Thoughts on Privateer 2

[Wedge009]

<sigh> After all these years, I finally got around to finishing Privateer 2... well most of it, anyway. Unfortunately, it's turned out to be one of the most annoying and frustrating games I've played, and the worst Wing Commander game I have ever played by far.

Please don't misunderstand me. I actually enjoyed the story part of the game, and the actors and actresses did a great job in their roles. No, my frustrations had to do with the actual game play experience.

Being one of the dozen people in the world who don't play PC games with a joystick, I found the mouse controls difficult to work with. It certainly wasn't anything like the nice mouse control in Freelancer. Nevertheless, I could have put up with the twitchy controls if it wasn't for two main things: the inability to flee overwhelming forces (no chance to observe descretion as being the better part of valour), and the sheer number of (software) crashes I suffered during the game.

I initially played the Windows patch on WinXP some time ago, but for some reason when I started playing again recently, the game would crash on any attempt to launch. (Although I've tried to keep my system clean in terms of software, lately I've noticed some things starting to fail.) So I resorted to installing the game on an older Win98-based computer and playing in pure DOS.

For the most part, the game played all right, with the odd mid-flight crash (resulting in a crash dump written to the screen in brown DOS-style text). The major cause of frustration was when the game crashed with the screen shot I attached to this post.

This particular crash occurred the most often in three separate cases:

1. Completing Bill Maddox's optional mission of escorting his freighter from Bex to Anhur - crashed on landing, I eventually gave up on the mission.
2. Crash on landing at Hades after rescuing Rhinehart (several times! Grr...). I thought I resolved this by disabling video transitions.
3. Crash upon completing the (presumably) final plot mission. I eventually gave up this altogether - I suppose I have to be satisfied with the video available in the Holovids section.

I know some folks didn't like P2 for other reasons, but for me, the technical problems were the main reason for being upset with otherwise a great, if rather different, addition to the Wing Commander universe.

 

[Vinman]

Wasn't there a non-windows 95 patch?

 

[Wedge009]

Why yes, I still have that in my archives, even. I concentrated so much on the Windows patch, I forgot that the DOS version still had its own fixes. Well, that just shows how long it's been since I tried playing it (old save games say 30 June 2004...).

Okay then, I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

 

[Wedge009]

No good - the same thing happened again. The strange thing is that my brother said he managed to finish the game on the same computer without too many problems (only had software crashes mid-flight).

 

[Naféasonto]

Mouse flying sucks and that's what I HATE about Freelancer. There is so much you can do with a joystick, you CAN'T do with a mouse.

 

[Eder]

I remember occasional crashes back to the DOS prompt when I first played P2, but it wasn't a frequent enough thing to put me off the game... However I do agree that the game's major flaw is the inability to flee overwhelming forces. I was actually surprised to learn that you couldn't manually flee from a navpoint in P2. It's such an obviously game-wrecking idea I'm surprised they never did anything about it. Each navpoint turned out to be a potentially endless gauntlet in itself, rather than the feeling of a "living universe" which they probably were going for. I mean, didn't *any* of those pirates who were jumping in all the time have any business to settle elsewhere?

On my first play through, I was also pretty pissed at the lack of cutscene subtitles, since my english was really crappy and I could barely understand what was going on in games that did have subtitles.

 

[Vinman]

No good - the same thing happened again. The strange thing is that my brother said he managed to finish the game on the same computer without too many problems (only had software crashes mid-flight).

Well crap. When P2 first came out I remember lots of people saying the game was practically unplayable due to bugs, including my math teacher.

I'm just brainstorming, but could it be a sound card issue? CD driver issue?

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

Oh yes, those seemingly endless pirate fights at some navpoints...

I played with a joystick so I can't comment on the mouse problem but, as Eder, I did encounter some crashed with Priv2, but not as violently as you.

I am sorry for you because I know very well how frustrating something like this and now your memories of Priv2 won't be as great as they should be. Because Priv 2 really is a different and geat addition.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The 'no jump near hostiles' is decidedly the game's biggest problem.

Actually, it's even simpler than that - the fact that more pirates can and do jump in with frequency is the game's biggest problem... after all, in Privateer 2 the 'mini jumps' are the gameplay equivalent of autopiloting in the original (which was also prevented when near hostiles). Use of Privateer 2's actual inter-system jumps (through gates) *isn't* prevented by hostiles - go figure. IIRC, you *can* get far enough away from the pirates to escape them... but it takes *so* long (and wastes so much afterburner fuel) as to be pointless.

The other major problem is that it needed a faction system - you should be able to befriend pirates/military/civilians/etc. as in the original. Actually, that's more of a wishlist item - in the immediate it actually needs less of a faction system... a stray hit shouldn't make all the military pilots your enemies until you land. I don't recall an unusual amount of problems with crashing - although crashing in general was a lot more common back then. I had more problems keeping the original Privateer stable than I ever did Darkening!

You really do need a joystick for the game, though - I know there was a longstanding rivalry between keyboard pilots and joystick pilots back in the day, but that isn't a reason to switch to an even more awkward control mechanism just because your favorite one isn't available. If you can, pick up a budget joystick and try it out.

It's sad, because it really is a flawed great of a game. The setting, however odd for Wing Commander fans, is amazingly complex and weird and wonderful... the combat engine, the weapons options, the 'expanse' of the universe, the artistic style - all of that was a cut above the norm in 1996. I think it's a great addition to the universe, no matter what the behind the scenes drama was... specifically because it's so strange and different and large.

 

[Delance]

Priv2's graphic engine might be the most advanced non-accelerated engine ever released. Many aspects of the game remined me of Elite even more than the original Priv - the radar was the same, and so was the "roll" effect when you moved left and right.

 

[Wedge009]

The other major problem is that it needed a faction system - you should be able to befriend pirates/military/civilians/etc. as in the original... a stray hit shouldn't make all the military pilots your enemies until you land.

I forgot to mention that. Definitely that was another irksome design point. While the military seem perfectly happy to direct friendly fire at you when shooting at pirates, they had very little tolerance whatsoever when you did the same to them. Of course, as you mentioned, this was of little consequence because of the lack of a faction system.

Come to think of it, a faction system could have really been good in differentiating between the different pirate groups. As it stands, a red dot on the radar always meant a pirate - it didn't really matter which group they were from.

I had more problems keeping the original Privateer stable than I ever did Darkening!

Seriously? My Privateer was very stable - in fact all of my DOS WC games were. There may have been the odd crash here or there, but definitely nothing as frequent and reproducible as I suffered in P2.

You really do need a joystick for the game, though - I know there was a longstanding rivalry between keyboard pilots and joystick pilots back in the day, but that isn't a reason to switch to an even more awkward control mechanism just because your favorite one isn't available.

I wasn't aware of any such rivalry, and that's not the reason I don't have a joystick anyway. I may just be stubborn, but P2 is pretty much the only PC game I have which would benefit from a joystick. Besides, I'm the kind of person who, if I intend to get an addition for my computer, will research endlessly for the best quality/price ratio as possible, and not just pick up the cheapest option available. Well, some of the time, anyway.

The setting, however odd for Wing Commander fans, is amazingly complex and weird and wonderful... no matter what the behind the scenes drama was...

As I said, I enjoyed the storyline side of things. But I wasn't aware of any behind-the-scenes drama. I thought a point reported on a few times in the front-page news was that Clive Owen claimed to have enjoyed the P2 experience thoroughly.

Priv2's graphic engine might be the most advanced non-accelerated engine ever released. Many aspects of the game remined me of Elite even more than the original Priv - the radar was the same, and so was the "roll" effect when you moved left and right.

I believe the B-render engine has been praised quite thoroughly here before. But I do recall reading or watching an interview somewhere that the developers accidentally ended up using the slowest, most basic mode of rendering in the engine - so they could have actually implemented much more complex ships (I think they had a choice between numbers of ships and complexity of models).

I think I've seen the radar style in a few games (only the Rogue Squadron console game series comes to mind right now), but I always switched to the WC-style 2D mode because that's what I was used to.

The roll effect was also present in the Longbow bomber for WC3, as I recall. I would actually prefer to fly without the roll effect, but it wasn't a huge bother.

 

[Vinman]

I wasn't aware of any such rivalry, and that's not the reason I don't have a joystick anyway. I may just be stubborn, but P2 is pretty much the only PC game I have which would benefit from a joystick. Besides, I'm the kind of person who, if I intend to get an addition for my computer, will research endlessly for the best quality/price ratio as possible, and not just pick up the cheapest option available. Well, some of the time, anyway.

Oh, it exists, or at least, it existed. I remember taking a good deal of flak for admitting that I played Wing Commander with a keyboard. I would have used a joystick but they kept getting broken by family members! Now I have a joystick, I'm very protective of it, and the Wing Commander universe is my oyster!

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I forgot to mention that. Definitely that was another irksome design point. While the military seem perfectly happy to direct friendly fire at you when shooting at pirates, they had very little tolerance whatsoever when you did the same to them. Of course, as you mentioned, this was of little consequence because of the lack of a faction system.

Actually, it's somewhat crippling without a faction system... because not being able to jump when the *military* is after you sucks.

Seriously? My Privateer was very stable - in fact all of my DOS WC games were. There may have been the odd crash here or there, but definitely nothing as frequent and reproducible as I suffered in P2.

Yeah, I had terrible problems with Privateer (1) on my 486... I remember calling into Origin's BBS (long distance!) to get help.

I wasn't aware of any such rivalry, and that's not the reason I don't have a joystick anyway. I may just be stubborn, but P2 is pretty much the only PC game I have which would benefit from a joystick. Besides, I'm the kind of person who, if I intend to get an addition for my computer, will research endlessly for the best quality/price ratio as possible, and not just pick up the cheapest option available. Well, some of the time, anyway.

Have you tried much joystick flying? I was a solid keyboard user for years and years... and then I happened across a free joystick a friend didn't want. All the classic games ended up being a lot more fun... and even moreso now that I've been turned on to throttles and rudder pedals.

As I said, I enjoyed the storyline side of things. But I wasn't aware of any behind-the-scenes drama. I thought a point reported on a few times in the front-page news was that Clive Owen claimed to have enjoyed the P2 experience thoroughly.

I was referring to the development and the debate over whether or not it was a 'real' game - a lot of the Origin guys (whom I respect greatly) had problems with Privateer 2's development.

 

[NinjaLA]

Privateer 2 is my single favorite wing commander game from a 'the joy of flying' standpoint.

It was so fluid and receptive that I rarely ever died. of course, I did use a joystick.

 

[Capn Johnny]

I liked it better before they tagged "Privateer 2" onto the title. That game almost got me fired. Well.. I almost got me fired because of my feelings about the game.

 

[Chaosbringer]

Privateer 2 must be the only WCU game i played only for a few minutes, and never played again. Part of the reason is that i'm not english native speaker, and it has no english subtitles, like WC3, WC4 and WCP (maybe i'm wrong about this, it's been a while). Anyway, it didn't attract me like the other games. What do you think? should i give it a second chance?

 

[NinjaLA]

you should.

 

[ChrisReid]

Nevertheless, I could have put up with the twitchy controls if it wasn't for two main things: the inability to flee overwhelming forces (no chance to observe descretion as being the better part of valour), and the sheer number of (software) crashes I suffered during the game.

However I do agree that the game's major flaw is the inability to flee overwhelming forces. I was actually surprised to learn that you couldn't manually flee from a navpoint in P2. It's such an obviously game-wrecking idea I'm surprised they never did anything about it.

Like LOAF mentioned, you can flee and them jump away with enemies still present. At 3600 klicks, your jump indicator turns green. Not a lot of people seemed to know about it though, and those that did found it difficult to use. A fast ship helps. I actually remember winding up taking advantage of it a bunch though. Also like LOAF, I didn't ever really have the crashing problems either, even pre-patch.

Probably the biggest issue I had with the game was syncing up with my transport. I managed to do it pretty well, but I was always very stressed out that I would lose my Monolith by mistiming my jump.

I was also a keyboard Wing Commander player. I got a cheap joystick just for Priv 2 and wound up alternating between that and the mouse. As far as WC games go, Privateer 2 seems to have the best mouse control.

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

Privateer 2 must be the only WCU game i played only for a few minutes, and never played again. Part of the reason is that i'm not english native speaker, and it has no english subtitles, like WC3, WC4 and WCP (maybe i'm wrong about this, it's been a while). Anyway, it didn't attract me like the other games. What do you think? should i give it a second chance?

Absolutely. You will have something totally different to a classic WC experience but the Tri-System is such a weird place, it's wonderful.
And Priv2 has some of the most beautiful non-generic ship models I've yet to see.

 

[Manboy]

I spent months saving up for Privateer 2 at the time. I was elated when I finally got it, only to be extremely.....dissapointed when I first encountered the dreaded planet landing bug. I think it was one of the very first missions, forget exactly which one. Every single time I tried to land on this specific planet the game would blow its top. I took the game back THREE times in hope that a new copy would work properly. Suffice to say I was getting mighty pissed. This was pre-patch so I gave up on the game entirely and got something else instead. Half a year later I decided to give it another go. I got the now familiar guys at the shop to download the patch for me and the game finally worked well.

And I loved it. I used a joystick also so it was alot more fluid to play. The FMV, actors, script all of that was top notch although I remember being bewildered and even a little underwhelmed with the ending. And small explosions both suck and blow - I remember that getting on my nerves more that the jump issues.