Star Trek: Elite Force II Diaries Part One

The second and final first-person shooter set in the Star Trek universe, Star Trek Elite Force II was released in 2003 and developed by Ritual Entertainment (Raven Software were too busy to develop). That studio was more well known for making ports (and making that one released episode of SiN Episodes), so it’s weird that this didn’t receive a PlayStation 2 port, unlike the first game. Honestly, while I’m fairly sure that I owned and played this, I don’t remember much about it.

It uses what Ritual call an ÜberTools modification to the Quake III Arena engine, which means that it should look a lot nicer, and there won’t be quite as many loading screens. Another big change is that you are stuck with Alexander Munro, so if you played as Alexandria in the previous game then tough luck, you had an irreversible transporter accident or gender reassignment surgery in the last 1,000 or so Stardates.

After following through the relevant PCGamingWiki guides, as usual, I’m ready to see what’s next for Munro…

This is my exploration of Star Trek: Elite Force II where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. Now let’s begin Star Trek: Elite Force II…

Lieutenant Munro’s personal log, Stardate 54973.4. These are the continuing voyages of Lieutenant Alex Munro. I had recently undergone my fitness and combat readiness training, when Voyager was finally given the opportunity to return to the Alpha Quadrant after seven years in the Delta Quadrant. A time-travelling Catherine Janeway had outfitted the ship with futuristic technology, and we were travelling via a transwarp conduit. Unfortunately, the ship had been grabbed by a Borg Sphere, and with no way to free ourselves from their dampening field, I was tasked with leading the Hazard Team to sabotage the Sphere.

Tuvok transported us off-ship with orders to reach subjunction 27 where we could disable the three generators we needed to disable. Accompanying me were Cm.s Chell, Chang, and Murphy. The transporters encountered antilepton interference, which meant that only Chang and I arrived in the same place, but we quickly located Chell down a lift and through a force field, despite some interference with our communicators.

I had to blast a plasma conduit and get through a crawl space in order to deactivate a force field blocking our way, but that led us into a large room with a view of Voyager. We didn’t have long to contemplate her, though, as some Borg drones attacked us, and one beamed away with Chang! Worse, our Infinity Modulators (I-Mod) stopped functioning, with Chell suggesting that the Borg were jamming them. We managed to fend off the Borg, and Tuvok reported that he was unable to get a lock on Chang with the transporter.

Chell located our missing teammate, saying that he was in a nearby maturation chamber for assimilation. Why he had been taken to the Borg equivalent of a nursery, and not an assimilation chamber, I had no idea. Surely a Sphere would have the former rather than the latter if it only had one?

While in a crawl space, Murphy finally checked in. She had located a Borg relay node and used it to access their computer systems, but I dismissed her achievement and told her I’d get back to her once Chang was safe. After blowing up a plasma junction to disable a force field, we followed the corridor until we hit another one, which required me to hack it. Chell reported that Chang was below us, and he had to remain there to operate the lift controls. So, I descended on the lift on my own to find Chang on the other side of a force field, already partially assimilated.

Luckily, there was a crawl space behind me which allowed me to destroy the force field’s power supply, and I quickly managed to beam Chang back to Voyager. A short distance away, and across a hazardous force field below some handily-placed pipes, was another force field to hack, so that I could destroy the power supply to a force field elsewhere. Where exactly? As luck would have it, back where Chell was!

As I returned to Chell, Tuvok reported that Chang was safe. Once at the top, we headed through the now-open doorway and rode down a different lift. Murphy called to say that she was researching the generators, and Chell interrupted her to tell me that she was up ahead. As we reached her, a force field went up and I started looking around for a way to deactivate it while she downloaded the locations of the generators. Unfortunately, that prompted the Borg to attack us, beaming in throughout the hallway. With them adapting to our compression phaser rifles and our I-Mods non-functional, I was having to use the very inefficient hand phaser!

I blasted a plasma conduit to gain access to a crawl space, but before entering it I shot a Borg distribution node to disable the Borg in the immediate vicinity, including where Murphy was trapped. In the crawlspace, I shot the force field generator and reunited with my errant teammate, who reported that the dampening field generators were in subjunction 37, near the central plexus.

We left the room after I blasted another force field generator, then followed the hallway to a lift. There were more Borg waiting for us, but Murphy ran ahead, then blasted a distribution node, disabling them! Of course, more awaited us ahead and annoyingly at least one was unaffected by my blasting another node… Only a couple more drones stood in our way before we finally reached the main lift and rode it up towards the central plexus.

Tuvok reported that Chang was expected to make a full recovery and I confirmed that we were en route to the generators before we disembarked and were attacked once again. Chell spotted a terminal and I hacked it while they took on the enemy force (who actually started ignoring me while I hacked?), and as luck would have it the device jamming our I-Mods was just inside, and exploded nicely when I blasted it.

With our superior firepower restored, it made the next part a lot easier as we entered a large room with a massive pillar, in the middle. How this vessel could contain such things as well as Voyager, and only be less than twice the size of our ship, I would never understand. We took a lift down and I blasted a force field generator, leading us to the first dampening field generators. Chell was unable to deactivate it, so I had to use my tricorder to modulate the waveform and help disable it.

Tuvok hassled us as Borg swarmed us, but when those were dealt with, we crossed through the room with the pillar and after taking a right turn to a dead end we luckily discovered another force field generator. But that led us back to the intersection where we went left to find another dampening field generator, which I helped disable. Then Tuvok complained some more, as if we weren’t going as quickly as possible.

Returning to the lift room, we now had another force field down and a new route open to us, though I had to switch to my hand phaser as my I-Mod was running low on energy. I would soon discover that refilling it at an energy terminal only gave me a small amount unless I stood close by and waited. We eventually managed to carve a way through the Borg drones and reach the third dampening field. Upon disabling it, Voyager beamed us out.

Except for me, who was instead beamed to a large room still inside the Sphere, due to antilepton interference. Tuvok ordered me to remain undetected, but no sooner had he said that when a Borg three times my height, unlike any assimilated species I had seen, rose from the floor and attacked! It took all that I had to stay ahead of its attacks, which included transporting directly behind me, but unloading the I-Mod into it completely a couple of times managed to put it down, and I was beamed back to Voyager! I eliminated 59 enemies with a 48% shot accuracy.

Now free, Voyager blew apart the Sphere from inside, being greeted by a fleet of Starfleet ships in orbit of Earth. We were finally home…