I call this one, “Review.” Review

I call this one, “Review.”

How many of you would prefer it if you walked into a store and saw a bag of

“Food” or a box of “Drink” on the shelves, or perhaps the people and pets you

know had signs on them such as “Man” or “Woman” or “Child” or “Cat?” Wouldn’t

you, like most people, prefer that things and people be referred to by their

individual names, such as “Rick” or “Jane” or “Pubert” or “Dr. Fluffenheimer?”

Yeah, I would too, which is why it struck me as odd that Raven Software made

an expansion pack to their excellent Star

Trek Voyager: Elite Force that is named simply "Expansion Pack."

Perhaps there isn’t much in a name – the "cat" mentioned above is

probably unaware of his college degree – but with a product this insipid the

name says it all.

Elite Force, which hopefully most people reading this review have played,

was an excellent riff on both Star Trek and Half

Life that successfully endeavored to give us what we always wanted from

the Star Trek license. Specifically, for once a Star Trek game

didn’t both suck and blow,

and it took its inspiration equally from “we come in peace!” and “psst… shoot

to kill, men!” It was involving, interactive, brilliantly realized, and entirely

solid.

This generic expansion pack, conversely, is basically overpriced nothing. I

don’t say that to be cruel – it’s actually rather well-produced nothing – but

there is so very little of it.

Since Elite Force was based on the Quake

3 engine, its strength is in its single player game. Not to degrade the

game’s multi-player aspect, but solid as it may have been, it was essentially

just Star Trek Quake 3, something the designers got for free with

the engine and not something that was a result of the ingenuity of the developers.

The

Expansion Pack, ignoring that simple fact, gives players a good number

of new multiplayer maps and modes, but serves up very little on the single-player

side of things. While the new multi-player content is entertaining, most players

will be briefly amused and then return to more involved fare such as Unreal

Tournament or Tribes 2. By yourself, however,

you are now able to wander through the Voyager and, to a limited degree, interact

with the crew and run errands (and a sort of treasure hunt).

For Voyager aficionados, having a “Virtual Voyager” may be a geeky pleasure,

but for the rest of Elite Force‘s fans (who were drawn to the game for

its decidedly action-oriented charms and relative lack of techno-babble) the

Virtual Voyager gets very old very fast.

A small saving grace is that there are a few short single player missions available

through the use of the onboard holodeck. While none of these missions are particularly

well-designed, one of them at least takes place in one of the farcical “Captain

Proton” programs that provided comic relief in the show, as well as a loving

homage to Buck Rogers and similar serials. Unfortunately, once the geeky

nostalgic charm wears off, even the Captain Proton mission isn’t anything but

frustrating. Expanding the meager mass of little is a lackluster target range

and “Tranquil Garden” to explore.

Elite Force was great fun because of its strong single player action,

story and gameplay. The Expansion Pack gives you next to nothing to extend

that and decidedly shoots itself when the only missions you do get don’t matter

at all because they’re just a great deal of light and sound within a larger

context of light and sound, and that is just one too many levels of abstraction

to be fun.