Wing Commander III
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Wing Commander III
1–10 of 166 posts
Re: Wing Commander III
#2I'm a big fan of the genre, played at least one of the Wing Commander games a while after it came out, and I think Tie Fighter also. I never understood the appeal compared to say, Star Raiders or the Star Wars vector arcade game.
Maybe I was just getting too old for video games, but I played Oolite (never played Elite when it was current) for a little while when I was between jobs at 40 and loved it.
Re: Wing Commander III
#3Owned it. It was campy fun even then but WCII and WC:Privateer were far and away the better games. III was one of many attempts at a game-movie crossover that never really worked imho. Privateer is the basis of EVE online, Star Citizen and countless other modern titles. In terms of influence it is up there with SimCity and Civilization.
Re: Wing Commander III
#4I'm a big fan of the genre, played at least one of the Wing Commander games a while after it came out, and I think Tie Fighter also. I never understood the appeal compared to say, Star Raiders or the Star Wars vector arcade game. Maybe I was just getting too old for video games, but I played Oolite (never played Elite when it was current) for a little while when I was between jobs at 40 and loved it.
Yeah, I must be too old too. When "cut scenes" started becoming the norm I felt like video games had lost their way....
Additionally, the big studios with their cut scenes set a kind of bar that the indie game dev couldn't match. It eventually sorted itself out but at the time it looked like the big players were moving in and the indies should probably head off and get "real" jobs.
Re: Wing Commander III
#5>Having been recently acquired by Electronic Arts,
>The goal was, if someone said, “What’s an interactive movie?” we’d just hand them the CDs from Wing Commander III and say, “Here, check this out.”
>This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, of course...but the lack of any real gameplay evolution within that look and feel perhaps is.
So...even back then, EA was in the habit of buying successful game properties and ruining the core gameplay by turning them into essentially interactive movies full of cut scenes.
Sometimes I wonder what video games would be like today if EA and a few other choice companies...cough...activision...Ubisoft...cough just didn't exist at all....
Re: Wing Commander III
#6I've lost something.
When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a game over a weekend.
As a result of this, I'd spend many, many hours on the same game. I'd "beat" the game, but I'd also have this sort of mental model of challenges or 'perfect' gameplay that I'd try to achieve. It might be a score. It might be a time. It might be collecting all of a thing. It might be getting to a particular location that appeared to be 'off limits.' It was basically 'achievements' before there were achievement systems, but they were generally a lot harder and all the rewards for doing it where self-generated and internal. (I also spent a lot of time thinking about whether a thing was possible, and if it wasn't, why not.) This also allowed me to spend a lot of time on games that weren't very good and find some good within them.
This post reminded me of this, because Wing Commander (the original) was one of those games I played over and over again. (I can't really recall what my goals were for the game, but I remember it being particularly difficult to achieve them.)
I don't really do this with games anymore. Even in the case where I don't have the next game chosen and already in my line-up, it's easy to buy a game online and have it downloaded and playable within an hour. There aren't any surprises: readily available game reviews tell me basically exactly what to expect. On a game I particularly enjoy, I might spend some more time on it by gathering the achievements, but achievements really pale in comparison (in terms of both difficulty and reward) to what I remember of doing this myself in my youth.
It's like the difference between reading a novel and really understanding a novel at a deep level. I think I'd like to get back to those deeper dives; but with more money than time (versus more time than money that I used to have), so many excellent games available, and all kinds of other distractions, I'm not really sure how or where to begin. I'm also not sure it's just me, or if games in general have lost a sort of magic they used to have.
Re: Wing Commander III
#7I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…
Funny you should mention the mental model of challenges because I do the same thing. I've started role-playing in games that neither require nor request any real role-play. For example, I find it much easier to suspend my disbelief in a shooter game if my character doesn't have to survive 10s of bullets without even a wince. As a result, I play and replay shooter levels until I can beat the game without taking a single bullet.
Re: Wing Commander III
#8I was so hyped when this game came out; I remember waiting 5-10 minutes for each mission to start on my computer at the time (a 486 dx2? Or a Pentium? Hard to remember). Clearing space to play it was a pain too.
I missed some of the wc2 gameplay and was not a fan of how the story kept resetting the progress from the previous games ("humanity suddenly comes to an agreement and dismantles its full fleet", "ragtag peripheral colonies are the only ones who understood the enemy" etc...). The way Hobbes' character was retconned wasn't great - especially since they left out his final message (seriously wtf?)
I still loved the game, enough so that I remembered all of that from years ago.
Re: Wing Commander III
#9Owned it. It was campy fun even then but WCII and WC:Privateer were far and away the better games. III was one of many attempts at a game-movie crossover that never really worked imho. Privateer is the basis of EVE online, Star Citizen and countless other modern titles. In terms of influence it is up there with SimCity and Civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer
Privateer was a lot of fun. I remember playing it and the sequel. I'd be interested to see more behind-the-scenes of Privateer 2. It also had FMV and (from what I recall) had this sort of campy sci-fi TV movie feel. Great game, although I'm hesitant to look at it without the lens of nostalgia.
Re: Wing Commander III
#10>Having been recently acquired by Electronic Arts, >The goal was, if someone said, “What’s an interactive movie?” we’d just hand them the CDs from Wing Commander III and say, “Here, check this out.” >This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, of course...but the lack of any real gameplay evolution within that look and feel perhaps is. So...even back then, EA was in the habit of buying successful game properties a…
Ubisoft - amazed at how many Assassins' Creed/Far Cry/The Division games they can churn out on a yearly basis unlike Rockstar who takes time to craft their open sandbox games.