Man, this post was coming for a long time. My first "actual exposure" to Wing Commander was watching the movie on sci-fi, but that doesn't count as what got me in because I was having difficulty staying awake that night, and then I lost the tape. My real gateway into this community was Prophecy Advance- and I can remember thinking, "This is pretty fun, I mean the targeting system is an absolute piece of crap but for the Advance this is amazing... I wonder what the actual games are like?"
My love of space sims had been initiated by Starlancer, so it was good to know that one of the same guys would be behind the series. I started on my journey with WC1, but took quite a while of on again/off again play to get used to it. The 2D graphics and- this post is getting off topic.
So the ORIGINAL point of this ramble was that I finished WCP on the PC last night, and now that I've come full circle I wanted to compare it with the Advance version, from the perspective of someone whose first taste WAS indeed the Advance version.
The game started off with a cutscene, or story text in the advance version. Most of you at the CIC knew there was something missing with these cutscenes, but holy crap does the story ever get butchered. From the little, humorous things, like Dallas passing out and falling out of his chair, to entire scenes missing entirely, to even facial expressions getting cut out, I think it's safe to say all a new fan to the series could POSSIBLY get from Prophecy is "we are on teh ship and there are EVAL THINGS IN SPACE!!!"
I suppose that could sound like I'm bashing the port; it was an excellent job for the Advance, but we all know it didn't do things any justice. For that matter, the amount of story that we lose thanks to the in-flight dialogue being cut out. I was shocked as anything to land and discover Dallas dead that first time- mainly because there was nothing more than a generic "goodbye my friends!" to signify it during the mission! Don't even get me started on anything involving Blair- you might as well forget anything with him beyond "Well he flew out with me and I came back and he isn't here anymore." For the longest time, I thought that Blair had died, got shot down and that was it.
Of course, this is to say nothing of the wondrous game mechanics. At least in the PC version I would hear about the Midway taking damage, about how we needed to hurry up before the bugs did X thing that would hurt us- but in Advance everything was set to the accursed timer of arbitrary. This was intolerable on those missions where I didn't realize it was in effect- one second I'm flying, the next I see the midway getting toasted. Never had I been given such a "WTF?!" moment in a WC game...
I guess that's all I had to say- just a rant about how much nicer it was to experience WCP the right way... I think part of this was an old post ChrisReid made in reply to me saying my first experience was Prophecy Advance- not being sure about how much of the story a newbie would have gotten, etc. It was a fun ride- but I don't think I'll ever be able to put PA into my DS's cartridge slot ever again!
My love of space sims had been initiated by Starlancer, so it was good to know that one of the same guys would be behind the series. I started on my journey with WC1, but took quite a while of on again/off again play to get used to it. The 2D graphics and- this post is getting off topic.
So the ORIGINAL point of this ramble was that I finished WCP on the PC last night, and now that I've come full circle I wanted to compare it with the Advance version, from the perspective of someone whose first taste WAS indeed the Advance version.
The game started off with a cutscene, or story text in the advance version. Most of you at the CIC knew there was something missing with these cutscenes, but holy crap does the story ever get butchered. From the little, humorous things, like Dallas passing out and falling out of his chair, to entire scenes missing entirely, to even facial expressions getting cut out, I think it's safe to say all a new fan to the series could POSSIBLY get from Prophecy is "we are on teh ship and there are EVAL THINGS IN SPACE!!!"
I suppose that could sound like I'm bashing the port; it was an excellent job for the Advance, but we all know it didn't do things any justice. For that matter, the amount of story that we lose thanks to the in-flight dialogue being cut out. I was shocked as anything to land and discover Dallas dead that first time- mainly because there was nothing more than a generic "goodbye my friends!" to signify it during the mission! Don't even get me started on anything involving Blair- you might as well forget anything with him beyond "Well he flew out with me and I came back and he isn't here anymore." For the longest time, I thought that Blair had died, got shot down and that was it.
Of course, this is to say nothing of the wondrous game mechanics. At least in the PC version I would hear about the Midway taking damage, about how we needed to hurry up before the bugs did X thing that would hurt us- but in Advance everything was set to the accursed timer of arbitrary. This was intolerable on those missions where I didn't realize it was in effect- one second I'm flying, the next I see the midway getting toasted. Never had I been given such a "WTF?!" moment in a WC game...
I guess that's all I had to say- just a rant about how much nicer it was to experience WCP the right way... I think part of this was an old post ChrisReid made in reply to me saying my first experience was Prophecy Advance- not being sure about how much of the story a newbie would have gotten, etc. It was a fun ride- but I don't think I'll ever be able to put PA into my DS's cartridge slot ever again!
