books and their covers.

Lacking the addition of a new single-player campaign, on the surface EFXP still comes replete with new features. On the multiplayer side of things, players get five new game modes, 22 maps and 12 models and skins. Additional single-player elements include two pieces of equipment (a holo-weapon and a tricorder), four "Holo-Missions," the Jeri Ryan Voice Pack (adds her voice to the original game, where previously she was the only Voyager cast member who had a soundalike play her role) and the bulk of the expansion, the Virtual Voyager Tour Mode. The CD also comes with a few bonus extras, like an artwork showcase and hi-res wallpapers.

A gift shop at the end

The theory of the Tour Mode is the player gets the opportunity to freely explore ten decks of the Voyager spacecraft, interact with ship systems, chat with crewmembers and experience other routine events in life aboard a ship lost in space. What this amounts to in gameplay terms is the ability to read personal logs of all the speaking-part characters from the original game (which includes the cast of the TV show), access ship's libraries with detailed information on Federation history, aliens and planets encountered, technologies, crewmember evaluations etc. In fact, the amount of reading available gives the Tour mode more the feel of an interactive Star Trek encyclopedia than anything else.

You can also perform a few limited tasks, such as launch a shuttlecraft and use the transporter to shift cargo. And when you're done traipsing around the personal quarters of your colleagues and superiors, you can visit the holodeck and participate in four simplistic scenarios to improve your combat skills (includes infiltrating a Klingon vessel and rescuing a princess in the "Adventures of Captain Proton," a black-and-white comic book style mission).

Trek me up

If any of this sounds fun, then the fact is, you're a Trek fan, whether you want to admit it or not. Elite Force had the advantage of being an action game with a wide enough appeal to interest gamers outside of Trekdom. The single-player portion of this expansion is certainly for the die-hards only.

Unfortunately, this would not be much of a problem if it were actually an undeniable blast for Trekkers, but the likelihood is any thrills at the concept of wandering around a 3D representation of Voyager will be short-lived. The irony is that much of the original Elite Force's success can be attributed to its authentic atmosphere and the well-crafted illusion it formed of being on Voyager with a crew going about its day-to-day existence as one disaster after another struck. You would walk by people and overhear conversations, technicians would be busy repairing hi-tech, flashy things in the corridors, scavengers would attack and you'd watch comrades fall in battle.

But in EFXP, there are no story-driven missions, and you're disheartened to discover all the finely textured 3D models are really wafer-thin cardboard cutouts on the inside, now that there's no explosions and firefights to distract you. Imagine wandering around Half-Life's Black Mesa facility for hours, while all the white coats respond in identical voices to every prompt for conversation, "Not now, can't you see I'm busy?" The experiment never takes place, aliens never invade. How long would you last before unplugging the oxygen on your HEV suit?

To be fair, the experience is helped along by some mini-objectives of the "go here and do this" variety. Rather like a bad adventure game, but it still breaks what would otherwise be monotony after the first five minutes. At first, you can't enter all parts of the ship until you make your way to the computer core and sneak a look at the access codes, then you're free to roam and do naughty things like activate the self-destruct sequence. Again, not as fun as it might first seem since reactions are rather timid considering the ship actually does blow up in ten seconds. The highlight is certainly finding the elusive Deck 15 and what an isolated crewmember has achieved there. (Hint: Don't ignore the obvious, even if another objective distracts you.)

Holo-carnage

The multiplayer aspect appears to have enjoyed a lot more attention than the tour mode. Originally coming with only a simple deathmatch and capture the flag option, the following new modes and modifications are available: Action Hero, Elimination, Disintegration, Specialties and Assimilation. Action Hero is regular deathmatch except one player begins with all weapons and automatically regenerates health. Killing him earns you 5 frags and then you become the Action Hero. Elimination is a rather straightforward deathmatch variation where each player gets a set amount of lives and then sits out until the end of the match. Disintegration is another common DM variation where all players are armed the same and get one-hit kills.

Specialties and Assimilation are the really thoughtful new additions. Specialties is basically Elite Force's version of Team Fortress allowing for class-based play in any of the normal Team DM or CTF modes. The six classes include Infiltrator, Medic, Technician, Demolitionist, Heavy Weapons and Sniper. Whether they actually balance well in the game and if the expansion pack will prove popular enough for online servers to use it is a question that can only be answered in time. Bots aren't particularly smart in this type of game and don't allow for the great potential of team tactics.

Finally, Assimilation is probably the most fun of the bunch. The teams are Federation vs. Borg. The Borg's objective is to assimilate all of the Feds. Borg players are slow-moving, and can only carry their first two starting weapons, a standard energy weapon and an assimilator. The assimilator must be used to finish off a player to assimilate them otherwise they just respawn. Borg also have a transport ability if they get in trouble. One Borg player is the Queen, who only has the assimilator as a weapon, but constantly regenerates health. The Federation's objective is simply to eliminate the Queen. Again, unfortunately, bots have no understanding of this game mode, so you'll need LAN buddies or have to rely on Internet servers running the mode when the game's been out for a while.

Conclusion

Elite Force's undeservedly low sales means Raven might not have been given much of a budget to work with, and if that's the case, it did a great job reusing what was available from the first game and modifying it into a new type of single-player mode. Nevertheless, the lack of new material will wear on even the die-hards pretty quickly. And as much as one hates to punish a company for releasing free extras, if you're just after the Jeri Ryan voice pack or new multiplayer options, the voice pack has been released by Activision for download, and reports online are even indicating you can legally tweak configuration files in the recent v1.2 patch to access the new multiplayer modes.

So we reach the inevitable question: is the expansion worth twenty bucks? If you didn't like Elite Force, absolutely no. If you liked Elite Force, but only as an action game and you're really not much of a Trekker, then probably no. If you loved Elite Force, own some Spock ears, a plastic Tricorder and mock-Seven of Nine party breasts, then... a reserved yes. There are a few fun surprises fans won't want to miss and the work that was involved on both the new single and multiplayer elements is still admirable compared to some add-ons where developers have bundled a bunch of fan-made mods and maps into a package and then put their feet up.

Review By GamesDomain

Game resources available on TrekCore