Today starts with a cutscene showing the capship blocking the jump point being destroyed. I was expecting to have to go after this myself but this makes life easier.

The next mission is instead escorting the Dauntless and the now fully operation Fralthi into the asteroid field.

On the way we have to protect 5 shuttles as they travel between the space station and the Dauntless with supplies. This part of the mission is fairly simple, the only trick is to fly out to the first shuttle at the start of the mission and take on whatever is closest.

We escort the Dauntless to the asteroids and then get sent to have a look at a radar reading that shows a huge ship approaching.

When we get there our ships systems go haywire due to some funny looking buoys and one of my wingmen crashes into it.

At this point 7 fighters jump in and I have to fight them in this crippled state.

My radar is showing dozens of false targets and my ship stops responding every few seconds and also gives off random commands. My wingmen are useless here and I have to take out all seven targets myself. I struggle with this a bit then try swapping my ship to an Epee at the start of the mission. The Epee has a stormfire which is seriously powerful in this game. I save all my ammo for this fight and get through it first time.

I then blow up the buoy. I guess I could probably have done this earlier and got my systems back but finding it might have been a problem.

I fly back home and get the next password. I discover that I can avoid having to retype all my mission passwords in the fiction viewer if I use the drop down box to select my name rather than just typing it in. This is a bit of a bug with the viewer if you ask me.

We are still hiding out in the asteroids so I have to make sure we stay hidden in the next mission.

The twist here is that I’m flying one of the Kilrathi asteroid ships from Wing Commander 3.

These ships are actually seriously powerful and have the best guns of any ship I use in the game. They take down a Manta from full shields in 5 hits and I breeze through this mission. The only real problem is at the first nav point where 2 mantas try to escape. They are faster than me and I have to know they are going to run before I arrive so that I can head straight for them.

When I get back there is another cut scene showing some of our pilots being attacked and scooped up by a Manta.

Our reinforcements are on the way but they are in the next system and we have to go looking for them for some reason. To this end we are going to send a modified Avenger through the jump point. I have to escort it to the point then hang around waiting for it to come back.

We have plenty of fighters to take out on the way in but the real action is at the jump point with a cap ship in the way.

The Avenger jumps out quickly leaving us to deal with the fighters. The fighters keep coming endlessly and I lose both my wingmen early on.

The Avenger arrives back having completed it’s mission a few minutes later. It brings a Vampire fighter with it but we could have done with a few more of them. There are far too many fighters to take on here so I end up afterburning away as soon as the Avenger shows.

I’m slightly surprised that this tactic works and the Avenger is still with me when I can finally autopilot. There is another skirmish at the Dauntless but this one is fairly easy.

That gets me to the games final mission. We have to head for the jump point to meet up with our reinforcements.

This final mission is basically an excuse to put as many ships on screen as possible it what is a monumental battle.

We have a load of capships to deal with just getting to the jump point but I do get to land and refuel after the battle. I’m flying a Kilrathi ship again and its quite slow for dogfighting. I end up being something of a spectator for large parts of the mission while the hordes of ships battle it out among themselves. I concentrate on getting a few torpedoes fired into the capships.

There are even more bugs at the final jump point. I’m told to take out the fighters which I do. I get a few but my wingmen are doing most of the work.

The reinforcements start to arrive after a while and things get a bit easier.

When the Eisen shows up with its squadron of Devastators and Vampires the enemy are beaten in no time. I actually finish this final mission on my first attempt which is a surprise given the earlier difficulty level. The final few missions have been considerably easier than the early ones on the whole.

The game finishes with a string of cutscenes. The first shows an Admiral arriving. The Dauntless is no longer going to be scrapped thanks to its performance here.

We then get to see the fleet taking the fight to the bugs and the plan working perfectly as their fleet is caught by surprise. That completes Unknown Enemy. This has been one of the more challenging games I’ve played in this blog and I’ve definitely enjoyed it. It suffers from perhaps being a bit incoherent in terms of story and missions. It seems that everything was thrown at this just because it seemed like a good idea and it was made to fit into the story accordingly. This isn’t such a bad thing but it certainly shows the games fan-made origins. I couldn’t honestly say anyone should play this over the original Wing Commanders or the likes of Freespace but it’s a great attempt for a fan game. If you’ve finished WCP and Secret Ops and want a real challenge you could do a lot worse. I gather Standoff improved on UE in many ways and I’m looking forward to giving it a go. The final episode still hasn’t been released yet though and I’ll hold off until it is.

The first episode of Tales Of Monkey Island is out today. I’m not sure how confident I am in it being any good but I’ll be playing that before I get back to this blog again. It had better be an improvement on Monkey Island 4 but I’m not too optimistic from the gameplay trailer. I preordered it ages back though so I may as well give it a go.

Next: Thief – The Dark Project