Star Trek Elite Force 22 Years Later: An LGR Retrospective
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- čas přidán 13. 01. 2022
- Remember that time Quake III and Star Trek had an FPS baby together? Taking a look back at Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force from the year 2000! Review of the single player campaign, Holomatch multiplayer, and the expansion pack with Virtual Voyager for Windows PCs.
● LGR links:
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● All background music licensed from:
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#LGR #Retro #Review - Hry
What was great was the back of the box, one of the features saying "Interact with the crew of the Voyager!" when 90% of said interactions were them just telling you to go away.
@@kaitlyn__L "Crewman."
"WHAT."
"E-Excuse me..."
"Can't you see I'm busy?!"
If you go to sickbay and sit quietly for long enough the doctor starts humming "I been workin on the railroad" If that's not realistic interaction with the crew I don't know what is.
AUSTIN!
@@nagash303 Jurot...!
@@FracturedPixels The amount of stuff that the crew would do if you just sat and watched was impressive, for the time it made the world feel so alive.
I always loved how they canonically explained having so many weapons though the invention of a personal transporter buffer on your belt.
Ha, yes. They even pull helmets and other bits of equipment outta there, like a magic pocket.
@@LGR sorry to hijack convo but wanted to ask a question of you LGR .. built an awesome retro win98se just wondering if more then 512mb ram is useful .. hard to find verified info online anymore but the bit i find says video/photo stuff uses lots but aside from that not useful
@@LGR
SilverStone Technology GD08B Home Theater Computer Case
asus a7n266 vm/aa
AMD atalon xp 2000+
512mb ram
2g/16g 2hd CF cards
Geforce4 128mb
Soundblaster audeology2
Lots of those boards out there has built in gpu (geforce2) and sound
@@darunealbane 512MB is overkill. Base system requirements for XP was 64MB. When I first ran 95, I had 4MB then eventually went to 8MB. Upgraded to 98, then 98se and I think I went to 16MB at that time.
@@skrenos was what i was thinking .. picked up 2 512 sticks knew 512 was awesome for win98 but board will hold 1g and when i looked up was like ??
128 gpu should kick ash .. next up nt2000/xp build
I spent hours and hours in the expansion exploring Voyager. The best thing was to initiate self-destruct on the bridge. The entire crew would gang up on you and if you could kill them all it would actually self destroy.
...and you would STILL wind up in the brig of the now presumably destroyed Voyager.
@@Takeshi357 the good, old "it-was-all-a-dream" trick
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING" - Janeway
10:08 To be fair to the developers, "completely ruining the overwhelming dread one should experience when facing the Borg" _is_ a core theme of Voyager.
It's a core theme of TNG as well. They did it first.
Yeah, let's take the race that destroyed an entire fleet with a single cube and was only stopped by an unrepeatable trick and have one mid range vessel get the better of them time and time again.
@@JamesTobiasStewart THE BORG DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS ONE WIERD TRICK!
@@BelieveIt1051 Yeah, no. TNG knew to use the Borg sparingly and they were not treated as "just another monster of the week". Hugh's group doesn't count, a handful of disconnected drones being manipulated by an evil AI one time is not the same as the Borg Collective.
Voyager broke the Collective, simple as that.
@@vegeta002 Data and Jordi figured out how to disable the entire collective with a geometric shape. The reason they didn't is because of Picard's bleeding heart. Talk about a lame villain.
This game felt really immersive; like you were actually on the ship. This was the closest Quake 3's engine ever got to a Half Life game.
@@patrickglaser1560 Half Life's engine was based on the Quake engine, not Quake 3.
@@soviut303 this. Half Life was released 1998, whereas Quake 3 was released 1999. and no licences for using the engine beforehand I suppose.
Quake 5 now. There were so many Doom games in the past, even Rage got a successor.
the source engine was and still is based on the quake engine
@@metallicarabbit I thought it was based off a heavily modified quake 2 engine? Was it really quake 1?
@@metallicarabbit Yeah, I explained that in another comment, the original Half Life engine was a heavily modified Quake engine, not the Quake 2 or 3 engine. The Source Engine came out much later and has a few bits of Quake 2's engine added to it. But Quake 3 never influenced anything in the Source Engine's lineage.
I have a boxed copy of this game signed by all Raven employees. They used a metallic permanent marker and it looks amazing!
That's so cool 😮
Get it encased, like in a plastic box or something, and keep it out of sunlight! eventully ink breaks down, but keep it in darkness and it should last a loooong time
That’s badass really cool piece
The Virtual Voyager guided tour from the expansion looks like one of the coolest parts of the whole package.
I wonder if that's where the inspiration to do the enterprise D in the unreal 4 engine came from, sadly now gone thanks to a bad management system at the reminants of Paramount, and some of the worst showrunners in history, who hate fans and good writing collectively.
as so much for inspiring people to do great things and not be dicks to each other like that.
@@kavinskysmith4094 I was the lead developer on that project (Stage 9), and you're absolutely right, Virtual Voyager was probably the single biggest inspiration for the project!
@@TheGlassGods The shutdown of Stage 9 is what got me into saving data I deemed important. I'm glad I still have a copy stored on a hard drive somewhere.
@@TheGlassGods Imagine a FPS/Flight-Sim Star Trek Multiplayer game involving multiple ships. Take my money!!!!
Sadly, Clint didn't mention the "Capt. Proton" Singleplayer campaign included in the Add-On. It's short and very simple, but kinda sweet and funny... and completely in black and white! xD
I'm so nostalgic for the Quake 3 engine look.
It defined that period of time between 1999 and 2001 in which I really started getting into gaming.
I’m not even nostalgic, but it simply looks good, period.
Ah yes. In 2000 I bought a Voodoo 3 agp, Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 all at once. Got home... PC has no AGP slot! Doh!
Returned for PCI version and I was set! I love this era... Such an unbelievable jump in quality from my ps1.
But within a few years the voodoo 3 was so obsolete it was stuck to games made in those couple years.
@@RootinrPootine yeah it really hits the aesthetic of it being accurate enough to look like the place it trying to represent while not being too detailed to lose its artistic quality, you know what they say "the more you aim towards realism, the more you stray away from art"
I think RTCW is the most impressive Quake III engine game of that time.
@@Oversensitive-S-poster Nail on the head. I don’t play video games but as a visual artist I never understood why so many video game designers couldn’t understand basic concepts of “style”. “Realism” is the most overrated concept in the history of art. That’s why technical limitations work so well for artists. It forces you to actually be creative.
They managed to capture the feeling of the show so well. I used to love just exploring the ship.
10:55 they did nerf the Borg a little quickly, but I have to admit that it was the ultimate Trek power fantasy. As a kid who found them terrifying when I was little, zapping them in the dome was incredibly satisfying.
I agree. The first time I played this, all I could think was "Assimilate this, you bastards!"
Someone gotta make sure they pay for what they did to Picard.
This happens a lot in sci-fi in general, they make a character too OP at the start and have to nerf them later. Look at how the Wraith in _Stargate Altantis_ went from nearly indestructible in the first appearance to no different than any other humanoid. There's not enough planning ahead.
In the second game, which also starts with a Borg mission, the I-MODs get hacked at one point and you're forced to use the other weapons.
I love this game so deeply.
I got it when studying computer sciene on college. Around the year 2000 or 2001.
I startet "trying out" the game the day I got it on 4pm, playing the single player campaign. Then a "only see the next level" thing started and I was not able to quit. I played the whole night without recognizing the time went by. Only "one more level". Finally, the end boss was defeated. I saw out the window. It was dawn, my father just left the house to go to his work. It was 6am and I played it through in a single session.
I was completely UNAWARE, that so much time passed. I was not in the real world anymore for the whole game in a single session.
Even for me as a computer enthusiast, this was an outstanding experience and such thing never happened again to me.
Great game!
I'm a 3D engine developer and I know an interesting fact about this game. ID game engines from Quake 1 to Doom 3 used a series of model files including MDL,MD2,MD3 and MD5. But what happened to MD4? well it's right here! - the MDR format of Elite force is this 'missing' MD4 format and the only game to use it.
BTW I'm curious what is the difference between the Q3 Arena and Team Arena engine? I was told Elite Force 1 used an earlier version of idtech3 which explains why most levels are set in corridors and lacks large outdoor levels.
@@richardfan7157 - Team arena is an expansion pack to Q3 Arena - the engine is the same although certain limits have been extended in the map files which does require a newer version of the engine after a fashion - but really it's just a few changed constants.
Elite Force 1 used a slightly modfied version of idtech3 while also including the new model format that id had been working on (the asformentioned MD4/MDR)
Elite Force 2 used the team arena variation of idTech3 with the extended limits but then added a huge amonut of new abilities - Elite Force 2's engine while being based on idtech3? is really very different - like an alternate universe version of idtech4
You are not interesting or intelligent. Hugs
Didn't RTCW for its expansion packs use a variant of it too? MDR didn't exactly match the md4 specs but it was close. I did have the .h file from it a while ago.. An associate got it from someone at Raven when they were making a Milkshape3D plug in.
@@steve87uk - I don't know actually :) if it did use MDR or a variation of the MD4 design? that's news to me - thanks :)
Ah yes.... Star Trek Elite Force. Or as I like to call it now, "The original Lower Decks". Seriously, this game had everything, including Buffer Time. Great retrospective!
The start menu of Elite Force is more entertaining and has better writing than all of Lower Decks combined.
Anything pre-Jar Jar Abrams or Cuntzman is instantly better by many orders of magnitude.
@@Kadotus And the main character is FAR more endearing than Beckett Mariner and her cronies.
Seriously, if they wanted to make an animated series about Redshirts, loosely adapting Elite Force, with the characters intact but on a different ship with new stories each week should've been the way to go.
@@Kadotus from what I've read online it's actually had a pretty good reception among proper Star Trek fans (unlike Discovery)
@@DIANAROSS4EVER stockholm syndrome and shills, nuff said.
I've been subscribed to his channel for years and have been waiting till the day he would review a Star Trek game!!! Since I'm a huge Star Trek fan and kept seeing them in the background of his videos
I didn't realize he hadn't yet. I hope we don't have to wait as long for the next one.
I love how your weapons get stored in a portable pattern buffer. Best game justification for having so many large objects on you.
I love when things like that are explained.
@@patrickglaser1560 nice!
You've coined a new term
Invented by Reginald Barclay based on Scotty's expertise in TNG. Patent pending.
@@feelx92ger lol Relics
@@patrickglaser1560 who blocked you?
THIS game was a huge chunk of my childhood gaming! haha. I was obsessed with star trek when i was a kid and just loved being able to walk around voyager! Try this secret out: on the scavenger mission, where you use the tranquilizer hypo on the terran empire doctor, clear out all of the enemies on the bridge and backtrack to sickbay to pickup another tranquilizer hypo before you go down the lift to the hirogen boss. You can use the tranquilizer hypo on him to one hit kill him!
I thought it was a fever dream when I did it. Thanks for confirming I'm not remembering it wrong!
Ooh I never did that before! 😮 You mean Beta? The guy in the Silver suit with the Tetryon Pulse Disruptor? I always shot him, hid, shot him, hid. That's such a good idea!
This by far is my favorite first person shooter and I still own my original copy from when I bought it and I can still get to play on my modern computer takes a little finessing though but it's worth it. I even found that I could run it straight off of a flash drive.
Quake 3 engine was ahead of its time. Even alone the ability in Quake 3 to set r_mode to -1 and then set your resolution to what you want is not what you'd expect. (albeit had to be done in the config file, and wide/ultrawidescreen streches the HUD)
@@bernds6587 Some old games were good like that. Even though they were made before there was any such thing as a widescreen HD TV, I can still select 1920x1080p on games like Project Eden without any tweaking IIRC. Yet some old games wont even BOOT without spending 30 hours pissing around with configs, patches, hacks etc first, and even when/if someone FINALLY figures out how to make it boot on modern tech, it'll probably be broken in so many ways that its still mostly unplayable; one good example: The Devil Inside... Trying to make that game work had me pulling my hair out lol. I still never got it running right in the end FFS lol.
Gaming on PC's man, I love it and hate it, probably equally, which is why I only play games on PCs these days if theres absolutely no other option.
I bought this on GOG the other week. I remember not being so impressed when it came out, but on a revisit, I found it profoundly entertaining. The attention to detail is incredible, I love harassing Tuvok, and the numerous creative ways to self kill/blow up the ship, as well as consequences of mission inactions. This game is a triumph. Underrated even now it seems.
I really miss graphics from this era, ~1998-2005, where polygon counts and textures were good enough to know what you were looking at but there weren't excessive post processing effects. There was a clearness to it. These days things like bloom, HDR, motion blur, and excessive particle effects are just so disorienting to me. It looks "cinematic" perhaps but it ironically looks more flat, and *less* like a 3d world that i'm allowed to freely explore.
I distinctly remember pretty much every room from deus ex, half life, jedi outcast, SiN, System shock, serious sam, and so on. Because I was allowed to *see* the world. Environments and enemies were very distinct and visible and always well lit. The model designers really had to think about what they were making because they couldn't just brute force it the way they can now.
Old man rant over.
Definitely didn't live through this era myself, but I feel like it wasn't the time period but rather just the games. There's plenty of games back then and now with bad environments stopping your abilty entirely to figure out where you are because everything is so bland and samey. It isn't just the time, but rather just video games trying to be more and more realistic and scenic when what really matters is art direction. Some of the best looking games aren't the ones that are the most graphically intensive but the ones that look the most unique. It just happens that games like Half-Life, Deus Ex, etc. pulled off their environments really well, made them believable, and made really enjoyable levels and set pieces.
There's multiple videos (and even studies, i think) about environments from older games being more memorable... It's not so much about post processing effect, but yes, it's about the visual density of spaces vs. brain's processing bandwith. When everything is super-detailed like IRL, your brain ignores most of it... like IRL. But when everything is an abstraction which requires your brain to "add stuff" for it to become a concrete, believable thing, then your brain will remember every of the few features that actually were there.
Quick! Remember the wall texture from your most favorite Mario64 level!
Now quick! Remember the wall texture from your most favorite level from any game from the last 5 years! =D
@@MidnightSt I could remember both of those. But then again my brain doesn't ignore most of the stuff in real life either. Guess I'm the outlier
I miss them too. I use to only be able to play for 30 mins or so before i was so naucious any more would have made me puke. Now graphics are so good I can waste all day playing stupid video games lol.
@@K162KingPin the nausea ...you just got used to it. I used to feel nauseous too, when I was young and played the first Doom, since it was the first FPS i ever played... but in about a year, I got used to it.
*Memory Unlocked!!!
I remember asking my mom to buy this for me at Target back in the day, I remember playing it but so many little details popped out when you showed them!
seeing it again can reconnect so many other memories.
HOLY CRAP I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!
Me and my dad played the hell out of this game when I was a kid! Thanks for this Clint!
This and the sequel are probably my all-time favorite Star Trek games.
Bridge Commander is also very good.
Especially modded.
Completely unrelated to your comment, but props on the avatar, lol, a man of "Bruleture" I see ;)
@@yellowblanka6058 bringo
If you like ST action games, also check out Klingon Honor Guard and The Fallen, both on the Unreal engine. The former let's you play as a Klingon in a FPS during the TNG era, while the latter is a TPS set in DS9, and you can choose between Sisko, Nerys, and Worf.
There's not much competition, really. Most don't seem too good unless you're into simulators and stuff.
elite force 1 and 2 was amazing.
just alone the fact that you can run around on the ship itself and talk to the crew was unique at the time.
The Tetryon Pulse Disruptor is to this day the coolest weapon in any FPS game. It's wall bouncing chaingun bullets paired with the awesome firing sound effect never gets old.
I dunno, Turok 2 had the Cerebral Bore. A weapon that fired a projectile that stuck to an enemy's head and then literally scooped out their brain.
I love that you've got variants on the standard Quake III guns (Torpedo gun is the BFG, Phaser Rifle is the Rail Gun, Scavenger Rifle is the Nail Gun, etc, though the alt-fires are all really fun and interesting), and then you've got the Tetryon Pulse Disruptor. It's absolutely horrifying when you first encounter it during the Hirogen boss fight, and makes you feel like such a badass when you finally get it.
@@rhettorical Yes. And it's really useful for clearing out weak hordes like Species 8472 and the Harvesters. You become the Red Shirt with the biggest body count in Starfleet history.
@@rhettorical i mean its basically a scifi minigun innit
My wife and I used to frag the heck out of each other in the Enterprise D map for Quake I. That went on for a few months until we realized that the faster computer had a distinct advantage over the slower one. After building a new Pentium III computer, my wife gifted me Elite Force. It was like mana from heaven, an amazing Star Trek experience. Sure, it was the bananas Voyager crew instead of the Enterprise crew (something that would be fixed in the sequel) but it was still some great Star Trek fun!
this is the ONLY game i ever got my wife to play; too funny you had the same experience.
Tuvok's taunt line "You require more training" always felt great to use.
Back when games were made with love and care. This game was so immersive and really was a gateway for me to get more into the star trek universe
This!
absolutely its rare that we get games that are so carefully made
"22 Years Later"
Oh cool, a new LGR on an awesome retro early PC game!
"Came out in 2000"
...Oh my god...
For real though, great episode, Clint! Always love seeing fun game reviews like this :)
This, so much this
Its a shame that Raven's last game was Singularity, over a decade ago. Hexen, soldier of fortune, take no prisoners, and now just maintaining COD
Other than the character models, I still think the Quake 3 engine looks amazing. Quake 3 was also my favorite online fps ever, so I am a bit biased. But the engine really does run well, even on old hardware, and the graphics have a slick cleanness to them.
Upscaled old engines on new hardware with crazy fps is best graphics imo.
I totally forgot that they managed to cram in "some kind of ___" into this game, too. The writers really were committed to replicating the experience of the show!
"It looks like she's wearing...some sort of leather jacket!" That was always my favorite of those lines.
Does the game have "reverse the polarity of the deflector and emit ____ particles"
This game blew my mind when I it first came out. My dad had just bought a new computer and I was absolutely pumped to be able to play it. The new computer was quite an upgrade from our old one so I never could have ran this before. This was the game for me to put the new computer through its paces.
I remember calling my parents into the office to watch the intro and even they were impressed.
Ah, good times.
This game especially when it was modded was my absolute favorite growing up it also is what got me into modding with all the custom skins maps texture packs I will always have a fond place for this game in my heart
Being able to swap MPQ files to and from Q3 Arena from ST:EF was what got me started. C-)
Man, just imagine a modern AAA immersive sim Star Trek game... it could be absolutely fantastic.
I wouldn't mind a DSC multiplayer shooter, so I can roleplay as Lorca blowing away the insufferable Discovery crew.
I don't know how much flak I'm going to get for this, but recently I was watching a dude play Mass Effect on Twitch (for some reason I never played the series myself), and after this ST:EF video I immediately thought "Man, Mass Effect feels like the best Star Trek game that isn't actually a Star Trek game." Or, to rephrase it in a less confusing way, I would love a ST game that attempts a similar(ish) approach. It fits so well in my mind.
this brings back memories. Back before it was included in the expansion I actually made and released an instagib mod for Elite Force, I don't think many people played it and other people released much better versions later, but I feel like I'm still a tiny part of Elite Force's multiplayer history
I played the hell out of that instagib mod (wasnt it called something like In2tagib?) there was a thriving community for years and years playing that. I played with a team called MAS (marquis attack squad) at the time. it was great fun!
That print ad with the tagline "Assimilate This" really was a Cassandra's prophesy about the future trajectory of the franchise.
Love how Raven made excellent Star Trek and Star Wars games using the Quake 3 engine (or a modified version of it).
For Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy though, I wish all the weapons other than the rocket launcher and the lightsaber didn't suck ass. In Dark Forces 2, they were great! Not sure why they got downgraded in the sequels.
They knocked it out of the park again and again. One of the few companies whose games I'd buy without reading reviews.
the Star Wars games are one of the few Q3 powered games I did not play yet. Thanks for reminding me! 😀
Raven did everything right, and it sucks all it got them was bought out by cruel and heartless business people.
@@AllisonIsLivid probably happens to most of the "smaller but better" developers sadly :( Either that or they just go bankrupt or randomly disappear. "Megacorporation 1" comes along, sees your team are riding a wave of success, then decides "we want a piece of this. And 100 million Dollar Pounds will be hard to turn down. Infact, anyone will tell them they're stupid to turn us down, and thats why we'll win in the end, because it IS true, they WOULD be stupid to say no! muhahahaaa!"
Loved this back in the day. They got the atmosphere just right and you really felt like a member of the Voyager crew. I remember the campaign being longer though… Should try and find the time to give it a replay. 🙂
It’s on Gog if you want it! They added a bunch of Star Trek games recently.
@@MattiRedsky Unfortunately, they're very hit & miss as to whether or not they will run, let alone well.
Bridge commander & Armada are notoriously finnicky on anything past windows xp.
@@garethfairclough8715 Good that I still have an XP machine then! 😅
@@garethfairclough8715 I agree on the retail versions. The Gog versions all ran for me first time with minimal messing around required. And yes, they have bridge commander and armada 2 as well.
It definitely takes longer than 5 hours if you're bad at FPS games (like I was playing it as a kid) or get easily distracted by things like a laser puzzle you can move around and zap things with (which I spent at least 5 hours doing). It does feel pretty short as an adult who already knows what to do in every room, though, especially compared to EF2's much slower paced plot.
One of my favorite experiences was installing the TC from "Space Station K7" that turned it into an original series Star Trek game, letting you play in '60s Trek environs and against characters like Khan, Ruuk, and "The Plaktow!" aka Amok Time Spock! It was a joyous thing, so lovingly done and it really extended the gameplay for my friends and I for several more years.
I'm so glad to see Raven Software's other games getting more exposure. I hope that one day Activision will finally let them make their own games again.
Raven made some dope games.
I hope they all quit and start their own studio so they never have to deal with Activision again.
Raven Software is the same company in name only. If they made a game now, it would be a terrible millitary shooter because thats all they know how to do
Well, just ask Bill Gates, I heard he takes requests
With the Microsoft buyout, who knows?
This game needs a remaster for sure they both do!
There is a high definition elite Force texture pack available on mod database I highly recommend it
@@Tzphardi oh awesome!
I've tried it, the textures aren't much better. And the models are the same..
I think the second one holds up better graphics-wise, but definitely would love to see the original game redone. If I had infinite free time, I'd figure out how to do a remaster in Unreal Engine. I've heard of the hi-def texture pack, but it just seems to me that redoing everything on a more modern engine would do a lot for the graphics (though I have no idea if Unreal is as good combat-wise as Quake III). I'd love to see all the alien ships (especially the Etherian ship) on a modern engine.
@@masterkriebel I'll do the textures, if someone can model and write code!
I remember playing the demo a bunch of times when I was young and years later I finally got the experience the whole thing, loved every bit of it.
16 year old me loved this game when it came out. I was so psyched and I actually enjoyed the story mode, maybe even more than the sequel.
This game was something else! For its time there was nothing like it, it felt like a voyager game and everything you did during reinforced the fact. The levels were well done and the action and weapons were on point. You felt like you were in the startrek universe.
13:14 True, but I loved the scavenger base! It had some neat stealth areas, and the design was a treat for series fans.
This game was AMAZING and well beyond its years, even the graphics resolution options where lightyears (heh) ahead.
One of my all-time favourite games, played the single player campaign & expansion a ton, and spent hours and hours and hours in multiplayer. I was even in a clan back in the day, EFP* represent!
I'm so stoked you've finally covered this - it was the game that got me into Star Trek and into PC gaming in the later 3D era.
As someone who never watched the show or played it back then this actually still looks pretty fun. (And 11:59 sealed the deal for me, haha.)
What at that time did it for you? All I saw was a button
@@JoshuaJacobs83 I think metfan is referring to the unintended comedy
@@thewiirocks Ahhh ok. Was wondering what I missed lol
that drop should NOT be enough to kill someone
I played the PS2 version as a kid without really any Star Trek knowledge at the time. Even then it was still a legit fun shooter on its own.
Still fun to play today, but of course the PC version is the way to go.
They had me at Star Trek. The Quake 3 stuff was just the cherry on top.
I still have the Star Trek: Action Pack. Its an amazing set of games - truly captures early 2000s 3D gaming hype!
Clint! Thank you for picking this game! So many of your videos bring me back to my childhood, playing in my dad's CELERON powered 500Mhz PC. Keep up the great work.
One of those games I actually prefer to play in German, where the voice cast was complete from the start. The first game had some impressive custom maps, my favourite being Wreckdeck, basically all recreational areas of the TOS Enterprise combined into one. It had things like a bowling alley, a dance floor (with The Cage Orion dancer music!), a gym, a pool and some crew quarters. There was also an amazing Area 51 map.
I played this game’s campaign a dozen times as a kid. It’s the best Star Trek game, and one of the best FPS games, out there.
Oh, and I just remembered my boxed copy of Elite Force was purchased on eBay from Rick Sternbach, who was the designer of the USS Voyager itself, along with countless other things in the Star Trek world, and he also co-wrote various Star Trek Technical Manuals. He was given a copy of the game with a letter from the development team thanking him for his help, and now I have it!
I absolutely loved Voyager, it was my favourite of all the Star Trek shows. I always wished there was more depth to Elite Force. I still feel like there has never been a Star Trek game quite like I've wanted.
I had this for the Mac back in the day. (Repeatedly) Vaporising Neelix bots in deathmatch, then going postal in the ready room and seeing how long you could last against the whole crew... It was good stuff. As for the story, I only had to cheat right at the end as I had no idea what I was meant to do when fighting the final boss.
I recently got a sealed Mac copy of this for my collection. Thanks to LGR it'll now be worth millions on eBay!
Came here to find out if you could kill Neelix or not, and I wasn't disappointed
I never understood the hatred for Neelix. He was one of my preferred characters just because he was the perfect foil.
@@scottdotjazzman He was annoying. A guide that didn't guide. Stayed after Kes left. However without Neelix, Tuovk would have been impossibly more insufferable and boring. If one goes, both must go.
I saw Tim Russ at a con and he is as boring as Tuovk irl.
LOL! I needed this video LAST week when my sealed Elite Force big box was on eBay. ;) I loved this game. The disc was only sealed because it was a replacement for my original that was lost in a 400-disc carrier nearly 20 years ago. Even worse: I’m suddenly forced to sell my big box collection because of an EF4 tornado. :(
Hell yeah Clint! Awesome video bud, always love a good Retrospective.
Love the retrospective videos lgr, great stuff as always. another game to add to my backlog.
Been waiting for this retrospective for years, great video as always!
I absolutely love this game. So campy and so much fun
I can't thank you enough for this video! EF 1 & 2 were my favorite games as a kid. Hadn't thought about them in years and had no idea GOG had re-released them. Made my weekend!
Clint, I've loved every video I've seen from you, but I need to thank you for this one above all others -- the simple nostalgia of this game is profound to me, and I'd never heard of GOG prior to today. I've since been immersed in some Armada I and Elite Force I and II as I haven't been able to get the originals to play smoothly (or at all) on my rig. Thank you and keep up the amazing work!
Would you consider a look at Star Trek: Bridge Commander, too? That one was a blast... especially after the modding community put together the Kobyashi Maru modpack.
So this reminded me of something amusing. In the VR game Star Trek: Bridge Crew, the first mission IS the Kobayashi Maru and we were screwing around and found the speedrun strat: Blow it up. Kill the Kobayashi Maru. The mission ends with a Congratulations message regardless so we all had a good laugh.
@@GELTONZ That's actually a valid approach to the Maru test. In the test's "canon", there's already a good chance the entire thing is a deliberate trap by the Klingons to trick you into violating the border. Blowing up the ship is pretty much the only solution that doesn't violate the border, doesn't antagonize the klingons, and doesn't doom the Maru's crew to being tortured and executed.
that mod turns the game into a giant sandbox.
Klingon Academy was the superior game, though. The non-front firing arcs would fire on their own so you could be a spinning death machine on vessels with lots of weapon arcs, and the modding scene had loads of neat units in a larger variety than BC. On top of that, there were more systems to play with.
This was the first fps game I ever really played through. Great memories and I wish they still made star trek games like this anymore.
The first game was one of my all time favorites. So excited to see you're covering it.
I played soooooo much of this in high school. My AIM screen name was a reference to my favorite weapon, the arcwelder. Hearing that voice say "welcome to holomatch" and "your commendations..." really brought me back. Haven't played it since like 2004, I didn't know it was rereleased... might have to buy it again now
This game blew my mind as a trekkie gamer.
Prior to this...all I played Trek-wise was the quick timeish Star Trek Borg and the TNG point and click. This was absolutely brilliant.
Thanks for this video ;)
Wow you know you are right. I think I played the point and click games and had some sort of enterprise tech manual on CD. This game blew my mind as well. I would just let the ship sounds play while I slept lol.
@@vanguze the actual opening theme from TNG was on it too. Thought that was one of the greatest things on pc too.
Ds9 Harbinger a few years later was also cool :)
This game looks awesome. Sad I missed it.
It's never to late to play it 🤗
I have been waiting for this for years!!!! Love it!!
This was an AMAZING game! Such a great love letter to Voy fans! They could've made the ship 3 rooms- but they did more than that! I remember exploring ALL aspects of the ship. Seems like they really did their homework.
Great game! I've never finished the second one though...
My favorite aspect of the game was how the enemies hit by the phaser rifle would be disintegrated, but that expansion pack truly blew my mind back in the day. Wish they would recreate something like this with modern tech, and particularly for the other enterprises.
RIP Stage 9 :(
CBS go to hell.
This was really fun to watch man thanks for sharing!
I remember back in high school, especially in like 1998 ALL of our computers at school had quake and all them installed on them and we’d have massive arena deathmatches lol. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! This game really reminds me of those days.
This is so up my alley. Retro tech and Star Trek. So much nostalgias
Favorite game of all time man!! I had so much fun just fighting the bots when I was a kid
The Virtual Voyager sounds like a feature I would have geeked out over. Wasn't really on my radar, though, because while I enjoyed TNG, I never really got into Voyager or DS9.
While VOY isn't that great at all, DS9 shines even more.
Many many good moments and characters like Garak, Weyoun or MARTOK! TNG>TOS>ENT>VOY for me. With Picard beeing the best Captain overall.
@@JamLpOtHeAd I agree with this, except Voyagers placement on the list. I'd swap it with TOS personally! Actually quite enjoyed the series despite it's quirkiness.
doesn't matter, as long as you watch star trek!
live long and prosper. :)
My favorite game at the time. Loved it, specially the network option. Played with my friends and sons for hours.
I had forgotten how Star Trek games were some of my favourite gaming experiences during the middle to late '90s: 25th Anniversary, Judgement Rites, DS9 Harbinger, Hidden Evil, and especially The Fallen. I really loved that game for some reason. Your shelf full of Star Trek goodness reminded me of all those good gaming memories.
I'm so glad you covered this. This was my first ever big box game I bought, and I still have it on display today. I was also hooked after playing the demo. I remember seeing it on the shelf in Electronics Boutique for weeks on end until I had enough pocket money to buy it. I still play it from time to time, and I agree that the story is a little tame, but holomatch is awesome. It's interesting to see that the US box has the hinged front, whereas the UK version doesn't. Omg, waiting for team members to slowly walk into the elevators! I bought the expansion pack a few months later and really enjoyed virtual voyager. I do have a copy of Elite Force 2 as well, but it wasn't as good in my opinion, though it was nice to see that the storyline had a bit more to it.
I had SO MUCH fun with this game.
I played this game all the time when I was younger. The modding scene for this game was incredible and I downloaded so many characters and maps for this game that I (apparently, according to my dad) filled up my hard drives at least twice!
Okay I did not expect THIS game out of all of games here. Thanks Clint!
Excellent Trek game. One I grew up on but my favorite has to be a tie between Bridge Commander and Armada II.
I was wondering why I was still subscribed to this channel as I haven't watched any of your stuff in over a year, but this video pulled me back in.
When I searched this game on CZcams a couple months ago I was very disappointed that you hadn't covered it. I'm stoked that you decided to!
I watched my first Star Trek show, Picard, and now I'm obsessed. Great video, I think I'm gonna have to play it.
God, I remember playing this and never remembered what it was. Thank you for reminding me, I'm going to throw some money at it and relive all those memories!
I don't have many big boxes around. Lost over the years. But I still have this one. It's a shame Looking Glass never got to release their Star Trek: Voyager game.
I guess you could say System Shock 2 was the closest Looking Glass got, which you could say shares many similarities.
Happy to see you review games again.
great job again LGR, would love to see more star trek retrospectives
One thing I used to do is bind a key to spawn one of the characters, then bind another key to kill them. You could have a "bottomless" pit and spam the spawn key. Imagine a super long chain of janeways slowly dying one at a time. Another thing I did was spawn them in doors and then kill them. It would glitch the crap out of the doors. lol
Elite Force is probably the only FPS I've played that I've enjoyed. I love how the game has branching story paths, but also that the game does not tell you this in any way what so ever. You just stumble upon this feature whilst you're playing it.
Man oh man would I love to see you review the other Activision Trek games. Bridge Commander, Star Fleet Command III, Away Team, and Armada: those games were my childhood.
Thank you for this. This takes me way back. One of my favorite games of the early 2000's along with NOLF. Ahhh....youth.....
I spent countless hours playing the multi-player map against bots, delighting in vaporizing Gowron. Man I loved this game and the sequel
I miss games having bots... Sometimes you're too chill to go against the average online gamer (insane, godlike insta-headshot skills. Stressful? Yes. Fun? No.), and you just want a quick frag fest against people of the same skill (novice mode bots on UT series!). Nowadays almost every comparable style of game (what do they call em these days? Mobas?) is online only, no bots. Almost as if to suggest todays mega-devs in this genre (EG Blizzard & Epic) don't even know HOW to program bots... But wait... The whole UT series (which had clever bots) was made by Epic, soooo.... Maybe its just dev laziness. Why put bots in if we can just skip that part of the job and people will still buy millions of copies? More pay, less work, just how we like it!
Loved this and the other star trek games that were developed in this period. Number 2 was great as was ST armada 1 and 2.
Thanks for the video. I forgot all about this game. Hope you're keeping warm with all that snow. 🥶
Omg those discs man, you really took me back to my childhood with this one