Whether you are a Star Trek fan or not this is one great FPS. Be warned: the Delta Quadrant is one tough posting!
STV:EF is like being in one of those cliff-hangar double episodes of the excellent Star Trek Voyager (STV) TV series. All your favourite STV characters (except Kes) are there. I played through on Normal difficulty using the Version 1.2 Patch.
The game is based around a specialiast "elite" Hazard Team that does the hard yards in away missions, as well as fending off attckers and averting disasters on Voyager itself. In many ways this is logical, as all the Star Trek TV series have the captain and/or various (theoretically difficult to repalace) senior officers on hazardous away missions. The team is under the tutelage of Tuvok, Voyager's Vulcan senior security officer, and is made up of two teams. The player's character is Alex Munro (playable as either male or female with interactive dialogue changed to suit your choice).
Alex leads one of the two teams on away missions but as you will find out does most of the hard work. The non-player characters (NPCs) add colour and do a fair bit of the ancillary work of a typical away mission. As with all things Star Trek the solution is not always to shoot the enemy, however like Nightfire, the Bond FPS game, you spend a lot of time running and killing the enemy, in this case aliens. So in some ways the game does not "truly" reflect the Star Trek ethos of live long and prosper ... but then it would not be a FPS would it?
Your fellow NPC Hazard Team members facilitate your main mission, and can help keep you alive by taking out some of the enemy, though this in true FPS style is YOUR main task. You have to be look out for your team mates as they are not immortal and can die (permanently) ruining the feeling of success when a mission is otherwise successfully completed. I somehow had incomplete mission objectives, including in the early mission when recovering 3 containers of isodesium. I recovered all 3 but that aspect of the mission was recorded as not completed? Puzzling, perhaps a glitch.
You and your NPC team battle your way (or judiciously avoid combat by sneaking around) through an arrray of Delta Quandrant bad guys: the Borg, the apparently hostile though ultimately benign Etherians, the Scavengers (comprising Malons, Klingons, Hirogen and even a nod to the original, Kirk & Spock era, "Mirror Mirror" universe) and Species 8472 on their various vessels all marooned in a ship graveyard by the Forge. The Forge and its various Vorsoth bug-like aliens are the main enemy in the game.
It is well into the game when you finally encounter the Forge which is populated by Harvesters, Reavers and Avatars which are bug like aliens comprising the Vorsoth, that pull apart the marooned/captured vessels. Once you enter the Forge the game becomes more difficult, due to the sheer number of enemy bugs you need to dispose of before you finally get to the mother of all bugs. The game ends with your Alex in one of those frustrating "boss fights", just like at the end of SOF, where the odds seem to be against you. As with most games with a seemingly unbeatable "boss fight" check the walkthroughs here at GameSpot, they will clue you in on how to slay this mighty beast.
The character voice acting in STV:EF is excellent (the original TV series actors reprising their roles) and highlight the idiosyncracies of the characters, notably Tuvok, Tom Paris, the EMH and 7 of 9 in the inter-character banter that goes on. While you tend to interact with the "TV series crew" on Voyager itself you are, on select missions, accompanied by Tuvok and 7 of 9. The actual gameplay however focusses on the Hazard Teams and their missions. Inter-mission breifings and debriefings usually involves most of the "TV series crew" which will please the fans.
Character and location graphics are excellent for the games age, easily on par with SOF2. The locations and settings on board Voyager and the various alien vessels are very good. As the environments are largely enclosed the age of the graphics is not that noticeable as for older games occuring outdoors. The environments tend to have interactive features, mainly control panels, to operate doors, elevators, weapons systems, etc. Some environomnets are quite eerie and the sound effects are suitably appropriate. The Borg, Scavenger and Dreadnaught (a huge space cannon protected by giant robots) vessels are probably the most unteresting environments for fans. The Etherians vessel seems to be a living, almost liquid, entity. There are also some interesting holodeck environments that are usually entered between beteen missions and used to practice with the new weapons.
I am a STV fan so the game had that basic appeal but it is primarily as a FPS that I am evaluating it. The reviews of STV:EF are mostly very positive so I knew the game should be good ... it is in fact very good. Like SOF/SOF2 you need to do a bit of thinking and have a good look around your environment to determine how to proceed/succeed in each mission. After a while this becomes intuitive. The save system on Normal difficulty is very forgiving and there are health and weapon "power ups" scattered around each mission.
OVERALL: This is a great FPS game and well worth (re-)visiting even for the non-Star Trek or sci-fi fan. It was a pleasant diversion from the WWII and modern/terrorist era FPS games I usually play.
The Holomatch feature is also worthy of mention. This is part of STV:EF's multiplayer component. You can go online and play the various team deathmatch, capture the flag, and free for all deathmatch games or avoid the whole online thing (my preference) and play solo using computer controlled bots. True to the holodeck you can assume any STV:EF character, whether Federation or any of a number of alien characters (Klingon, Romulan, Hirogen, Vorsoth, etc) or even those Flash Gordon-like B&W Captain Proton holodeck characters.
BTW, I've got the ST:EF2, Alien Versus Predator I and II FPS games waiting to be played ... but I've had enough of bug hunts for a while!