I recently bought Star Trek:Voyager - Elite Force for the Mac. I bought it from Gamestop.com for $20 which is $10 less than other places. And when I received it I found out why as it was a pretty beat up box, a return or damaged shipment. But the CD was still wrapped and there was a manual and warranty card. Still, it would have been nice if the web site had mentioned that it wasn't a "new" game.

It's a Mac OS 9 game though the 1.2 update just came out which adds Mac OS X support. So I had to install it using Classic then updated the application. One of the updates new features is that they got Jeri Ryan to do the voice of Seven-of-Nine. Apparently the rest of the cast did the voices for their characters but Seven was done by someone else (Ryan was probably busy). I'm not sure what the big deal is. As long as it's a close match I won't notice.

Elite Force uses the Quake engine. Now, the problem with 3d games for me is that Mac OS X doesn't have good drivers for the older ATI video cards. So the game can't take advantage of video acceleration. Therefore I have to turn off everything to get decent speed and even then it bogs down when there are a dozen creatures moving about. I'm sure if I boot up into Mac OS 9 it'll look great. But I don't mind if everybody is just a blob (it's not that bad but it seems that way at times).

In any case, all that are minor things compared to the gameplay. Now, I don't have a great of confidence in PC games. The PC first person shooters seem aimed more at twitch gaming than telling a story. At least to me and that's from playing early games like Doom and Heretic and Quake. No story, no dialog even, just level after level of monsters. Compare that to the Marathon series on the Mac which had a story line which immersed you in a story.

Elite Force has a story. You are Ensign Alexander (or Alexandria) Munro, second in command of Voyager's new Hazard Team, a special ops force created by Tuvok. The Hazard Team is as yet unproven but that will soon change. Voyager is attacked by a mysterious probe and when they destroy the probe the whole ship is transported to a null space, a grave yard of ships, the whole area blanketed by a dampening field.

With Voyager out of power and sensors, Janeway turns to the Hazard Team to be the eyes and ears of Voyager. Munro and her teammates are sent to a derelict to find out more info, have to infiltrate the Scavenger base to get Isodisium crystals for power, have to deal with the Borg when they steal the Isodisium, then have to withstand a Harvester attack and finally take the battle to The Forge, the center of Null Space.

This is a good game. Lots of cut scenes to give you the plot. There are also lots of playable cut scenes where you go from area to area and talk to people without having much of a point. Lots of fights and quite a few puzzle solving scenes. Many times you have to find a "secret way" into an area or you have to use some special item correctly. The puzzles aren't that hard, but they do add variety to the game.

You're never that lost. Even the "find the correct route" puzzles aren't in mazes, so you're not going to wander around lost. The game is set up so that you go from section to section and the sections aren't huge and complex so I seldom felt like I didn't know where to go or what to do.

You almost always operate in a team. The other guys follow you around and when you get to special areas they do their thing like break into the computer or set demolition charges or whatever. Although they can die, it's really rare unless it's a planned death. For the most part they sort of help in combat but usually just get in your way.

Lots of different weapons. You eventually have nine to choose from and the weapons either take standard energy (the Federation weapons) or energy crystal (the alien weapons). Strangely, there are energy recharge stations on alien ships and the crystals are just lying around carelessly tossed away.

Overall I really like this game. It's not really hard but it is challenging enough for most people. You have lots of things to do and you really have a feel for participating in the Voyager universe and interacting with characters from the tv show. Two great yet minor things about the game. The first is that although it changes the screen resolution and back when you start it and quit it, it does it without the Finder having to be updated so that when you come back all the Finder windows are exactly where you left them. That's so nice. Also you can set the volume really low, low enough that I can use my headphones with the game. Also very nice.

I've gotten about 15-20 hours of game play out of this game and I'm almost done. The last main battle is really tough so I'm playing it a bit and if I'm doing well I can save and if not I can start from the last save point. So eventually I'll beat the big baddie and finish the game. Otherwise I died occasionally but mostly the action keeps moving and for $20 it's well worth buying.