Set phasers to stun

After the release of their "realistic" first person shooter "Soldier of Fortune", which put players in the role of a mercenary and allowed them to blast arms, legs and heads off their opponents in a spray of blood and gibs, Wisconsin based developers Raven Software had acquired something of a reputation for ultra-violence. Their latest game, the Quake 3 engined "Star Trek Voyager : Elite Force", is a very different beast though, with gorgeous graphics but little in the way of spraying claret.

In an interview with PC Shooter, Raven programmer Mike Gummelt explained that this was mostly "because (with very minor and isolated exceptions), Star Trek violence itself is rather tame - you don't see people getting gibbed on Star Trek (if you exclude the Next Generation episode "Conspiracy")". More's the pity - we would be more than happy to see the scant contents of Neelix's skull splattered across the mess hall of Voyager. There was another reason for the decision to tone down the violence in Elite Force though, as Mike admits that "this was really done to not only make the game fit the license as faithfully as possible, but also to appeal to a much larger audience". Given that Soldier of Fortune is currently at the center of a legal battle in British Columbia after the local authorities tried to classify it as an adult movie, that's perhaps hardly surprising...