I managed to finish this game off on Sunday in one of the longest gaming sessions of this entire blog. I then had it all written up and ready to cut and paste onto the site and managed to lose it and am having to write the whole lot a second time. This hasn’t put me in the best mood so this post is probably going to be a bit more negative than it was the first time around.

The first mission was going after an alien communications facility. I have to blow up some nodes on it using torpedoes.

Maniac has lost more wingmen while he was out. I resume my ships counselor role and cheer him up a bit.

With the communication center down, the bugs can’t get messages back to their fleet any more. We need to stop them from escaping and warning anyone about us so its another seek and destroy mission next. We can’t let a single ship escape.

This mission was the hardest in the game by a mile for me. The only 2 ships trying to escape are a couple of transports which aren’t tough in themselves but I can’t damage them without torpedoes and am relying on the bombers I’m escorting. They have a nasty habit of getting themselves blown up though. The numbers of enemy on this mission is huge and I run out of afterburners before the end – the only mission where this happens. After several attempts I just scrape through it.

I’m rewarded for my efforts by being recommended for the medal of honour.

We’ve got some intel on a bug ship killer which is a giant plasma weapon which can destroy a whole fleet in one shot.

One of these is in dry dock being repaired and we are going to go and capture it.

The graphics for these cap ships are really nice. At a distance like this its easy to forget you are playing a 13 year old game.

Partway through the mission the ship powers up and starts to leave its dock. I have to take out its engines quickly to stop it shooting the Midway.

Maniac has resigned as squadron commander in favour of the “carefree life” of a wing commander.

I collect my medal in the meanwhile.

And also a promotion to the newly formed Wolf Pack squadron (along with all my other buddies).

Elsewhere the bug gate is finished…..

… and something very big comes through it.

On the bright side we do have a new plasma weapon ourselves.

We have some intel on this bug dreadnought and also on the gate itself. The gate has 7 cooling towers which dissipate the heat produced keeping the thing open.

I get a choice of ship for the next mission – I have to choose before I know what the mission is. I’ll be in these two ships now for all but one of the remaining missions and they are the two best in the game. The Vampire is a superb fighter which is the fastest ship in the game but also has great firepower. The Devastator is arguably the slowest ship ever seen in a Wing Commander, rivalling the Broadsword from WC2. It has load of turrets which helps but its major redeeming feature is its giant plasma gun – this is strong enough to punch through capship shields and work like a torpedo and it will take out most fighters in a single shot. The recharge rate is slow but its still a devastating weapon.

I choose the Vampire and get to fly support in the mission which is to try to clear the path to the Kilrah jump point.

There are plenty of capships and bug fighters but our new ships are far better than any we have flown before and its not too difficult.

Next mission is clearing out mines but I can’t say I ever saw any myself. I just killed all the fighters and got a mission complete.

Next mission is clearing another nav point. We are starting to incorporate alien technology into our weapons now and have some advanced missiles for this mission.

I get my first good look at the Midways new plasma weapon.

Partway into my mission I get a call to go and investigate another ship killer we have detected.

Its unguarded but with no torpedos all I can do is look at it for intel

Next mission is to go out and destroy it. I’ve got new shield technology for this mission.

This is my first time in a Devastator. It’s a very nice ship as long as a quick alien doesn’t lock onto me as I’m so slow to turn it can be impossible to get it in my sights.

We are clearing out the jump to Kilrah next so its time to finally use our plasma weapon. The snag is we need to drop a priming device on a transport in the middle of the fleet first.

I have to take out the fighters first to have a chance at this mission. The priming device take just about forever to lock on so I can’t just nip in and fire it off. I’m in a Devastator and could just as easily take the capships out myself at this point but I stick to the plot.

The fleet is pulverised and I arrive back to celebrations.

These celebrations are dampened a bit when the Captain shows up and tells us that we won’t be able to use the weapon again as there is a 2/3 chance it will overload. We will have to do things the old fashioned way.

Blair is trying to talk the CAG into letting him fly but she isn’t having it. He doesn’t rate himself as a staff officer and wants to do his bit.

Capships are still coming through the gate so we have more to kill in the next mission.

The ruins of Kilrah can be seen in the backdrop in space now which is a nice touch.

After this mission we get a scramble to protect to Midway from attack. I’m back flying a wasp but they are nice ships so I don’t mind too much. I have to take out 4 capship missiles before they hit the Midway which is easy enough. I then have to take out all the bombers which isn’t so easy. There are loads of trebled up skates attacking – I just have to shoot them enough to split them up so they can’t fire torpedoes. I manage to get them quickly enough on my second attempt.

Next we are attacking more capships for a change.

Kilrah is getting nearer all the time.

For the next mission, we are attacking yet another capship for a change. This time its the giant dreadnought we saw coming through the gate in an earlier cutscene.

At Blairs suggestion the Midway fires training missiles to draw off the fighters. I’m only in a Vampire for this mission so I can’t actually destroy the ship. I just have to take out the turrets. I could just as easily be blowing the thing up if they had put me in a Devastator but I get on with the task. It’s surprisingly easy and I just fly around the ship at point blank range taking one turret after another. The ships seem to leave me alone.

When I get back, its straight back out again to finish it off with bombers. I don’t even get to save my game. This is a bit trickier than part one thanks to a Devil Ray which latches onto me right at the start and blows me up pretty quickly. I’m wise to it second time around but I have to replay both missions again. With that out of the way, the plasma gun chews through the engines and bridge of the dreadnought in no time.

That gets me to the final mission of the game.

We are seriously close to Kilrah now and it fills the whole screen.

The gate looks suitably impressive. The plan here is for Dekker to land at a tower, then in two teams work both ways around the ring taking down the shields at each tower.

I have to fight off wave after wave of fighters in the meanwhile. He gets the first set of shields down quickly.

The tower blows up with a single shot, then its back to killing off fighters.

This carries on for a while but he gets stuck before the final tower.

Back on the Midway, Blair sees the situation and gets to play the hero one more time as he sets off to the final tower to drop the shields himself.

I get to refuel in the meanwhile. This is really contrived. We kill off the last of the aliens, then autopilot away to refuel, then come back and they are arriving in endless waves just like before.

Blair goes in and gets the shields down. I’ve killed off dozens of fighters in this mission but its been surprisingly easy and I’ve never been in danger of being killed. Blair tells me to go in and blow up the last tower but someone must beat me to it as the end cutscene starts before I’ve done anything.

Blair is poking around on the gate still and has a close encounter with one of the bugs. It jumps him from above and thats the last we know for now as the gate collapses. The tower is shown still in one piece as the gate blows up so it was definitely being left open to bring him back. Since we never got the sequels though, this is how Blairs story ends – being squashed under a giant cockroach. This is pretty unsatisfying and he hasn’t been treated well in this game in general – I didn’t get this guy through 4 games just to have him end up like this. Still it could be worse, if you want to see Mark Hamill meet an even worse fate, try watching the film Guyver (as if being in that film wasn’t bad enough on its own).

Casey isn’t joining in the celebrations, partly because of Blair and partly because he knows the bugs will be back.

The end credits have some rubbish music playing over them which reminds me a bit of U9 but at least the engine is being shown to good effect on the other side of the screen as a battle plays out.

This is a game that I’ve gone off the more that I’ve played. The engine and alien design are both superb but other aspects of the game are not. The gameplay got repetitive before the end and there wasn’t enough there to keep it fresh. WC4 managed to keep the mission variety up far better and despite the new engine this is actually a simpler game than its predecessor. The branching movies have gone, the planet missions have gone, there are no capships on our side other than the Midway, I can’t choose my ship, loadout or wingmen any more, cloaking ships don’t exist anymore, etc.. There is enough there for the game to be great at the start but it doesn’t change a whole lot. Sure we get some new capships to blow up but these all play the same and none of them are a serious threat – they are more there to look pretty.

Its the general storyline that bothers me most of all. The missions are good enough that a great storyline would carry the game but there just wasn’t very much to it and especially on the final CD there was little plot FMV and it felt like the game wasn’t quite finished or that corners were being cut. A lot of the FMV was like watching a soap opera, in that nothing much happens except a lot of people not getting on very well. You could skip a load of it and pick it up again and have no problems figuring out what was going on. I didn’t like the way some of the long standing characters were treated and the new characters were not especially interesting either. Maestro struck me as really annoying which isn’t a good trait in someone who is supposed to be my best buddy. Finally, the ending is completely unsatisfying – I really hope that Secret Ops offers some resolution but I don’t expect it will.

I’ve come full circle in the course of playing this game and I’m pretty much back to the opinion I had of it before I started. It’s good fun for a while but I’d prefer to think of the series ending with WC4 as it just provides a much better resolution. It’s still a shame we didn’t get the sequels, for all that. The potential was definitely there and this game was consciously being used to set the scene for the games to come. On its own, this is probably my least favourite of any of the main Wing Commander series but it could easily have been the beginnings of a decent trilogy if things had worked out differently.

Next: Wing Commander – Secret Ops.

I managed to get in a good few hours today and made it to the end of CD #2. There are just the 3 CD’s in this game so I guess I’m nearing the climax. I’ve ended up abandoning the DVD movies as I’ve been struggling to get the screenshot capture program to behave when capturing these and its just been a whole load easier to revert back to the original movies. The quality of these is pretty good actually so its not a big loss.

For the first mission we are going up against some cap ships for the first time. I’m supposed to take out the turrets while some bombers kill the ships themselves.

There’s some new ships again on this mission. Squids aren’t particularly interesting except that they fold their arms in when they afterburn away.

This barracuda is a sort of mini cap ship. It doesn’t deal out much punishment but it takes a lot of killing to say the least.

The new capships look good and very alien. They don’t turn into a husk any more when they blow up but just sit there with explosions coming off them all the time.

Zero isn’t too happy when I get back so I get to cheer him up next. He tells me about his father and how he was in intel studying the Kilrathi for 20 years and I tell him about always having to try to live up to Iceman even though he died when I was a kid.

Next mission is a straight defend the midway.

We are in Wasps which are special defense ships. They have a disposable booster which you can use at the start of the mission to rocket into the battle. There is yet another new ship to fight in this mission – a manta. This has lots of little ships swarming around it which break off when you destroy the main one.

The cruiser is a fair size to say the least.

I attempt to work on its defenses while bombers take it out.

When I get back I’m told that Dallas didn’t survive the battle.

Maniac is bragging when he gets into the bar and not exactly sympathetic about the 3 people who died in that last battle. I end up having a go at him and get stuck in the brig for it but Blair talks the CAG into letting me out.

We’re in a new system now as we want to repair the comm relay and send a warning back to Confed ab0ut whats going on out here.

Blair volunteers to be my wingman for this mission.



Dekker and his guys dock at the station and he says Blair should come and see the place as well so I’m left on my own. The place looks like a slaughterhouse.

This wasn’t a good idea as Blair is abducted and the ship that got him jumps off straight away.

I fight off the attack but Blair is lost and I land at the comm station.

Dekker gives me my next mission – a straight defense while he brings the station back online.

The biggest problem with this defense is this Devil Ray which is really tough. Support arrives from the Midway after a couple of minutes though.

The CAG promotes me and I’m also transferred to Black Widow squadron.

I’m not the only one to be transferred and their is a bit of a party going on. Maniac isn’t too happy about never getting the girl…..

In this mission I have to find a jammer in the middle of some asteroids.

There is a new type of ship to fight where 3 stingrays treble up. You really don’t want to be infront of this as it just rips your shields out in 1 hit.

The asteroid field is full of strange devices and I have to scan them all to find the jammer. If I do the sensible thing and kill off the fighters first I fail the mission every time. I have to scan them before and let Stiletto handle the fighters otherwise I get called back to the Midway before I get anywhere.

About this point I start struggling to capture the FMV. One of Maniacs wingmen has ejected and he has been ordered not to go out and get them. I volunteer to go myself.

The CAG isn’t too happy about this but allows it.

It’s an easy mission anyway. The only tricky thing is another of those Devil Rays that I have to break off and attack when it shows or it scoops up the pilot.

Next mission is a straight patrol.

I’m called back to defend the Midway shortly after starting but its not really in too much trouble. I’m getting a lot more routine missions like this in WCP than WC4. There are probably more missions in total but they are usually short and quick and I’m starting to have trouble telling them apart.


We are going to take out a carrier and are getting support from rebel Kilrathi which Hawk does not appear pleased about.

The Kilrathi are useful allies for all that and I wouldn’t like to try this mission without them.

I’m struggling to sleep by this point and having nightmares about what might be happening to Blair. Hawk gives me some glib advice that my father once gave him.

It’s more flying with the Kilrathi next. Hawk tells me about how they butchered my father but it wasn’t reported to spare the family. He is trying to prove to me that we shouldn’t be flying with them.

He’s turned off our flight recorders and wants me to kill off the Kilrathi myself but I refuse.

He’s not happy about this when I get back.

My flight stats are ruined also.

We have a not so friendly chat about it in the bar but I talk him around. I’m sure Blair already did this back in WC4.

Finlay is in the briefing room working on the jamming device we found and has pulled out a couple of messages including a load of tissue samples which may be human.

Another escort mission and another new ship – the Lamprey. These are a strange addition as they appear to be weaker than ships that were added earlier and are extremely easy to hit. They have a nice laser style weapon which fires in circles like smoke rings.

Hawk doesn’t make it back from this mission. One of his buddies is clearing out his locker and tells me how Hawk’s homeworld was destroyed by the Kilrathi when he was at the academy which is why he ended up the way he did.



This is another routine, fly out to a nav point and kill things type mission.

Next up we are sending Dekker in to recapture the Dula 7 station.

The reactor isn’t in good shape and it blows up when we leave but he rescues a prisoner in the meanwhile.

I’m told I’m getting a medal for my efforts and also that the prisoner was Blair.

He’s not in great shape but at least he’s alive. He says they forced him to relive old memories that he’d wanted to forget.

Theres a big congratulations for me after the next mission although it doesn’t feel all that different to any others I’ve flown.

We then leave for the G’Mar system.

I think I can see now why I was let down by this game. In the movie sections, the writers are trying to empasise all the time how the new alien race is pure evil and its just overdone. I seem to spend half my time talking people around from depression and the storyline doesn’t really go anywhere. Its more like WC3 in that sense only worse.  The whole plot is limited to 4 sets also which can’t be a help. I don’t miss the branching video too much although this was a major part of the game in WC4 especially the endgame in the senate. It would have still been nice to see it again. In brief, this game has the worst movie sections of the FMV Wing Commanders but thats not to say they aren’t a lot bettter than most interactive movies (and still better than the Wing Commander movie)

The missions are also getting repetitive. It’s not that bad but they don’t have the variety of WC4.  There is a however a good variety of enemy and the super smooth engine makes for some frantic gameplay which doesn’t give me time to be bored. This really is a pure arcade game and the missions do start to feel like the next wave of enemies in a scrolling shoot-em-up. For all my minor gripes, this is still a nice game and better than I thought it was going to be. WC4 is one of my all time favourites and it just wasn’t going to be able to live up to it but this is still well worth playing and I’m more than a little interested to have a look at the Standoff mod that was made for it.

First mission today is clearing out some navpoints so that the Midway can get to a jump point.

I fly against a new and slightly bigger ship. They take a few more shots but are not much tougher than the first type. When I get back after the mission Rachel apologises for her attitude last time we met and we get along from here on out.

Next mission is another scramble to protect the Midway while it jumps.

The aliens have learned our language and give us not so cheery messages. After taking enough out the Midway reaches the jump point and I’m called back before it jumps out.

Dallas is still worrying about being shot at for some reason. I try to talk him around which appears to impress Stiletto.

Next mission is to fly a circular route out to some supply ships and escort them back to the Midway.

Dallas seems to be coming round after my little pep talk.

Which is just as well as this isn’t all that easy a mission. We have to fly through 3 nav points before we get to the supply ships and they are already under attack and in trouble before we get there. We get messages on the communications about their ejected pilots being picked up by an alien craft.

When we get to the nav point, its too late and the supply ships blow up the moment we get in.

There is another new ship on this mission. They are small and not tough but really quick and hard to hit. I end up using missiles to take them out most of the time.

They can also team up in 3’s to form a super ship which then splits down into its 3 parts if you kill it. This is pretty neat – I’d completely forgotten about this.

A refueling ship does survive the encounter and I can rearm on it before making the return trip. I’ve not seen one of these since WC2. The return trip is easier but the Midway is under attack and we have to kill off a load more bombers before we can land.

Finlay is in the bar and turning to drink to cope with the news about this new threat but I talk her round a bit. I still feel like I’ve barely got started after 2 days on this game – I’ll get a much longer session in today and see if I can’t make some real progress.

Wing Commander Prophecy was the 5th in the main series and the first game to be made without Chris Roberts who had left Origin by this point to work on the Wing Commander movie. It was intended to be the start of a new trilogy but with UO sucking up all Origin’s resources after this year none of these ever happened. This is a game I’ve not played since within a year or so of it being released and its not one I remember too fondly for various reasons. The one that sticks in my mind is the cliffhanger ending which I’ll deal with when I get to it. It’s been a long time since I played this anyway so maybe I’ll like it more this time around.

For the first time in Origin’s history, this game uses 3D acceleration so at the very least it should look a lot better than previous games. I’m also using the DVD patch from wcnews.com which adds 3gb worth of DVD quality movies to replace the games original cutscenes – this is the first time I’ll have played the game with these and judging by WC4 it should really improve the game.

A minor word of warning before I start – with DVD quality video the images for this game are going to be pretty big and might take a little downloading. This whole site should come with a bandwidth warning anyway.

The intro looks really good with the DVD video – the patch is well worth the download. The start tells how the Kilrathi have some sort of prophecy of a time of darkness which will come after they have been defeated by one who has the heart of a Kilrathi but is not Kilrathi born.

At this point some sort of giant alien ship comes through a hole in space and blasts a few mining ships which are working in the ruins of Kilrah.

We then cut to some new pilots arriving at the Midway (Confed’s latest super carrier). I’m not playing Blair any more but am instead going to be playing a rookie pilot called Casey who is the son of Iceman from Wing Commander 1. I arrive with my buddy Maestro who has stolen some contraband brandy from the private reserve of a confed admiral. We meet our new acting squadron leader, Stiletto, who sends Maestro off to see the CAG about the incident with the admirals daughter while I get to look around the ship.

I get to log into the ships computer as part of the intro which sets up my callsign.

Its then off to the bar where Maniac is telling some of his over the top stories to everyone in there. Hawk is still around and doesn’t look too impressed. I try to introduce myself but don’t get a good reception as the table I choose is reserved for Black Widow squadron. After being something of a sidekick in WC4, Maniac is back to being a bastard in this game and is in the middle of having a go at me when he’s called off on the comm. I liked his character in WC4 and it was one of the things which made the game so entertaining but I guess he wouldn’t necessarily treat a rookie pilot as well as the likes of Blair so it’s not big a change.

Another pilot called Zero shows up and introduces himself before giving me the grand tour.

Walking round the ship is just as in previous games, it all feels familiar right from the start. There are fewer locations than WC3 though.

Zero shows me the briefing room next. The briefing tables have gone and been replaced by the ISIS system, with each pilot having their own screen. I get to meet another pilot Dallas who is purely here for the money it seems. He tells me how the Midway was a money saving option for Confed who have poured all their money into this one super ship. He says it was Commodore Blairs idea at which point I spout off about how I’m fed up of hearing about Blair and he walks right in behind me.

That concludes the intro videos so its time to do some flying. There is a simulator in the bar – I head there first and try a few missions out. There is a full spread of training missions on here.

I try the first one and it talks me through the very basics of flying. I’m not sure that the rock music in the background is very Wing Commander but its not a bad tutorial. The difference in the graphics is immediately noticeable.

The 3D acceleration certainly means that things are much smoother. The WC4 engine could never turn out this framerate no matter what your hardware. The cockpit is now in full 3D and swings around as I maneuver. There are some nice effects on missiles and explosions and the cap ships are way more detailed. The background of space is more colourful also. It does look good but I’m actually surprised at how the actual ships don’t really look much better than in WC4. With the 3D acceleration comes the sort of plastic look that all games had at this time as well.

I get to fly against a Kilrathi ship which provides a moving target for my training mission. There is a nice shockwave when it explodes. It doesn’t fade away like it should – I seem to recall that direct3d support wasn’t what it should have been in this game (it was early days for the technology) so I’d probably be better off with a glide wrapper. I might hunt one out but its not really a big deal.

At the end of the training mission, I get to dock with the Midway.

I don’t play through all the training missions as I’m figuring that playing every single Wing Commander game to date should have served as decent training anyway. I try out flying a bomber in another mission and get to fly against a Corvette.

I head for my first briefing. The ships captain comes in and tells us that we are at full alert status. A Kilrathi fleet has been destroyed by something or someone and we are to go out and investigate it.

The mission briefings are very different in this game. The FMV has gone and been replaced by a realtime 3D wireframe equivalent. This is done really well and if anything is better than the briefings from the earlier games. In this first mission we are to fly out with Dekker and his marines to investigate the remains of the Kilrathi fleet.

We get a word from Blair before we leave and then I’m dealt the bombshell of being recommended to lead the wing by Stiletto due to my flight school record. This is just the usual thing of always having to play the Wing Commander which we’ve seen right since Wing Commander 1.

There is an entirely unnecessary ship loading sequence. It does look nice but there seems to be a lot of space on this ship.

We are then launched through a big tube, Battlestar Galactica style and spat out the side of the ship. I love this idea even if it was stolen from a 70’s TV show. We are just missing the stripy tube to complete it. The music for the missions is back to the orchestral stuff you would expect and its much more fitting for Wing Commander.

We fly out and have a look at the Kilrathi ship. There isn’t much here. Dekker lands at what is left and downloads the log. All the communications are shown in full FMV which we’ve been seeing since WC3. However, the quality of this here is superb – its in full colour and just as good as watching the DVD sections (albeit it in a tiny little window).

Things could never be too simple and a wing of unidentified ships appears. We take them all out pretty easily – this mission is not as tough as the training ones in the simulator.

Mission completed we arrive back at the Midway.

I arrive back at the Midway looking a little lost. Rachel is making a return in this game and she is less than friendly. When I land I get to check out my stats on the computer screen. This shows me percentage hits and the like + an overall score. I leave her trying to sort out a fire.

Dallas is not happy about us being shot at – this wasn’t part of his money making scheme.

Hawk comes over and joins us. He tells us that the cats on that ship were all dissected into cat chunks. They found a word scrawled on the wall in blood which means darkness or evil. They science team are apparently working on breaking the code on the log still so we don’t know much yet.

We are called out on a scramble so I have to dash back to my ship.

Maniac’s wing has run into trouble and we have to go and help. We run into more of the alien ships and this time they are communicating with us (although not in English). There are certainly plenty of them – we didn’t have combat on this scale in any previous Wing Commander. We send the communications back to the Midway for them to analyse.

After the mission, Maestro is trying some awful new drink in the bar. One of the science officers called Finlay is down here and we get introduced. It’s her team that are trying to figure out what we are up against.

I only got two missions in before I had to stop although I did mess around with training missions for a while. So far WCP is a lot better than I remembered it to be. The cutscenes are definitely not as good as those in WC4. Visually they look great but the script is really cliched and a bit childish. They are, however, way above what I was expecting and its only the comparison to WC4 thats bringing them down.

As for the combat itself, its quite a big change from earlier games with loads of relatively weak ships to fight in huge battles with a dozen fighters on each side. You could argue that this is nearer to the original WC1/WC2 games than WC3 or WC4. There is also much more chatter on the radio, which hasn’t been too repetitive so far and gives some atmosphere to the combat. I’m really quite impressed with WCP actually which has come as a pleasant surprise. The move to 3D acceleration perhaps hasn’t improved the graphics as much as I would have expected but its allowed for things like nice colour FMV in cockpit, way more action on screen at once + new types of missiles and its actually been used to spice up the gameplay a bit which is what new technology should always be used for.

So despite my initial misgivings, this has the potential to be a worthy sequel. The atmosphere doesn’t feel quite Wing Commander somehow but things do have to evolve if they aren’t going to become stale. It’s making me wonder what put me off the game in the first place. Surely there must have been more to it than not liking the cliffhanger ending but I’m not so sure now. WC4 really was a high point in PC gaming for me and maybe I just went into WCP expecting too much. I’m sure this was quite a short game so I should be finding out soon enough.