Years have passed and without a doubt, it always seems that some of the most coveted licenses are the ones that the PC game industry continues to batter senselessly. Star Wars has seen its share of abuse, but Star Trek has unfortunately seen much more and those who have played some Star Trek titles over the years should probably have a facility donated to the recovery of their sanity. The Star Trek franchise has essentially seen only one decent game lately, if at all-Star Trek: Armada. A solid, if not toned down RTS with sweet graphics and sound. It wasn't perfect in a lot of ways, but the game was pleasing all the same. However, since Elite Force hit the FPS market, using the Q3 engine, things have gotten a tad spicier.

There have been many people saying Elite Force is the best PC Star Trek game to date. I for one, tend to agree with this understatement. However, a major criticism of the game was that it ended too quickly. Because of this, the decision by Activision and developer Raven Software to create an expansion pack to Elite Force seemed like an obvious one. The expansion pack adds to this already awesome game by introducing some new single player missions, an awesome selection of Multiplayer maps, and some hot new gameplay modes exclusively for the Multiplayer environment. I think Activision and Raven have successfully captured fans of both games (Q3 and UT) with Elite Force and it's now added expansion pack.

Gameplay:

In the single player arena, Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force Expansion Pack falls a little short of my original expectations. The single player missions consist of a few (4) new missions - two of which are really only target shooting. You can access these new missions while in the Virtual Voyager Mode - a mode of gameplay that allows you "Take a virtual, interactive tour of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Voyager and interact with the crew and the ship's environments." That is, you don't get to see the entire ship. Instead, they've glued together all the individual levels you've seen in the single-player game, including a few new areas. This means that rooms such as the brig and astrometics are now available to roam around freely. A nice touch is that various computer consoles around the ship now give you access to data libraries. For example, in astrometrics you can query for information on the various species in the game as well as other astronomical topics, you can also use devices on the ship that will do things like synthesizing food of some of the cast's favorite drinks and dishes.

The tour is little disappointing at some points. Most rooms remain locked (We forgive you Raven, recreating a large ship would simply take up too much time and not be worth the investment, plus the Quake 3 engine is not really suited for very large levels on that scale) and your goal throughout the tour consists of carrying out some conventional tasks such as launching a shuttle or transporting some cargo. Once you've completed all these tasks, you can still walk around the ship freely but there's not a lot left to do. Some of the fun they did include varies from putting the ship into 'Red Alert' and get yelled at by Janeway and shut down the warp core and get reprimanded by some unknown mechanic. There is also the option to kill your crewmates and get thrown into the brig, or on the lighter side you can collect little EF Action Figures that are scattered throughout the ship. Most reviews out there will tell you the gameplay value of this part of the game isn't too great. I disagree because most people don't take the time to completely explore this pack. One of the most fun features in single-player mode can be found on a the very elusive deck 15 where a newly developed Star Trek mini-game can be found. One of the most fun arcade style games I have played in a while, simple, but very neat.

Getting back to the single player missions... The two missions that can actually be called missions can be finished in about 20 minutes or so. In one you have to retrieve a data pack from a Klingon mercenary, and in the other, you play the part of Captain Proton fighting the evil Dr. Chaotica. The black and white world is a novel approach, but the mission is too short to even allow you to appreciate the environment. However, they were fun for the little time it took to complete them - I just wish they were longer. The black and white map can be played in the Multiplayer modes however so not a complete loss. I actually liked the holodeck mission against Chaotica is quite entertaining, I just wish it had been longer.

Graphics/Sound:

There weren't any changes to the graphic quality, or the textures or models, and since you have to have the full game to play it, you already know how it looks. With all the new games that will come out in the near future I can't say this game is state of the art anymore, however Ravensoft does such an excellent job of re-creating the Voyager ship environment that you will actually start to feel like you are part of the crew. The tiniest of ship details are brought to life in the Virtual Voyager mode.

The sound hasn't changed either, and it is good but not great. The only thing they added in this expansion pack is the Jeri Ryan speech pack. Maybe I'm strange, but that really didn't excite me all that much.

Multiplayer/Devices:

The Multiplayer maps and game types are really this game's most exceptional feature. With 22 new levels, I consider this expansion well worth the $20 price I paid for it. The different game types you can play are 'Action Hero', 'Assimilation', 'Disintegration', 'Last Person Standing' and 'Player Class Mode.' The only one that is any different than all of the other Multiplayer games out there is Assimilation. In this game type, you are one one of two teams - Borg or Federation. If you are on the Borg team, you try to assimilate all others, and if you are on the Federation side, you try to destroy the Borg Queen. This is a really good twist on an otherwise very common idea, and in my opinion is the only redeeming part of this whole expansion pack. As far as the other game types go, I couldn't really tell the difference between the normal deathmatch style and the Action Hero game. In this one, there is an action hero who is designated at the first of the match and he has all available weapons, but it's still just a free-for-all. All of the other game types are pretty much self-explanatory. Disintegration is just a sniper mode, Last Person Standing is just that and in the Player Class Mode, you can choose to be in one of six different classes: Infiltrator, Medic, Heavy Weapons, Sniper, Demolitionist and Technician. All of these classes have different specialties, and it can make for a pretty darn fun game. Upgraded server support (Also available with a patch), allows for overall better in game performance and has increased the average amount of public EF servers I see on the server listing everyday. There's also a fair share of new skins, but these are also available in the free patch you can grab from a number of sites.

Devices tested with this game included Game Commander 2, Sidewinder Game Voice, and Sidewinder Dual Strike. Game Commander 2 performed exceptionally well in Elite Force. Command success rate was a clean 100% and there are several command files for download on the GC2 site. Game Voice proved to be valuable as well. With a command success rate of 95% (Two commands were missed), GV was found to help out in some of the more mundane tasks like weapon switching and team text communication. Although I at first thought that the Sidewinder Dual Strike would be ideal for EF, I quickly found that the response time for turning was not as fast as I would have liked. I tweaked with the settings for over an hour and could still not get the results I desired. Also worth note was that my Logitech Ifeel mouse now has an update patch for use in Elite Force, this let's the owners that use this mouse feel the shots as they fire. Neat, but more of a novelty if you ask me.

The Wrap-up:

Elite Force Expansion Pack should easily please both the standard FPS crowd and the hard-core Trekkies that have been own the game or have wanted to; at least with Multiplayer gaming. For single-player gamers, however, Elite Force could leave you longing for more. Who knows, we may see more additions in the future in the form of patches or mods. I know there are several EF mods under development like the upcoming The Dark Project. Overall, I found this expansion well worth the price.