I’ve been wanting to play this all week and I’d probably have got around to this last episode sooner but I’ve been messing around installing a RAID-array of hard disks, then reinstalling XP, then Windows 7 this week which has eaten into my time and then some. It’s all working now, apart from some slightly dodgy Win 7 sound drivers anyway.

Mission 1 is a two part mission and this is going to be a bit of a theme for this final episode. First I have to escort a load of fighters (being flown by techs) back to the Firekka, then I have to go and inspect a Kilrathi fleet. It sounds innocuous but on the winning path I’ve played this mission is the hardest in the game by a mile.

I fly to meet the Rapiers without incident. There is a nice big space station here and I guess the Kilrathi know better than to attack but on the way back we are ambushed first by a load of Salthi and then by some Drakhai in some fancy new ship. Trying to keep the tech’s (or even my own wingmen) alive here is a nightmare.

The Drakhai ship’s are extremely tough in the fighter I’m in and taking them out without using a missile is near enough impossible as my guns just don’t seem to hurt them all that much before running out of power. I manage to get back only losing a couple of the tech’s (eventually) which seems to be enough to complete this goal.

The second part of the mission is bound to be easy after that….. I suppose it’s easier than the first part but it’s still a nightmare. I have to fly into the middle of the Kilrathi fleet and inspect a ship. That doesn’t sound too hard except the inspection takes about a minute all of which time I have to stay within 5000m of the ship whilst being turreted + having a load of fighters come after me. I just about manage to survive after a few attempts and do my best to afterburn away with the little fuel I have left. I swear that the autopilot light comes on half a second after my afterburners give out. I’m not sure if this was by luck or designed into the mission but I don’t hang around to ask questions.

This mission was the Wing Commander equivalent of I Wanna Be The Guy. If this was the first mission it begs the question how hard it’s going to get but I’m glad to say it gets easier, maybe not much but enough.

Next mission, it’s straight back out there to take out some of these capships. This time I’m flying a Crossbow and it makes all the difference, although this mission is more about taking out capships than fighters. There are a lot of ships to take out but I complete this mission first attempt without any drama.

When I get back one of our support ships isn’t looking too clever which makes the next mission a little harder.

We have to scramble again to meet a load of incoming fighters and bombers. This mission is another tough one but this time it’s more about figuring out the strategy. I have to concentrate on bombers (which probably goes without saying). The biggest Jalkehi ships are trying to take out the Firekka and since this can take some punishment I have to leave them till last and instead go for the Gothri’s then the Grikhath’s which are aiming for the more vulnerable support ships.

The first time I follow this strategy, I complete the mission without losing any of our fleet.

There is another cutscene of me talking to my log and sounding confused about my feelings for Sparrow…

That doesn’t last long and then I’m given another tricky mission. This is an interesting one. We have to go after a Kilrathi carrier but we only have 3 Broadswords to escort + my small fighter wing. We are being joined by a load of civilian pilots who will act as cannon fodder for the operation.

They weren’t kidding about the civilians being cannon fodder and they get blown up in large numbers. They all have there own little speeches when they go. The only trick to this mission is to take out the fighters quickly enough that the bombers can get their job done. It’s tough and takes a few attempts.

When I get back, I’m out of missiles + most of my fuel but get sent off on more work without landing.

The Concordia has been damaged and can’t launch fighters so we have to go and help. I’m in no shape for this. I help out in the fight but after I run out of fuel I hang back and let the rest of the fighters clear up. This strategy works ok once I figure it out. In the middle of the battle the Concordia uses it’s main guns to take out the Fralthi so we don’t have to worry about anything except the fighters.

Our last strike was just a diversion. Now we are to proceed with the real plan. The marines are going to plant mines inside the enemy capships and we have to escort them.

The plan has to be put on hold as a wing of Kilrathi attacks the Firekka and we scramble our fighters.

The Firekka doesn’t seem to be in any real danger in this mission. The only real challenge is staying alive until the support arrives from the Lexington. My old strategy of hanging around the capships works well here.

At the end of the mission we get to keep the fighters from the Lexington + I get to rearm. Actually landing to rearm is a pleasant surprise as I’m expecting to have to go straight back into the fight.

I get straight back out after landing and fly out to meet the predictably huge fleet of Kilrathi. The marines have already taken out some of the ships. I have to attempt to escort the second wave in.

There may be some good tactics for this. I try a few things but in the end I just resort to killing the nearest ship as quick as I can over and over. There is no way to keep all the marines alive but I manage to get about 2/3 of them there safely. They make very short work of all of the ships when they get there but I’ve got plenty of fighters to keep me busy in the meanwhile.

I afterburn out after the mission. I’m expecting this to be the last one but there is still more to come.

I have an email telling me that my jump drive has been swapped for extra fuel. Since I’ve not used my jump drive in the whole game so far, I wish someone had thought of it sooner.

There is a video cutscene to introduce this final mission. Basically we just have to blow up as many Kilrathi capships as we can, especially their final super-carrier.

There is a huge wing for this mission and we will be meeting up with even more pilots from the Concordia. We have to face a wing of bombers on their way to Firekka on the way out but this many of us make light work of them.

The Kilrathi fleet is bigger than ever and they are joined by Prince Thrakhath who I get to fight. He comes straight for me so I can’t just ignore him and leave him to the others which is my usual strategy with the ace’s in this game. He’s quick but not too difficult and I get him with a dumbfire at short range.

After this I attempt to concentrate on the super carrier. I don’t have that many torpedoes but I use what I have to take out it’s engines and the rest of our fighters finish off everything else. It’s actually a fairly easy mission and I finish it on my first go destroying everything in sight.

The fleet is waiting for our return. Why they didn’t join us in the battle I don’t know…..

After completing every part of the last mission, I’m expecting the good ending.

The final cutscene shows me congratulating the crew, the Commodore gives us a couple of days off before we go on the counterattack and I give Sparrow the brush off to end the game. It’s a slightly downbeat ending considering, I’m assuming this is as upbeat as it gets and I’ve not got the middling ending.

This final episode has thrown a lot of capships at me, and mission after mission was packed with more ships than ever seen before in a Wing Commander game. The variety in mission design was kept up to some extent although destroying the huge groups of capships would have started to get old if there had been another episode. I liked the mission with the civilian pilots especially and the ending battle was suitably large. It felt like the real battle was escorting the marines the mission before and the final mission was just hammering home our advantage as we destroyed everything in sight.

The storyline didn’t really go anywhere in particular in the end and it finished on something of an anti-climax. I’m not saying it was badly done, there just wasn’t a lot to it. It reminded me a bit of the Wings of Glory or Pacific Strike games where it was very secondary to the action. For a fan game, I think this was the right decision. They could never take on WC4’s movies but the story we got helped to keep the game interesting. The movies that we did have were very well done with some decent voice acting. The worst acting was probably the main character which is a bit unfortunate but it wasn’t so bad as to be a problem.

I’m nitpicking here as usual. This game is good enough that you forget it’s been made by a load of WC fans when you are playing it. It’s more along the lines of playing a game that’s a few years old (which is still newer than most of the stuff I play). Any Wing Commander or space shooter fan should give this a go. I hope we haven’t seen the last from the Standoff team but after 10 years I could forgive them if they retire from WC mods.

You’ll have to excuse the thumbnail sized screenshots in this post. I’ve been getting my PC set up for Windows 7, which included a reinstall of XP + Hypersnap. Unfortunately, it reset my image size to 200×200 when I swapped from crop to resize in the settings and I didn’t notice until I’d played through the game. It’s a pity as there are some impressive sights in this 4th episode but I don’t fancy replaying the whole thing again.

The episode starts out with us attempting to clear a path to attack the Kilrathi supercarriers. This means taking out some capships, a lot of capships. In fact the most even seen in one place in a Wing Commander game.

I just have to concentrate on fighters myself although I do have just enough torpedoes to take out the remaining capships after the cover is gone. There are a lot of floating husks when we are done.

Next we get to go after the carriers. I finally get the choice to fly a Crossbow and I’m not about to turn it down.

The cockpit has the familiar white bulges at the side that I remember from WC2.

It’s a decent ship which is just as well as we have to go against a supercarrier. This thing has god only knows how many engines to take out and seems to launch fighters indefinitely. I start out trying to take out the fighters but it doesn’t get me anywhere so I decide to concentrate on the engines instead. This isn’t too hard although it does take a while to fly around to get to them when I’m going around a ship this vast.

After the mission, I get a new landing sequence for the new bomber, this time at a different angle.

I’m struggling to remember details of the next mission in all honesty (thats why I need the screenshots) but I think it involved escorting a confed capship to the fleet. Sparrow and Spoons get sent off on another assignment early on anyway so we have to fly with reduced numbers but we do get helped out by the fighters already there. We win the battle but the capship has suffered too much damage and has to evacuate. The fighters are sent back with us to the Firekka.

When I get back I discover that Spoons was killed in the last mission.

We are called to scramble as I’m being told. No one wants me to fly the mission in my current mood although you would think a Wing Commander would have seen this a few times after years of fighting. I steal another fighter and fly out into the battle against everyones advice.

I have to defend the Firekka from a small attack then I’m eager for more work and despite the comm officer wanting me to return I head out to save another ship which is under attack but can’t launch fighters. This is actually the first mission in this game that I don’t complete on my first go but it’s still easy, I just have to go after the Grikhaths and ignore everything else to stop them taking out the capship. I realise this and complete the mission second time around.

Since my little stunt didn’t backfire, I get away with it but still have to hold Spoons funeral when I get back.

Now Spoons isn’t around to warn me off, the inevitable love interest provided by Sparrow comes to fruition…

We have been separated off from our fleet. For now we are going to attempt to rejoin with another nearby carrier. We get to see what the Kilrathi have done to one of this systems planets in the meanwhile. The mission is a straightforward one just taking out some fighters.

The final mission in this episode is a similar one where we have to escort both ships to the jump point where the rest of the fleet is waiting. This time we have corvette escort but we also come under attack from a silly number of Kamekh’s. I just go for the fighters and leave the corvettes to take care of each other. After the mission we meet up with the Concordia. I’m not so sure about the model for this, it looks a bit different than I remember but I don’t get a really good look at it from this distance.

In the most impressive cutscene so far (but you wouldn’t know it from my titchy screenshots) the start of the final chapter shows a little of the Kilrathi’s last assault on Sol and how much larger the force they have mustered this time.

This has been the most fun episode yet with lots of frantic action, a good bit of storyline and some interesting new ships thrown into the mix. It’s also been the easiest with me completing every mission first time except for the one escort mission which only took a few attempts. Despite it being relatively easy, I always felt challenged at the time and the storytelling and mission design were exceptionally well done. There have been some monumental battles in this, which begs the question just how large they are going to get in the final episode.

I’ve got a feeling that Lazarus will top it when I actually get around to playing it but this is by far the best fan made game I’ve ever played, and I’d have quite happily have paid a few quid for it. The old WCP engine has held up amazingly well with the enhancements they have managed to work in. I can’t wait to play the last chapter but its likely to be the weekend again before I get around to it.

I’m called straight into action with no briefing at the start of Episode 3. We have to help out another ship in the fleet while its fighters are out on patrol.

There are some new Kilrathi ships to fight in this mission, or at least new to WCP as they are familiar to anyone who played WC2. These Grikhaths have rear turrets which have always been the bane of my existence in Wing Commander games.

This first mission is relatively straightforward. Afterwards we escort the Verdun back with us.

Mission 2 has us chasing down some of the Kilrathi capships. There is a small fleet of them in the system including a Snakeir which hasn’t been located yet. We are meeting up with Concordia pilots for this which finally places the game in the WC timeline for me. They are flying Broadswords and the like which have been modelled up to the usual standards. I always liked the Broadsword in WC2 – fingers crossed I get to fly one in Standoff.

We have to take out a Ralatha to start the mission and then get word on the Snakeir and go after that as well. This is the trickiest mission in Standoff so far and takes me a few attempts. If I lose too many wingmen the mission is aborted which is a problem when taking out the Snakeir.

One of my pilots is steaming drunk when I get back – the action here is taking place over Xmas and he is missing his family. I thought people got drunk pretty often in Wing Commander games but my character doesn’t have much sympathy for him.

The third mission is a bit different. We have been ordered by Tolwyn to retreat but are mining the system as we go. I have to protect the mine laying ships at 3 nav points. This is another tough mission with all my wingmen getting blown up in seconds at the final nav point. I retry a couple of times and the final time the last nav point is really easy without me really doing anything different.

I can’t help but notice that the mines are as wide as the ships laying them so I don’t know how they manage to fit so many in. I can only think that they must be inflatable.

Some of my wingmen have been off helping a convoy in the meanwhile and have recovered some new fighters. It’s about time I got to fly some new ships.

Unfortunately these new ships still need assembling so I’m stuck with the usual suspects for now. For this next mission, I have to rescue two more capships that have missed the retreat. Rescuing the first of these is really tricky.

When I arrive at the nav point the ship is under heavy attack already. In fact it dies so quickly that I assume at first that I’m not supposed to be able to save it until I get a mission failed when I arrive back. If there is a key to this mission, it appears to be attacking the Grikhath heavy fighters rather than the lighter Dralthi which presumably don’t carry torpedoes. The problem is that there are more of them than I can possibly take on by myself and they are spread out over a large distance.

After enough attempts I luck out and attack the right ships. I escort it back then have to go and save another one. Thankfully, saving the second ship is easy.

Spoons has been moaning about flying with Squealer due to his defection to the pirates but Squealer wins him round by helping him out during a tight spot and he comes in to apologise at the end of the mission. He is still not happy about Sparrow though.

Episodes 4 starting scene shows the Kilrathi advancing toward Earth. We’ve been retreating but are now finally making our stand.

This episode took me quite a long time to play through. The difficulty level was more along the lines of WCUE but it was probably about right – it shouldn’t be too easy as an episode only came out once every year or so. I’m looking forward to flying some of the new ships in the next episode – I’ve been a bit surprised how few I’ve got to fly so far, although I’ve probably missed a few in the alternate missions.