09.17.07

What I lack in patience, I make up for in cheat codes

Posted in Games at 18:59 by Jonas

I just finished Star Trek: Elite Force 2. Yes it’s an older game, but I only just got around to playing it, so shut up. It’s another fun example of geographically expansive sequels to games that take place in a microcosmos. The prime examples being Half-Life 2 and Diablo 2. Both of these series started with games that were very limited geographically. Half-Life was completely restricted to the Black Mesa research facility (which was a very large microcosmos, granted) and Diablo took place entirely in the village Tristram and the direct passage to Hell that had opened below its church.

Elite Force took place in a sort of intergalactic junkyard surrounding The Forge, but its sequel concerns itself with a brewing interplanetary war spanning several planets and space stations. A new feature which I appreciate is the addition of dialogue choices at key moments. As far as I could guess from one playthrough, however, the only effects of these choices is whether the protagonist Lt. Munroe hooks up with his colleague Telsia Murphy or the scantily glad alien Kleeya at the end of the game. I picked Telsia - I like women who wear pants. Figuratively speaking.

In general, it’s a solid shooter; its weapons have a good tactility to them which makes them adequately satisfying to shoot, although the elaborate death animations sometimes makes it a little hard to tell when you’ve killed some of the larger enemies, causing you to uselessly pump ammo into their dead bodies until they hit the ground. A more serious problem, however, is the game’s insistence on throwing braindead alien hordes at you instead of using its more intelligent enemies that are scripted to take cover and flank or even snipe you. Fighting the humanoid enemies is far more enjoyable than perforating mindlessly charging monsters, so it’s quite annoying that the monsters are used more frequently.

The boss fights also had a tendency to become a little stupid, but some of them were actually quite entertaining. This comes from a guy who hates boss fights. I did, however, end up godmoding the final fight; not because it was difficult, just because it was kind of annoying and I could see it taking some time - and I just wanted to finish the game already. The best boss fight by far was when Munroe manned a huge laser turret on the hull of the USS Enterprise (after a really great mission bouncing around on the hull in low gravity) and had to shoot down a force of enemy ships. That is why I play video games.

The best thing about the series of course is the Trekkie wish fulfilment element of getting to walk around on your favourite starships and perform interesting little chores and talk to the various crew members. In the first game, the USS Voyager had been faithfully mapped out. In the sequel, it’s the Enterprise (and its gloriously Shakespearean captain, Patrick Jean-Luc Stewart Picard). I found myself often enjoying the Enterprise intermissions more than the actual missions, but of course it would’ve needed more fleshing out if it were more than just distractions to tie the plot together.

And now my final caveat: The Hazard “Team”. I already dedicated a small entry to this problem, but it’s big enough to bring up again here. The whole premise of the game is that you are the leader of a hazard team tasked with particularly dangerous missions. Why, then, does the team split up at the slightest opportunity? Why does the team leader go scouting through vents every time a locked door is encountered? Why do I, as the leader of this crack team of specialists, not have a single bloody command for my team at my disposal? I recall that EF had the same issue, and one could wish that it’d been fixed in the sequel. Having your team members crack jokes about this blaring inconsistency does not alleviate the problem (much). They really should’ve taken a hint from Star Wars: Republic Commando and implemented a solid squad command system. Indeed they would’ve needed little else: Republic Commando’s squad system was solid enough to support a whole game.

Overall, EF2 was definitely worth my time. I wouldn’t consider myself a Trekkie, but I have seen a fair amount of Star Trek episodes in my day (I’m a big fan of the Shatner era and its endearingly clumsy visual effects, if anybody asks) and I know the universe and the characters enough to appreciate Stewart’s face and voice talking directly to me or having to defend the Enterprise from evil turncoat boarding aliens (best mission in the game, hands down). I’m glad I played it. I’m also glad I didn’t pay full price for it though, because even if it has a simplified dialogue choice system, it’s still just a sci-fi FPS with silly boss fights and an overabundance of stupid aliens.

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