I don’t manage to get far with Lynch’s cousin before confed pick me up. In my usual style, I hit the afterburners and run away.

When I get back to Lynch he tells me to find an employee of his who would be able to find out information about the artifact at Oxford library.

Before I get there, Lynchs bouncers (who was suspiciously absent earlier) attempts to get the artifact for Lynch by force. I shoot him down but the mission turns out to be a fake. There is no one to pick up and when I go back to find Lynch he has done a runner as well.

The obvious thing to do is head for Oxford and try to research this thing myself.

Oxford is a university planet and a bit of a change from anything I’ve seen before. The ship dealer even has wood floors.

I can’t get into the library without being and endowment sponsor. However they agree for me to fly four missions on the cheap instead.

The first of these is an escort mission, to escort the author of a book the Brotherhood of Man consider heretical back to Oxford. This guy looks suspiciously like Salman Rushdie which is probably intentional.

As soon as I finish talking to him the retro’s attack in force. This is by far the largest number of ships I’ve had to take out but two missiles take care of every one.

Next mission is to destroy some data pirates. Again I have to take on about 7 or 8 ships on my own to win the mission. The dual missile launcher is invaluable again.

Its back to escort duty next in what is near enough a repeat of the first mission.

And the final mission of the four is another escort mission. They get progressively harder but there isn’t a huge variety in these missions. They don’t really feel like proper escort missions – the ship I’m looking after just stays where it is and I have to keep it alive. Afterwards I autopilot off and leave it behind.

I get the mission done anyway and get access to the library.

I select a terminal…

and scan my artifact.

This brings up a page from a book mentioning an archaeologist who can currently be found on Palon so that must be the next place to go.

There are a host of enemies on the way into the planet but I afterburn past and conveniently the doctor is waiting in the bar.

He wants leave the planet but first I have to break the blockade of ships outside. He sends me to the nearby refinery base to find out more.

Breaking back out of the blockade is a lot harder than getting in as the ships follow me all the way through an asteroid field to the base. In the bar there I run into Lynn who is organising the resistance to the blockade. She tells me this is all being caused by two rival firms, one of which has blocked the planet to get a competitive advantage.

My first mission is to destroy some reinforcements being sent to the blockade.

The next mission is pretty much the same, just with a much harder set of fighters to destroy. I have to take down a wing of Centurions in this mission.

After this we get to destroy the blockade itself. I get a bit of help for this mission and its quite a bit easier than its predecessor.

Back on Palan, the doctor get me to fly him to Basra in return for a bit of cash and information on the artifact.

Its less than a surprise, when as soon as we take off we are attacked by some Kilrathi who want to get there hands on the doctor. This is the hardest mission of the game so far but still only needs the one attempt.

On arrival at Basra, the doctor comes up with the goods and then some. He has a similar artifact which when combined with mine makes some sort of interstellar map. Unfortunately the location of the X is in an unexplored system so my next job will be to sign on with the mapping company on the frontier.

He also tells me about an alien race called the Steltek, more advanced than our own whos empire spanned the galaxy millenia ago. This artifiact is allegedly something to do with them and he expects me to find a colony at the X. If this could be the key to super-advanced technology it would explain why everyone wanted it so badly. He mentions a myth that the Stelrek now live out a quiet existance at the center of the galaxy – I know there are aliens around from the intro if nothing else so I guess this is probably correct.

The plot of this game is definitely proving more interesting than any of the Wing Commanders so far. It’s not exactly complex but it good enough to make me want to push on and find out where its going. I’m curious to see what I’ll find at the X as I really can’t remember anything about the plot from 15 years back.

I spent about 40 minutes building up my money then finally made the plunge to buy a Centurion. I couldn’t quite kit it out with everything but its good enough to get back to the plot missions.

The view is better than the other ships although still pretty restricted in all honesty – I can only assume this was done for performance reasons to speed the game up.

I complete the drugs run to Hector and get a snippet more info from Tayla who then sends me on another run to New Constantinople.

I get attacked by confed along the way but just afterburn to the jump and get out of there asap.

I have to fight through a wave of pirates on my way back every time but Tayla sets me up with an identical mission flying back to New Constantinople again. This time I get a secret compartment to hide the contraband.

When I take off some guy called Riordian takes offense to me for taking his job from Tayla and ends up attacking me. With my new ship this fight is no trouble.

There and back again and Tayla still doesn’t have anything to tell me except to send me to a guy called Roman Lynch back on New Constantinople where I’ve just been…. twice.

Nothing comes for free in this game and I now have to fly missions for Mr Lynch. The first one involves flying back to Pentonville again where I’ve just come from. Theres a whole sector to explore and these missions are sending me backwards and forwards between the same two places. I have to deliver a message to a man called Seelig that Mr Lynch is disappointed in him

Predictably enough he attacks after I give the message. Since hes only flying a Talon and hes on his own he doesn’t stand a chance and I fly back to give Lynch the news.

Lynch is running into obstacles researching the artifact and requires another mission as payment. This time running a shipment but at least its to a new system.

An englishman who I’ve heard one of the bartenders talking about tries to talk me into ejecting my cargo on the way. Lynch warned me about him already and it comes as no surprise when he attacks. This is a pretty tough fight in an asteroid field but my dual missile launchers help a lot here.

Lynch has a little information for me although I pretty much knew the artifact was alien already. In the meanwhile he gives me a nicely paying mission to escort a relative of his who is supposed to be appearing in a murder trial off world.

 Now that I’ve got a decent ship I feel like I’m really racing through all these missions. I’ve completed each one first time and they haven’t been too difficult at least so far. I’m hoping to see a bit more variety in some of these missions later in the game. It would be nice to get some escort missions or maybe work with some wingmen.

I’m slightly disappointed with the Centurion. Its main asset seems to be the ability to outrun anything so I can afterburn away from pretty much all the random encounters. The 4 gun mounts at the front are pretty nice though. I guess I wouldn’t want it to be too easy.

I’ve spent a good couple of hours on Privateer tonight but this will be a short post as I was pretty much just grinding away earning money. It took next to no time to get my ship up to a decent level where it was a definite improvement on before. I spent a bit longer just repeating similar missions in the Troy system then decided to try out a tip I saw on the web. 

The tip was that if you base yourself at the Padre base you can take bounty hunting missions which pay well and only have to traverse 6 nav points in the 2 systems to beat these missions due to the isolation and small size of the padre system and its neighbour. I fly off and sure enough the merchants guild has one of these missions paying a whopping 22000+.

I literally just have to take off, shoot down one ship and land to collect the money. I repeat this a bit and while I tend not to get quite so much cash each other time and have to fly through the nav points its still easy money.

Some of the ships in this system also drop cargo which never happened to me earlier. This tends not to be worth much but its easy enough to tractor in. I’ve got my ship nearly fully equipped now. I’m about 50000 short of a level 5 shield generator and that will pretty much finish this ship. I may upgrade the guns I’m using which are the 3rd most expensive also depending upon how much power I’m left with when I get the shield generator. Its so easy making money in this system I’ll probably stick around until I’ve got a fully equipped Centurion and then pick up the plot again.

Before I get onto Privateer, a random bit of news. I picked up a Metro newspaper on the train into work this morning and was more than a bit surprised to see a picture of Richard Garriot on the front page. It had passed me by completely but he is one of the first lot of space tourists and just blasted off the other day. As a token Brit (he was born over here in England) he’s taken a copy of the Metro making it the first newspaper in space. He will be carrying out a few simple experiments that school children designed as part of a competition in the paper. There isn’t much scientific basis for these but there will no doubt be videos of him attempting to skip in space and the like on the Metro website in the next few days. 

Back to Privateer. This is a game, I’ve played through just the one time years back and I hacked my save game to give myself enough money to get the best equipment from the start. I wasn’t hugely impressed at the time but the fact was my PC didn’t have enough grunt to run it making it very difficult to play. Despite being based on the Wing Commander engine it required a much more powerful machine and although I met (exactly) the minimum requirements on the box it wasn’t really playable.

This was the last series to be based on the Wing Commander engine before Origin made the transition to full 3D for its flight sims. It came with an optional speech pack and was not a cheap game in the first place as I remember. Its a game I’ve been quite looking forward to playing as I’ve never given it a fair chance before now and have heard a lot of positive things about it.

The introduction shows me being attacked by 3 pirates, fighting them off and accidentally shooting some strange looking spaceship with green glowing bits with a stray missile which powers up after I’ve gone.

Its a great sequence, (apart from the usual level of voice acting) and it sets the scene for the games storyline nicely. The manual gives a bit more background on your character which to be extremely brief tells how you inherit a spaceship, lose your existing career on a merchant vessel when it is damaged beyond repair and get forced into the life of a Privateer. In the best traditions of an Origin RPG you aren’t really given any information on the game and have to figure things out yourself on the way. 

The game starts with my inheritted ship sitting on the spacepad. From here I can explore the space station in Wing Commander style.

There is a bar and a bartender to talk to. I guess the bartenders will give general clues about where to go and what stocks to take where, etc..

This base has a ship dealer and I will be spending a lot of time customising and repairing my ship here. Pretty much everything you can think of is upgradable and there really are a huge number of choices. I will need some money first though.

The mission computer in the hall provides me with a choice of 6 randomly generated missions. These follow the usual formulas. Patrol nav points, defend a station, track down and destroy a certain ship, fly cargo etc.

I pick a mission and take off. The first thing of note is that I can hardly see anything. I’m not sure if this is a performance thing or if it will get better with newer ships. The graphics are quite a bit nicer than Wing Commander though.

Space stations in particular look awesome and the textures are high-res enough that they just keep looking better the closer you get.

Combat is quite tricky. It seems to be much more picky about you getting an exact hit than Wing Commander was and some of these ships are quite thin. It makes missiles a lot more useful.

The whole system of the game is open to me from the start (at least once I buy a jump drive) with loads of bases and planets to explore. Jump points here are big blue clouds which you have to be inside to jump to the appropriate system.

Once I’ve done a few missions I look into joining the mercenaries guild.

After a brief chat, I pay my 5000 credits to join up. This gives me harder higher paying missions to take on.

I don’t attempt to jump out to another system for quite a while but stick with the troy system I start in. It has 2 mining stations + an agricultural planet. The graphics and sound are all completely different when landing on a planet which is a nice touch.

After about 20-30 missions, I have a look at buying a better ship. I can afford it but don’t have enough left to kit it out with any decent equipment so I load up a save game and stick with what I’ve got. I decide to try to pick up the games plot instead which I gather starts in the New Detroit system.

This means jumping out of system for the first time.

I stop off at a pleasure planet along the way. Once again its a completely new set of graphics and sound.

I make it to New Detroit, which on landing has a sort of Blade Runner feel to it

In the bar is a man called Sandoval who gives me my first plot mission.

Its a simple cargo delivery mission. As collateral he gives me some sort of alien artifact which is blatantly a hot item he doesn’t want to keep hold of.

The mission is nice and simple. I fly to Newcastle, land and come back without incident.

When I get back Sandoval has gone and Tayla is in his place.

I don’t get my payment from Sandoval and I’m stuck with this alien artifact which the police apparently want to get their hands on as well. Tayla claims to have more info but wants me to fly 4 missions before she will tell me. The first of these is to take some plastics to a pirate base.

On the way out I run into my first Confed ships. There is no way I’m in a position to take on a Broadsword so I don’t want to make these guys angry.

I get to the base and get the next job of drug smuggling to Hector. I attempt this mission but my ship just isn’t up to it by a long way. I gather I can come back and retry the mission later so I fly off to upgrade my ship at this point.

My new ship has a slightly better view (still small), is a bit quicker and better armoured but I can only carry one missle rack as far as I know. I can certainly only afford one. My favorite strategy so far has been to use heatseekers fired in pairs (not possible in earlier Wing Commanders) to strike the same point in an enemy simultaneously and destroy it in one go. This has been working well but I’m now back to using lasers most of the time.

I’ve not really got very far yet but have spent some considerable time on this game already. My initial impressions were very positive, the presentation of the game all round is just awesome. This is another game that uses general midi instead of MT-32 – I didn’t think much of the music on an AWE32 originally but here on a real sound canvas it is just superb and possibly the best score of any Origin game to date. Its not music you would sit down and listen to but is ambient and just fits with the environments perfectly. The graphics are equally impressive and the varied environments give some real incentive to just explore the sector. The Wing Commander engine has been enhanced almost beyond recognition here. The higher resolution ships look great, especially the bases but beyond that everything moves much more smoothly. In Wing Commander the game tended to run faster and faster with a quicker PC, this just runs smoother. With the large number of angles for each ship the game looks good enough that you really don’t miss 3D graphics at all.

The options for upgrading my ship are extremely complex and I will need to amass a lot of money to get the best ship. I was hoping to follow along the plot missions making money along the way but this seems to be a non starter. I’ll confess to losing a bit of interest around the time I upgraded to the 2nd ship. I was expecting an improvement but the fact is I was better off in my old ship. This is despite having around 130000 credits saved over and above the well equipped ship I already had to fit it with some nice stuff. It will no doubt be better than my first ship when I’ve upgraded it more still but in the meanwhile I’m limited to flying essentially the same missions over and over again to get the money for new parts. If I try to take on anything else I usually run into trouble. I would estimate I’m about 500,000 – 700,000 credits away from fully fitting out the ship I’m in although I’m sure I’ll be able to try some different missions and/or pick up the plot again long before that point. Despite my minor complaints, I’m completely hooked on this game and if I didn’t have to work I would probably have spent all of today on it.