I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game work harder to remind you of a different, better game
It’s very clearly drawn a lot of inspiration from Half-Life. It’s got story scenes interleaved with combat sequences, most of which are first person and allow you to wander, and it tries to keep it all contiguous in space and time. It falls down a bit in that it has to contrive a lot of extracanonical conceits to justify a Star Trek first person shooter where you can actually defeat the big bads of Voyager. First up, you’re part of a “Hazard Team” (never seen or mentioned in the show) whose job is to be the militaristic first response to hostile situations both aboard Voyager and elsewhere. Secondly, because you come up against borg and species 8472, and you’re supposed to win, Seven of Nine has conveniently come up with the Infinity Modulator, a weapon the borg simply cannot counter. I guess every time they’ve rotated weapon frequencies it’s been literally rotating rather than random, and someone finally remembered entropy existed? This… does not occur in the show, ever, for obvious reasons.
And you do shoot a lot of these enemies. Encounter design can be summarised as large numbers of enemies spawning out of nowhere for a few minutes and not much else. A shame, because the levels certainly could be used in more interesting ways.
The Half-Life references are all over the game. There’s a “hazardous materials” level which has you leaping from broken catwalks over radioactive water, B’Elanna mentions needing to calibrate the resonance cascade couplings, they wear their inspiration not on their sleeve but as a tired graphic tee. And it’s really rather distracting.
You spend a decent amount of time wandering Voyager, and these sequences are probably my favourites, as exploring the ship is pretty fun. There are plenty of little touches, like a signed photo of your player character with Worf in her quarters, and a segment where you get summoned to the bridge. These parts just make me wish this game hadn’t had such a focus on the out of character combat, I’d have loved a game like this more interested in a story aboard Voyager, and less focused on being a Half-Life-like with a Quake style multiplayer mode.
It’s very clearly drawn a lot of inspiration from Half-Life. It’s got story scenes interleaved with combat sequences, most of which are first person and allow you to wander, and it tries to keep it all contiguous in space and time. It falls down a bit in that it has to contrive a lot of extracanonical conceits to justify a Star Trek first person shooter where you can actually defeat the big bads of Voyager. First up, you’re part of a “Hazard Team” (never seen or mentioned in the show) whose job is to be the militaristic first response to hostile situations both aboard Voyager and elsewhere. Secondly, because you come up against borg and species 8472, and you’re supposed to win, Seven of Nine has conveniently come up with the Infinity Modulator, a weapon the borg simply cannot counter. I guess every time they’ve rotated weapon frequencies it’s been literally rotating rather than random, and someone finally remembered entropy existed? This… does not occur in the show, ever, for obvious reasons.
And you do shoot a lot of these enemies. Encounter design can be summarised as large numbers of enemies spawning out of nowhere for a few minutes and not much else. A shame, because the levels certainly could be used in more interesting ways.
The Half-Life references are all over the game. There’s a “hazardous materials” level which has you leaping from broken catwalks over radioactive water, B’Elanna mentions needing to calibrate the resonance cascade couplings, they wear their inspiration not on their sleeve but as a tired graphic tee. And it’s really rather distracting.
You spend a decent amount of time wandering Voyager, and these sequences are probably my favourites, as exploring the ship is pretty fun. There are plenty of little touches, like a signed photo of your player character with Worf in her quarters, and a segment where you get summoned to the bridge. These parts just make me wish this game hadn’t had such a focus on the out of character combat, I’d have loved a game like this more interested in a story aboard Voyager, and less focused on being a Half-Life-like with a Quake style multiplayer mode.