[Review] Star Trek Elite Force
Apr. 10th, 2005 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsAre you familiar with the principle of first sale? First sale is a legal principle that basically says that once you've paid money for something, that "something" is yours to legally transfer to another person. This is the principle behind used books. Publishers tried to get used book stores outlawed, but the principle of first sale states that you have the right to transfer (rather than duplicate) "the ability to read that story" to someone else.
Software companies have been trying to outlaw first sale through licensing agreements. Basically, you buy the license and it becomes non-transferable. Microsoft does this with Windows XP, and people have reported first sale problems with Worlds of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Half Life 2.
Part of their excuse is that they don't want the games to be playable "forever" because they don't want the overhead of having to tell people "we don't support that game anymore." But I think some small part of it in this Internet age is that, with the compression of time factor, developers twenty years from now don't want some bozo who found an old CD at some tottering dolt's garage sale to take it home, only to email the developer an hour later and say, "Remember this game you wasted your life developing back in your mid-20s? Well it SUCKED!"
Who wants that kind of memory?
I write this because this must be how the developers of Star Trek: Elite Force must feel. Take the very worst aspects of Star Trek Voyager: the brusque and incomprehensible technobabble, the political correctness marred by senseless violence, the way the writers thought that sarcasm and irritating banality could be endearing character traits. Now, combine those with the very worst aspects of a three-dimensional shooter: trivial spatial puzzles that insult your intelligence, the meaningless piling on of violence, and the poorly-drawn characters. There, you have Star Trek: Elite Force. I don't care that it's the Quake 3 engine, it was never meant for accurate machinimatics; Janeway's helmet hair is taken to absurd literal heights, Torres really does have a lobster on her head, and SevenOfNine is reduced (or more accurately, enhanced) to some steroid-taken East German female wrestler who has eyes (and a chest, oh the insanity!) as flat as Wilma Flinstone's and the hair of a chemotherapy patient. Only The Doctor looks convincing, but you barely whiz by him as you take on a group of the stoopidest boading pirates you've ever seen; all you have to do is run past them at high speed and then shoot them all in the backs as they're too dumb to turn around.
At least I only paid $1.50 for it at a garage sale. The opening movie is a rehash of the opening theme, and it's nicely done, and it was probably my favorite sequence in the whole series.
Software companies have been trying to outlaw first sale through licensing agreements. Basically, you buy the license and it becomes non-transferable. Microsoft does this with Windows XP, and people have reported first sale problems with Worlds of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Half Life 2.
Part of their excuse is that they don't want the games to be playable "forever" because they don't want the overhead of having to tell people "we don't support that game anymore." But I think some small part of it in this Internet age is that, with the compression of time factor, developers twenty years from now don't want some bozo who found an old CD at some tottering dolt's garage sale to take it home, only to email the developer an hour later and say, "Remember this game you wasted your life developing back in your mid-20s? Well it SUCKED!"
Who wants that kind of memory?
I write this because this must be how the developers of Star Trek: Elite Force must feel. Take the very worst aspects of Star Trek Voyager: the brusque and incomprehensible technobabble, the political correctness marred by senseless violence, the way the writers thought that sarcasm and irritating banality could be endearing character traits. Now, combine those with the very worst aspects of a three-dimensional shooter: trivial spatial puzzles that insult your intelligence, the meaningless piling on of violence, and the poorly-drawn characters. There, you have Star Trek: Elite Force. I don't care that it's the Quake 3 engine, it was never meant for accurate machinimatics; Janeway's helmet hair is taken to absurd literal heights, Torres really does have a lobster on her head, and SevenOfNine is reduced (or more accurately, enhanced) to some steroid-taken East German female wrestler who has eyes (and a chest, oh the insanity!) as flat as Wilma Flinstone's and the hair of a chemotherapy patient. Only The Doctor looks convincing, but you barely whiz by him as you take on a group of the stoopidest boading pirates you've ever seen; all you have to do is run past them at high speed and then shoot them all in the backs as they're too dumb to turn around.
At least I only paid $1.50 for it at a garage sale. The opening movie is a rehash of the opening theme, and it's nicely done, and it was probably my favorite sequence in the whole series.
