rank your fav wing commander games in order

My list is going to be a little weird, mostly down to when I joined the fight (WCIV). I still loved discovering the older titles but they obviously didn't have quite the same impact on me as someone who played them at launch.

1. Wing Commander IV (Adore the cutscenes, even if the game engine and controls were a little rough)
2. Wing Commander Prophecy (Adore the engine even if the mission design and plot leaves a little to be desired)
3. Wing Commander II
4. Privateer 2
5. Wing Commander III
6. Wing Commander Privateer
7. Wing Commander I
8. Wing Commander Secret Ops
9. Wing Commander Arena
10. Wing Commander Academy
 
Of the games that I've actually played all the way through:
1. Wing Commander III (My favorite game of the series, I thought it got the most right out of all the games in terms of gameplay and aesthetics)
2. Prophecy
3. Wing Commander I
4. Privateer
5. Wing Commander IV (While it did a lot of things right, I was always put off by how ugly the textures and interface was, both in the cockpit and elsewhere)
 
As Maniac said, you can detonate the Mace manually by shooting it while it is in flight.

Does the splash damage not trigger when the Mace directly impacts an enemy fighter-sized craft? I'm pretty sure that it does trigger when you manually shoot it.

Going from the Sabre to the Morningstar, you get twice the shields at the cost of your rear turret, and the too-widely-spaced-to-both-hit-a-small-target Mass Drivers are replaced by a third Particle gun. You do get only five ordnance hardpoints instead of eight (despite the Mace missile being so powerful) though, and I would have preferred to have an additional pair (four torps / 1 mace / 2 ImRec for multi-capship missions and two torps / 1 mace / 2 ImRec / 2 FFoe or HeatSeeker otherwise).
agreed and like I said when I faced off against the sabres in the final missions of O2 it seemed the enimies flying them had better shields and armor than me. one sabre I was fighting was red from nose to tail on my screen and still wouldnt blow up, it was crazy
 
5. Wing Commander IV (While it did a lot of things right, I was always put off by how ugly the textures and interface was, both in the cockpit and elsewhere)

It's funny... if you do a side by side comparison of the WC4 textures next to the WC3 ones, the WC3 textures are really plain and flat looking. There's waaay more detail on the WC4 ships, which is weirdly enough part of the problem. With the limited resolution the ships just end up kind of a pixelated mess. And for whatever reason they went with black for space in WC4 when every previous game had a blue-ish look. If you want realistic, yeah space would be black, however the blue seems to convey the idea of 3D space much better than black... (and of course there's the lack of cockpits at all in WC4).
 
It's funny... if you do a side by side comparison of the WC4 textures next to the WC3 ones, the WC3 textures are really plain and flat looking. There's waaay more detail on the WC4 ships, which is weirdly enough part of the problem. With the limited resolution the ships just end up kind of a pixelated mess. And for whatever reason they went with black for space in WC4 when every previous game had a blue-ish look. If you want realistic, yeah space would be black, however the blue seems to convey the idea of 3D space much better than black... (and of course there's the lack of cockpits at all in WC4).
Yeah, the effect really just did not pan out. Every capital ship in Wc4 just looked like a block of oily, jagged scrap metal; the simpler textures in Wc3 where the ships were more smooth grey with more solid accent colors ended up looking much better. I really like having the cockpit there too, so the 'hovering wireframe' design in Wc4 was comparatively disappointing (the kinda-sorta compromise in Prophecy was better but not as good: I love that Standoff went full-bore on cockpits).
 
Yeah, the effect really just did not pan out. Every capital ship in Wc4 just looked like a block of oily, jagged scrap metal; the simpler textures in Wc3 where the ships were more smooth grey with more solid accent colors ended up looking much better. I really like having the cockpit there too, so the 'hovering wireframe' design in Wc4 was comparatively disappointing (the kinda-sorta compromise in Prophecy was better but not as good: I love that Standoff went full-bore on cockpits).

I agree about the textures in Wing IV, they really ought to have done some smoothing of the colours, it looked like they simply selected the nearest texel rather than interpolating in any way.
However I never liked the background in Wing III, at all. WCI and 2 may have been a dark subtle blue but Wing3 was always overexposed, a bright navy blue - my least favourite backdrop to any WC franchise title.
The cockpit... I understand that complaint, I really do - but personally I like my viewspace. However I also accept WCIVs cockpit was probably born of time constraints and not a purposeful aesthetic choice. Kilrath Saga had in right in my book, making the cockpit optional.
 
Pedro, you know that you can adjust the brightness of th eblue background in WC3, do you? Because if it is a bright navy blue you either did not calibrate it right or your screen is extremely off color.
 
Pedro, you know that you can adjust the brightness of th eblue background in WC3, do you? Because if it is a bright navy blue you either did not calibrate it right or your screen is extremely off color.


I'm aware, and I set it to a low brightness without fail. Rather than debate the point I'll simply point to a google image search for Wing 1, 2 and 3. Wing 3 definitely averages out brighter.
That said I have no attachment to the dark blue in any of the games, contrast in games is a marvelous thing, these days often discard in place of a wash of murky greys. Wing IV and Prophecy have more appealing backdrops to my eye, but WC3 was definitely the title I associate with the brightest blue.
 
1. Wing Commander 2
2. Wing Commander 1
3. Privateer (Thanks to Good Old Games :) )
3. Wing Commander 4 (Better Production Values)
4. Wing Commander 3
5. Wing Commander Prophecy

Game I bought off Good Old Games but haven't played yet:
Wing Commander Armada and Wing Commander Academy.

Does Privateer 2 count? If so, I would tie it in 3rd place with Privateer. There is something about that game that just draws me back (crazy bug problems and that thing with the pirates spawning endlessly sometimes) idk. I missed Privateer first time round so its great for me to go back on GoG and play it now. Some of my friends think I am nuts when I play these old games, (graphics are awful dude, how can you play that etc etc) but a few know what it is like to have so many good memories tied up in a game.

I absolutely agonised over putting the original or wing 2 in at number one, but I went for Wing Commander 2 because it took the classic game and expanded it (Wing One on amiga was my introduction to the Wing Commander Universe) plus it had that cool bombing run music, dodging AMG blast in the broadsword whilst trying to lock on, then my relief when you could drop the torpedoes was almost tangible.
 
1. WC1 (first I played and still fav, plus the "wide" mission chart is better than the more linear ones)
2. SO1 (moral dilemma of Gettysburg, the Kilrathi imperial family)
3. SO2 (mace)
4. P1:RF
5. P1
6. SM2
7. SM1
8. WC2
9. P2
10. SO
11. WCP
12. WC3
13. Academy
14. Armada
 
Privateer (maybe i'll just kill a drayman or two... on second thought!)
WC1 (i just loved it from the first time i played it)
WC1-SM2 (it was the second wc i had and i loved it too)
WC4 (i felt like in a movie)
WC3 (i felt like in a lower budget movie :p)
WC2 (Never liked Blair's face in this game)
WC2-SO2 (Morningstar!)
WC2-SO1
WC1-SM1
Wing Commander Prophecy (gameplay and the feeling of speed was the best, not so much in the story, it feels kind of incomplete)
righteous fire (what do you mean no more steltek gun!?!?!)
WCSO (no cutscenes, i missed the actors)
Academy (gets boring after a while, wraith was nice though)

Privateer 2, Armada and Arena i didn't play
 
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1) Wing Commander 1 (maybe for sentimental reasons ,my first WC game ever,Amiga )
2) Wing Commander 4 (again for sentimental reasons my second WC game after a long time,also CUTSCENES)
3) Wing Commander 2 (best storyline)
4) Wing Commander 3 (classic and HELLCAT is introduced :D )
5) Wing Commander P (Ok story ,but maybe the best WC gameplay)
6) Wing Commander Privateer 2 (Man,great story and my first Privateer game)
7) Wing Commander Privateer 1/rf (I really like this game ,but I am not a privateer type gamer)
8) Wing Commander Armada (interesting game ,still not my type but I love the game engine)
9) Wing Commander SO (hmm ok not great stort-wise ,but I love the gameplay)
10) Wing Commander Academy ( I still play it once in a while,bored after a couple of missions :) )

Did I miss something ? Expansions are considered with the main games :)

EDIT: Now that I actually read the other posts :p :p , I see interesting choices , I never considered WCP popular and I always thought WC4 would be on top for many fans :)
 
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