Does anyone remember Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force

Hey, I'm relatively new, here, still. Just registered a couple of days ago.

Anyway, I had the urge to reply Elite Force last week. After a lot of trial and error, I managed to get the game to work on Windows 7, after my attempts to run it on an XP virtual machine failed. Unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to raise the resolution any higher than around 1024x768. The game refuses to launch at any higher resolutions. Which really sucks, as I thought about recording my gameplay. Anyone have any solutions?

That isn't my purpose for posting this, though. I merely wanted to reconnect with the game's community, if it still exists. Elite Force Files still has all of their old mods, maps, and skins that I enjoyed as a kid. Which is great! Because I really thought they would have closed down years ago.

I finished Elite Force yesterday (honestly, I've probably beat it twenty times, no exaggeration). It held up as a great Trek game, even after all these years. The campaign is a bit short and the graphics need love, but it's still a perfect little gem of First-Person Shooters and Trek gaming. The game's strengths is that it doesn't require a working knowledge of Trek to enjoy, but Trek fans will definitely notice that the developers just HAD to be Trekkers. It's all very consistent with the universe, has the Star Trek feel to it, and is really immersive as an experience in Star Trek: Voyager.

Without spoiling anything, I can say that there are missions that turn to diplomacy, in the classic Trek fashion. There are little surprise nuggets of Trek historical lore that will have you squee with fanaticism. And, there are quite a few levels that have you wander about the ship, completing tasks that an actual Starfleet officer would have to do. The majority of the game is, of course, spent on away missions, but the atmosphere when you return to the ship is really fitting with Trek. One of the first few levels has you head down to Engineering to prevent a warp core breach.

Included in the expansion pack was the ability to freely roam any of around 7 or 8 decks of the ship. It gives you the freedom to run up to four Holodeck programs, at your leisure, activate the transporter, read the crew's extensive personal logs, and even activate the self-destruct mechanism.

Multiplayer allows you to play with bots (which is good since the old servers went down years ago), in what is referred to as Holomatch. This mode is essentially the Quake 3 multiplayer matches, reskinned, with Trek characters on Trek themed levels.

Unfortunately, the sequel wasn't as good, despite being set on the Enterprise E with Patrick Stewart making a vocal appearance. Which reminds me, EF 1 is fully voiced by the entire cast of Voyager, which REALLY makes a difference in helping you feel like you're taking part in an episode of Voyager.

Anyone else ever play this game? If you haven't, then I certainly suggest you do. I decided to post this when I saw that all of the threads in the gaming forum pertain to STO.

 

I loved Voyager: Elite Force. I was a big fan of the sequel too, despite it's poorer reviews. I enjoyed a couple of really good EF SP mods too, although I don't remember what they were called.

 

Hello AustNerevar, welcome to the board! You know, if you want to play Elite Force in widescreen, go here and follow the instructions: http://www.wsgf.org/dr/star-trek-voyager-elite-force

Having played this on my Win7 machine, I can vouch that it works.

 

The Argas Effect was a great TOS singleplayer mod for EF 1. There were a few others (Colony 7) that weren't totally Trekkish, but were still really good stories.

I also fell in love with the demo. Getting to explore a Borg cube, while fighting or evading Borg that actually respond to your presence or lack of precense AS WELL AS adapting to different weapons frequencies was so awesome. You can tell that this game was made by real Star Trek fans who knew their stuff.

Unfortunately, I tried this site's suggestions, already. When set to these specifications, the game refuses to launch and the console throws up an error.

"GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem"

Every time. Same thing for Elite Force II. I'm not sure how to fix it.

 

Whaddya mean, remember it? It's not that old! It's only been out tw- well, thirteen years. I have many fond memories of staying up all night playing CTF online, sometimes talking about the latest ST Voyager episode with people. I still play the game on an older computer; it won't run on my 64bit Vista, alas. I also have Elite Force 2, though I've never played the campaign through. Mostly I use it to play CTF maps based on old EF maps.

 

Hmm... have you updated your video drivers?

 

I liked both games. EF 2 had some cool tidbits like Starfleet Academy, even with that silly romantic subplot and the unfairly difficult thing where you had to shoot ships with some gun turret while Barclay ran around engineering.

In EF1 I distinctly remember the EMH trotting out his First Contact line about analgesic cream, and if you kept pestering Paris while he was assisting in sickbay he goes "What? Want more cream?"

 

Yeah, they're up to date. I figure it's because Win 7 or 64 bit operating systems just aren't fully compatible with these old games. However, I've had problems with getting them to work on XP in a virtual machine, which is strange because I ran these games on XP as a kid.

I remember spending about an hour being in awe of Starfleet Academy. I finished the game twice, if I recall correctly.

But, at least to me, it just lacked the spark of EF1. It felt much less like Star Trek (especially that bar with the weird alien woman dancing) and most of it was forgettable. The only parts I remember are the Academy, Scotty's great grandaughter who trapped herself in the transporter buffer, and walking around on the Enterprise E. I didn't really like the multiplayer maps either.

But a lot of this may be personal preference.

 

Spoiler incoming!

I loved the part where multiple species had cobbled their ships together to survive! Especially the TOS era sections, those were awesome. The final boss really reminded me of something you would see from Quake or Doom.

 

That was my favorite part. The Mirror universe Constitution class ship was of course the best part of it and maybe even the whole damn game. Though I did really enjoy the Borg levels and getting to do everyday stuff on Voyager.

I must have played this game 20 times or so and probably the Scavenger base levels even more than that. So much Trekky goodness.

 

Colony 7! Thanks AustNerevar. C7 was the best EF mod out there. Well worth playing if you want more Elite Force goodness.

 

I played this every day when I was 14-15ish. I remember trying to get hold of every map and weapon I could find in my limited knowledge of the internet.

 

So did I. Holomatch was more fun than most FPS deathmatch modes. I would collect tons of maps and just go through them one by one.

The Assimilation gametype was a load of fun.

 

Elite Force is great! Definitely one of the better Star Trek console games.

 

Never played the PS2 version. As I understand it received a much lower rating and sales were worse for it than the PC version. Also a shame that console users missed out on the expansion pack and online play.

 

Elite Force is great. I played a ton of CTF HM back in the day. Great community on the Ravensoft boards back then, too. There's a facebook group that some of the old regulars still contribute to.

 

Good point. I never played the PC version, but I heard it had better graphics and lacked the frame rate issues which appear in the PS2 version. Regardless, I still had fun with it on the PS2.

 

That sounds cool, could you give me the link to this Facebook group? I might like to browse the posts.

 

I had the game on PS2, years later had it on PC with the expansion, downloaded that TOS mod where you got to explore Starbase 11, had the TOS multiplayer mods, played that Season 4 mod which was never finished (and never will be, given how old the game is now), etc.