It doesn’t say too much but here is a brief preview of Longbow 2 from the November 1997 PC Gamer:-
In unrelated news, my Wing Commander 4 trailer reel arrived back today having been converted to high definition digital and stuck on blu-ray. I can’t wait to see what this came out like but since I still have to go and pick it up I’m going to have to. I should be sharing the results on here in a couple of days.
I’ll spare the Internet any more of my decorating (for now) and instead have a scan of a Wing Commander Prophecy preview from Ultimate PC magazine in October 1997. The best part of this is all the pictures of game mockup screens and storyboards spread around the 2 pages:-
If you are wondering how those storyboards fit in with Prophecy, there was a mistake with the WCP press kit and some of the movie storyboards were thrown in instead.
I’ve not had time to play any more Freelancer so to tide over the baying legion of Origin fans, here is another review of Privateer 2 scanned from the February 1997 PC Home:-
It’s another great score for The Darkening. The reviewer has a point about trying to spot all the minor British actors in this game and figure out where you’ve seen them all before, I expect most of us over here would be guilty of that when playing this. I also like the description of Clive Owen given how his career went after this.
It seems that Chris Roberts can’t go anywhere these days without breaking servers. I was going join in his reddit AMA but it crashed about 30 seconds after I joined. Maybe Star Citizen is just too popular for its own good but it’s still not a bad bit of publicity and puts the trouble with the RSI site in context.
While I give it a chance to come back online, here’s a scan of a Privateer 2 review from the January 1997 PC Format:-
You may notice that while Wing Commander 4 got a rough ride for its copious use of FMV, massive budget and unoriginality, Privateer 2 gets universal praise despite being just as guilty in all departments. I’m sure the fact that it had a British cast has nothing to do with it…
I love both games of course although unlike the reviewer here, I’d regard the combat as one the weaker aspects. It definitely wasn’t the most expensive game ever made either, despite the line at the start, as Wing Commander 4 cost over twice as much. Privateer 2 was filmed before WC4 though (despite coming out later), so may have held the title at some point during production.
I scanned this in a couple of weeks back with the aim of posting it while I was away. That never happened but it’s finally making its way on here, a preview of Crusader No Regret from the November 1996 PC Format. It’s positive on the whole but takes the obligatory swipe at Wing Commander near the end:-
And from the same magazine a double-page Privateer 2 advert:-
