Any 'LF-Reviews' of Elite Force 2?

[txa1265]

Hi:

 

I know I've seen a few people mention they have it, I was wondering if anyone wanted to post their mini-reviews? I still haven't gotten it, and haven't decided if I will ...

 

Mike

[RoguePhotonic]

I went through it...I liked it.....I thought it was as good as the first...

[txa1265]

I got the game two weeks ago and beat it in a week. I see the general review state ~80% based on gamerankings.com and I tend to agree. Here are my thoughts ...

 

- Game Length: I finished it is just over 11 hours, and that includes finding almost every secret area and secret item, for which I was rewarded (later...)

- Graphics: noticeably better than just about any other Q3 game. This is Star Trek, so many of the environs are drab, but the structures were nice. Definite improvement in the models and textures from EF1. Fewer 'graphical errors' than most of those (things like bodies through walls, floating weapons, etc) - but part of that is because the enemies explode after dying, but I did have a few feet sticking out of platforms. There were issues with Munro typing ~a foot off of the keyboard.

- Cutscenes: really good. Faces were well done - the best mix of facial elements I've seen yet: found a good point between JO's 'too much internal detail' and RtCW's 'empty hole'. They advanced the story without stealing too much of the action from you. While I suppose there's always an argument to be made against cutscenes, in Star Wars or Star Trek I think that they do help. My gripe is when a cutscene does something you would like to do, and there were some of those moments in EFII, but not too many.

One thing I liked thaht they did once I liked - allow you to mouse-look, but not move. So you could look around, and were part of what was going on, but had tp let things play out.

- Sounds: really good but with issues. As a kid I grew up with the original Star Trek in reruns, and watched TNG when I was in college and it came out (I was 21) and got into that. So ... hearing the battle music was quite exhillarating. But 'dynamic music systems' are a bit of a myth, and the one in EFII had noticable clicks and poorly timed drop-ins. For instance: I take out all of the enemies to the quiet music, then I'm walking the empty halls and the battle music kicks in - I get a jolt, switch from Tricorder back to Disruptor (If you've played you know where I am now ) and then start looking around for ... enemies.

- MultiPlayer: people on the JKII boards have been extolling the death of JO MP since April of 2002. Elite Force 1 had a good MP element and was pretty popular - look, nothing is taking over from the various WWII-ish team shooters (and CS, or course ), but with JKII's MP it is still possible at any time of day or night possible to join a fun game of some MP element. EFII MP was DOA. I've played bits of MP here and there, and wanted to join in some after I finished the SP game, and counted the number of players on all servers (note - this was ~10PM EST on a Friday) and it was ~35. I didn't have to scroll to see all of the servers.

- Secrets & rewards: JK had an excellent secret & reward system (force points), and I thought Deus Ex's was even better (points towards upgrades, and sometimes finding augmentations). Most games now make secret areas with extra powerups and reward you by telling you how many secrets you found (JO, SOFII, MoH), or give you some collectables (thanks for the gold bars, RtCW ... just as useful as the goblets in Wolf 3D ). Elite FOrce did something really cool - you collect 'StarShips', and your total gets you access to 'Secret Maps'. These are not connected to the main game, but they are a true reward that makes you want to find the secrets, some of which were cool, others of which were hard to find.

- Enemy AI: ever seen a 1-year old go for something? They look, you can see their interest, then they start to move with their hands out - you have quite a bit of time, and it is very predictable. If Ritual employed that AI system for their enemies it would have been refreshing. This was some of the worst AI I've faced since the 2.5D era, and it really took down the joy of the game, almost as much as ...

- Enemies: Yuk. My least favorite part of JKII - by about an 2 orders of magnitude - was the mine crabs. Imagine if ~50% of JKII was filled with them, different sizes and shapes, most of which shot various things, but all of which had the same basic 'mine crab' intelligence. That describes EFII enemies.

- Friendly NPC's: very good. They made good use of Elite Force NPC's, and also people from the Enterprise-E. Decent voice-acting - Patrick Stewart was there and did fine, the guy who played Barclay was also there, and other actors were pretty good. Whoever did Korban was over the top! NPC AI was the usual ... mediocre at best.

- Klingon: they had Korban, who you had been teaching at StarFleet, filling in for Worf. He was my favorite NPC! 'Perhaps today is a good day to die!' ... and he had the armory as his playground and was always giving you weapons to test, and when you did well he'd exclaim 'almost as good as a Klingon!'

- Use of License: excellent. Music as I mentioned was good, and you got plenty of time to spend on the enterprise.

- Interaction: In general, typical. You could move what you were designed to move, nothing else. You could open what you were meant to open, nothing else. You could use the Tricorder to look for 'strutural weaknesses', most of which were secrets, but some were critical path areas. When they were breaks in walls or weak doors it was one thing ... when they were rocks ...

- Non-linearity: very little - not as bad as the 'follow the guys shooting at you' from SoFII, but very much a single path game.

- RPG elements: nice touch - especially for EF players (well, certainly the onces who chose Alex, anyway). You choose dialog elements that effect the cutscenes and other plot elements. It is always nice to feel like you control something, but sometimes it is not clear if you could have made a wrong choice ...

 

Mike