This time around, Raven Software left the task of making the sequel up to Ritual Entertainment who are known for such games as Sin, Heavy Metal FAKK 2 and the upcoming Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. So, with a new developer at the helm, does Elite Force II live up to it’s namesake?

At its core, Elite Force II is your straightforward first-person shooter with a few more puzzles to solve and more exploration than in the original. As in the first game, you have helpful teammates who will fight by your side and in some instances guide you through sections of a level. In a few missions your goal will be as simple as keeping a crewmate alive or finding and rescuing crewmates who are locked aboard an abandoned spacecraft.

As far as the AI goes, it’s a mixed bag with your teammates generally doing a good job of following you and helping out in combat, yet they have a nasty habit of getting in your line of fire on occasion. The enemy AI is smart enough to duck behind cover to avoid your attacks and in general, puts up a pretty good fight. There are some aliens that lack any real AI, such as the Exomophs, which will just run straight at you in huge flocks. There are plenty of these guys, and their rush attack gets old after a while.

In Elite Force II, the tricorder is used more often than in the original game, unfortunately, you’ll only use it to open doorways, hack into computers or to follow a teammate’s instructions. Most of these tricorder requests are made when you need to open force fields or to solve a puzzle. I would have liked to have seen the tricorder used in a more creative way, like finding life forms as they do on the TV series.

The weapons are a mix of old and new. A few of the old favorites include the Phaser, Compression Rifle and the I-Mod (Infinity Modulator.) As has become the standard with most FPS titles, weapons offer both a primary and a secondary fire mode to increase the damage they can dish out. You will also have access to miniguns, fully automatic energy rifles, and rocket launchers. My new favorite weapon is the shotgun, which doubles as an energy grenade launcher in secondary fire mode. As you progress through the game, you’ll also happen upon strange and exotic alien weaponry, which I’ll leave you to discover and enjoy.

Overall, the gameplay is quite good, though one small gripe I have with it is all the crawling around in service ducts you have to do. It seems that whenever there’s a force field in your path, you can just look around for a service duct, blast it open, crawl through it and knock out the power coupling With the coupling disabled, you can leave the duct and find yourself in front of a now open corridor.

Elite Force II features some boss battles that can be frustrating at times but are also challenging and satisfying at the same time. Defeating a boss isn’t always a "shoot until the monster is dead" situation, as there is almost always a puzzle linked to the defeat of the boss. Just remember that when you are blasting away at that 16 foot tall Borg and he adapts to your attacks, you’ll need to quickly modify your strategy.

Using a modified Quake 3 Arena engine makes this game look great both indoors and out. The textures are sharp and clean, while lighting and special effects are as good as or better than any I’ve seen in many other titles.

The character models are mostly well done with just a few exceptions. For example, Jean - Luc Picard’s face looks like a paste job gone horribly wrong and character movements are a little "jerky" in some of the cut-scenes. During the cut-scenes, the characters’ mouths don’t always sync up perfectly either. In all honesty, these are small distractions and don’t take away from the overall experience. After all, you’re here to frag, not watch movies!

One high point of the game is the environments, especially the Borg sphere level. The level designers did a great job of making the sphere a dark and ominous place. I’ll admit that I nearly jumped out of my seat as I walked through a dimly lit corridor with the Borg slowly waking up and chanting, "We are Borg, resistance is futile!"

Gamers who still haven’t bought the latest greatest PC hardware will be glad to learn that Elite Force II runs as smooth as silk with very few slowdowns on most good hardware. Even my older gaming rig handled the game just fine with no real noticeable drops in framerate.

Audio-wise, everything from the "bleeps" of your tricorder to the "whoosh" of a door sliding open sound crisp and clear. The soundtrack is dynamic and will intensify during combat and soften when you have dispatched your enemies. The game supports Dolby 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound along with all the other standard sound setups, and Patrick Stuart does the voiceover for Jean-Luc Picard, so what more could you ask for?

If you’re not into the single player campaign that’s no problem as you can go online and test your skills against the other "Elite Forcers" in over a dozen multiplayer game modes across 13 maps. You have the old standby multiplayer modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch (called Holomatch and Team Holomatch respectively) and Capture the Flag. Some of the other modes include Bomb Defusion, (each team tries to plant a bomb in the other teams base), Disintegration (each player is armed with a Sniper Rifle, and one shot kills your opponents) and Action Hero (a variant of "tag" but with high-powered weaponry.)

With a single player game that will take 7-9 hours to complete, and all the multiplayer game modes and maps, Elite Force II will keep you busy for quite some time. The developers were kind enough to include bots so you can practice your fragging before going online. Practice enough, and you’ll find you might just be able to "Live long and Prosper" in the multiplayer modes.

Summing it all up, Elite Force II is a good FPS with a fairly enjoyable single player campaign and an excellent variety of multiplayer options. Even if you don’t like Star Trek, so long as your an FPS fan, you’ll enjoy this game.