Category Archives: Books

Quest For Clues 4

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This is the 4th in the series of Quest For Clues books and was published by Origin in 1991. This doesn’t break the formula, and is the same as ever with solutions for 40 more games. There are only the 3 solutions for Origin games this time and no foreword whatsoever leaving me with nothing much to write about that I haven’t already said for the first 3 books. There are another 2 of these books left in the series, which I’m hoping will have a little more for me to work with.

The offer stands to scan in any of these solutions if anyone wants to see one of them, but I expect walkthroughs to most (if not all) of these games can be easily found on the internet. Some of the RPG’s covered are quite complex and the walkthroughs are brief considering this. With only a few pages per game, it’s very much a bare minimum to get you through but with so many games covered in each book it was potentially good value for money at the time. It just doesn’t make it of much interest as a collectible 20 years down the line, although I’m sure I’ll have made use of a solution or two in here over the years and may well use a few more of them when I get round to playing some of the other games I’ve amassed.

Wing Commander – Action Stations

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This is the 6th Wing Commander novel. It was written by William Forstchen and published by Baen in 1998. I was curious to know where the series was going to go after the last novel. There were enough hints at another hostile race that I expected that to come next but instead this is a prequel and details events back at the start of the Kilrathi war with a young Tolwyn taking a lead role. There is certainly plenty of scope to write about this time as not all that much was said in the games manuals beyond a few select events.

Before I get into the plot, I have to say that the cover for the book wasn’t exactly inspiring. If I went into a book shop and bought this in person, I’d be embarrassed handing it over at the counter frankly. Thankfully, this is only a small paperback but if this was on the front of a game I can’t help but think that I’d have seen it on a list of worst game covers. Admittedly there are far worse out there such as my personal favourite Metro Cross which looks like this:-

I’m digressing anyway and I suppose I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. To briefly summarise the plot, at the start of the book, the Kilrathi and Confed are sizing each other up and although there are rumours around war hasn’t yet been declared. The Kilrathi are in the meanwhile going to mount a surprise attack on McAuliffe station, which is the biggest base outside of Earth. The military know it’s coming, Earth’s politicians refuse to admit it so Tolwyn and a few others go on a secret mission to get proof. They get this, and arrive back at McAuliffe just in time to raise a warning. The raid destroys McAuliffe and most of the fleet but thanks to heroics and sacrifice from the humans they manage to strike back at the Kilrathi and stop them pressing on towards Earth.

The book started off with a brief foreword suggesting that it was written after Tolwyns death by a Confed historian to in part explain his character and how he ended up doing what he did. It didn’t achieve this and he was basically back to being the hero he was in the early novels with a page near the end suggesting that he didn’t want to let politicians allow this to happen again. I’m not sure how much like Wing Commander a lot of this felt really. It probably drew on the past novels more than the games. After 6 books, this is very much Forstchen’s take on the Wing Commander universe with a lot of little elements that never appeared in the games. There was still plenty to link it to the games with perhaps the main point being that this was the first time that torpedoes were used and that they were originally a Kilrathi technology. They were untested so by the end of the novel, Confed have a few unexploded ones to learn from and start making their own.

There are a lot of familiar themes in the plot with the clueless politicians, loads of human ships sacrificing themselves for the greater good, sympathetic Kilrathi who understand humans but aren’t listened to, etc… In some ways the book is a rearrangement of what I’ve already seen in the series. It also borrows heavily from Star Wars in the early parts of the book as Tolwyn et al hire a souped up freighter from a dodgy trader to go and spy in Kilrathi space, stopping off in a space station full of aliens and get involved in bar fights, and so on. If you want originality, this isn’t the place to look. However, I’ll admit to quite enjoying it for all that. It’s arguably a worse book than the last 2 but the original(ish) story made it far more worthwhile reading it in the first place. It also didn’t rely half as much on ship combat scenes and was more of an action/adventure set in the Wing Commander universe, making it more suited to the medium. It’s a fun, undemanding read, ideal if you want to pass some time but not too much more than that.

Wing Commander – The Price Of Freedom

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Onto Wing Commander novel #5 – The Price Of Freedom. This was co-authored by Forstchen and Ben Ohlander and published by Baen in 1996. This is the novelisation of Wing Commander 4 and as such I could probably say before I started reading it that it wasn’t going to win me over. WC4 is one of the most fun games I’ve played and hardly set a foot wrong in my eyes.  It was possibly the only Interactive Movie that ever deserved the title. There is no way the book is going to be able to compete but I gave it a go anyway in the hope that it would at least get somewhere near.

I’ve read the first part of this before actually as it came with the WC4 documentation. This is one of the better sections with a lot of extra background detail. As before, I’m not going to spell out the plot since I’ve done it once before when blogging the game but I’ll list some of the differences:-

  • Blair is less of a heroic figure in this (just as he was in the last novel). For instance, in the bar scene right at the start Seether would have killed him if Maniac hadn’t come to the rescue. He is more of a hero than in Heart Of The Tiger but he does have to work his way back into the role after 2 years of farming.
  • Vagabond is resurrected and briefly resumes the role he had in WC4 despite being killed off in the last novel. After breaking continuity for his reintroduction, he then never appears again.
  • When Paulson comes aboard he immediately relieves Eisen so he can face security charges. The hidden agenda within Confed was a lot more hidden in the game. Right from the start the ship is all but divided in two with part of the ship being run by some sort of Special Ops teams who don’t even answer to Eisen.
  • Eisen doesn’t enlist the help of Maniac to escape but instead it’s Maniac and Blair that get sent out to stop him (with lethal force). Maniac defects at this point but Blair goes back to Confed, despite stopping the attack on Eisen’s shuttle. Blair defects during his next mission when Seether and his buddies start taking out surrendered craft. Vagabond and Catscratch don’t defect and barely appear in the book at all.
  • When Eisen leaves the ship, Blair takes over as Captain and loses combat status so it’s Maniac that ends up in charge of the squadron. This isn’t a bad idea as it means the book can concentrate on the overall story for a while and have a few less combat scenes. Maniac matures somewhat into the role, and there is a gradual shift in attitude between him and Blair rather than the immediate change we saw in WC4. Blair starts flying missions again when Wilford turns up in person to command himself.
  • With no Catscratch, Sosa becomes a new love interest for Blair despite being half his age. There isn’t a lot on this in the book and he looks to have blown it until the books final few paragraphs.
  • The story is seriously compressed down in the second half. The missions to capture the capship with the Dragon fighters, raid the shipyards and go down to Telemont are all squashed together so that the first two happen simultaneously and the latter is just done over a video relay after the mission.
  • The advanced technology in the Dragon is based on Kilrathi technology that was under development at the end of the war.
  • Rather than the Intrepid chasing the Vesuvius to Earth, we have the opposite as the Vesuvius tries to catch up. The battle is similar except that the fight with Seether takes place at this time and involves Maniac as well. Blair wins by using Seethers own trick of riding a mine’s shockwave.
  • Blair doesn’t burst into the senate but is shown in by Eisen and Taggart. Taggart is apparently allowed to launch his own private investigations and calls Blair as a witness. The rest of the book matches the game until the very end. Both Blair and Maniac get promotions. Maniac gets his own light carrier and Blair gets put in charge of overseeing Confed’s forces in the border worlds.

This wasn’t a bad attempt but just as I thought before I started, it was no competition for the game. I didn’t feel that the changes to the plot improved things on the whole, but my main complaint was the amount of combat. This just isn’t all that entertaining in a book and after 4 previous WC novels I do feel like I’ve been there before. Combined with a plot I already know inside out, it didn’t make for the most entertaining of the series. There was still enough extra content in here for it to be possibly be worth reading for anyone who enjoyed WC4, but I’m glad that the remaining books in the series aren’t based around the games.

Wing Commander – Heart Of The Tiger

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This is the fourth in the lengthy series of Wing Commander novels and was published in 1995 by Baen. It’s written by Forstchen once again but also co-authored by Andrew Keith. I was glad on the whole to see the novels return to the games, as that is after all primarily what I’m interested in. The story on Wing Commander 3 was well told but it could certainly stand a little padding which is what I was looking for in this novel.

This is the first novel to feature Blair. A character called Blair got a brief mention in Freedom Flight but this is the first definite mention of the person you play in the games. To answer a question I asked at the end of the last novel, the book does pick up immediately from where the last one left off. The Concordia was destroyed in the defence of Earth leading to Blair’s transfer to the Victory. Blair was apparently out of action for 6 months at the time of the defense which is why he survived. The game’s story flows fairly naturally from the end of the previous novel actually. Whether this is by accident or design I’m not sure, but the huge losses at the end of the last book would explain the downbeat and world-weary attitudes shown in WC3.

The novel follows the book extremely closely, right down to using word for word dialog a lot of the time so I won’t go into too much detail on the plot except to point out a few differences. Flash isn’t a test pilot in this but a home defence pilot transferred to the Victory. He doesn’t play much of a role here and is killed off fairly quickly.

Regarding Hobbes and his mutiny, right from the start of the book we know that there are orders for the Kilrathi not to attack him so it’s not much of a surprise. We do at least get the explanation in the book about the Kilrathi implanting him with a second personality which was removed once he heard the code phrase “Heart Of The Tiger”. In the book, Blair gets to go and kill him straight after he murders Cobra without any consequences. There was the famously cut scene in WC3 of Hobbes explanation and the game could have done with this sort of explanation.

There is no rescuing of Severin to build the Temblor bomb here and it is already complete when the Behemoth is destroyed. Vagabond, Flint and Maniac come along for the final mission and all die before the end (with the possible exception of Maniac who may have ejected). Maniac actually sacrifices himself weakening Thrakaths fighter enough for Blair to finish him off and drop the bomb. This fight takes place on the planet rather than in space. Vagabond being bumped off could be awkward in the next book, but it wouldn’t be too hard to simply replace his character with someone else.

Finally during the surrender, the Kilrathi mention that another greater race will take the opportunity to attack after their surrender making their only chance now to ally with Earth. This race was refered to in the last book also, as pulling out of a conflict with the Kilrathi when yet another lot of aliens attacked them. It’s interesting anyway and could maybe feed into the Prophecy plot. There are a few books left yet so I expect I will find out more.

This was possibly the strongest of the books so far, thanks to being able to base itself around the WC3 plot. The characters were stronger in this than the previous novel though and it was a definite improvement. It was the longest in the series but it still compressed the games story down which gives an idea just how much was packed into WC3. I wouldn’t say the writing felt rushed (apart from the ending), but it didn’t hang around either.

It certainly wasn’t an upbeat read, but then the game was positively gloomy also. This takes it further and basically everything goes wrong, near enough everyone dies and the Temblor bomb is a last desperate suicide run. I might not agree with the methods but you can see where Tolwyn was coming from in the next game/book when he said that the victory against the Kilrathi was a fluke.

My biggest problem with this book would be my familiarity with the game as I obviously knew where the story was going. I expected the book to fill in details and it did this to some extent but it missed as much out as it added. This may be the better novel but I enjoyed the first two in the series more thanks to their original storylines. This book possibly added a little to the game but if you gave me a choice between the two, the game is going to win every time.

Quest For Clues 3

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I’ve made a start on the next Wing Commander book which I should finish tomorrow, but in the meanwhile here is another Quest for Clues. This is number 3, it was published in  1990 by Origin and as ever it’s a collection of solutions for various games following the same format as the first two books.

There are quite a few Origin titles included here which didn’t get their own clue books such as Space Rogue and Windwalker, along with a selection of many of the better games of the period. I used this book to help me out with Knights Of Legend although it didn’t get me through the game half as quickly as I would have liked from what I remember.

My copy is signed on the inside page by Shay Addams which is a nice extra. I can’t imagine it makes much difference to the value but it makes it worth more to me at least. Other than that, there isn’t much to say as it’s more of the same. I notice that each solution is tending to take up a few more pages than in earlier books as the games get larger and more complex. There is a brief introduction which talks about the changes in gaming in the early 90’s but it isn’t hugely interesting so I’ve refrained from scanning it in.

The fact is I’m not going to have a lot to write about any of these QFC books and should probably have done all 6 in one post. I’ve started now so I’ll stick with it though. As with any of these, if you are interested in any particular solution drop me a line and I’ll scan it in.