Gameplay continued
Gameplay continuedBlasting
The game environments can be put into two groups, those that take place on starships and stations, and those that occur on planets. Generally, the missions aboard the space ships are better than the planetary ones. For avid trek fans the attention to detail in these locations is superb, and the Quake III engine is certainly pushed to its limits to create this believable environment. Computer terminals, computer panels, shuttles, objects, weapons, and characters are all superbly designed and intricately detailed.
The weapon and light effects within the game are also top quality, as are the inclusion of moving space shuttles flying around your heads! I remember the days when in-game large space ships in FPS titles were terribly done. They never were designed well, never moved realistically, and just looked like a few background textures pasted together in a shape of a spaceship to pass off as a flying vessel. Having them flying around, firing weapons without looking pathetic is defiantly a good thing.
The Q3 engine, despite the first-rate visuals Ritual has managed to pull off, is starting to show its age. The outdoor planet levels for instance don’t look that satisfying compared to other modern day titles like Unreal 2. Personally I now prefer the Unreal Engine anyway, and DS9: The Fallen showed how more suitable that engine was in creating the Star Trek universe.
Incoming Hordes
The enemies you face are a sore spot for Elite Force 2. The first game suffered from the same criticism a couple of years back in reviews, but luckily they managed to avoid the issue by the fact that your primary enemies were bug-like swarming creatures. Thus they were able to deflect the fact that the A.I. was very simple, consisting of enemies charging you and occasionally hiding behind a scripted object to simulate taking cover.
This time round you’re again facing bug-like things and the A.I is almost the same as before. They may have been forgiven for this in EF, but this time that excuse won’t stick. It’s lazy, and when you do face humanoid life forms (like Klingons and Romulans) they again just consist of charging at you, running away, or hiding behind a scripted object for cover.
In Multiplayer the scene is a little different. The bots, although not smart enough to duck or dodge, handle themselves very well… too well in fact. Maybe it’s just me not used to the weapons types, but every time I play I get beaten to a bloody hologram pulp!
While I’m on the topic of Multiplayer I think many will be disappointed in it (despite how challenging it is). The levels aren’t that inspiring, the weapons aren’t overly spectacular to fight with, and the game modes are just dull. Added to the fact that there are no official servers to play on (unlike EA’s Battlefield 1942 and other games) means finding a low ping game is difficult. I often faced connection interruptions whilst playing, even though I have broadband internet.
Geek Issues
Where Elite Force 2 loses marks is in silly areas that it shouldn’t being a Star Trek game, knowing full well that’s its primary audience will be avid Star Trek fans. Fans are notorious for being meticulous when it comes down to general Trek trivia, so to be a good film, episode, game, or whatever Trek product your making it needs to be flawless in terms of continuity, and attention to detail is a must. It needs to fit in with the whole Star Trek universe, or fans get annoyed, VERY annoyed.
Firstly EF2 doesn’t really fit into the whole Trek universe. The idea that you go around blasting aliens left, right and centre is a far cry from the original ideas of peace and exploration. Sure the series Deep Space 9 had lots of warfare within it, but that was because a war was taking place and it wasn’t as though there was a diplomatic solution to those problems. EF2 is extremely gung-ho, more akin at times to Quake Arena and Unreal 2. Plus running around the Enterprise E, jumping up and down like an ape (rather than casually walking around) doesn’t really fit well with the Star Trek setting.
It’s only a minor gripe, plus it does get around this whole ‘blasting everything in sight’ aspect by having the primary enemies as these bug type creatures I suppose.
What would irritate Trek fans though is the amount of stupid things the game gets wrong within the Trek universe. The most obvious example is that you regularly see throughout your trips aboard the Enterprise Vulcan officers acting with clear emotions, sometimes even talking with malice and prejudice. Have they (the developers) ever seen an episode of Star Trek? This would be like a company making a Star Wars game but making Han Solo and Luke bad guys by accident. It’s so fundamental, so obvious to genuine fans of the series, that it begs the question of who designed these in-between talk scenes.
There are also inconsistencies and annoyances in other minor aspects, like a ship councillor on one intelligence gathering session offering nice advice to a patient on the one hand, then in a later scene insulting and name-calling the same patient! Its like they forgot he was a councillor when they made that scene, or just used his character model skin by accident (therefore it was meant to be a different character, but they couldn’t be bothered to design a new skin). It is possible though that it was just them using the same skin, but it would so difficult to tell as the limited voice actors all sound the same, which leads to my next gripe…
I don’t know how many voice actors they used, but for the crewmembers walking around the Enterprise it seems (to me) to consist of two male actors and two female actors. All the crewmembers you see have the same voices and the same tones. You think if they did use the same actors to cut costs they’d at least try to impersonate different voices so they’d pass off as different people (like the Simpson’s cartoon does, with Homers voice actor Dan Castellaneta doing several voices). It kind of ruins the whole wandering around the Enterprise bits, as you soon realise who the main characters are who are worth talking too (the ones given unique voices), and who was just added to be a kind of pointless stand-in.
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