Wing Commander IV Revealed To Be Sequel! (August 2, 2012)

[Dundradal]

Another visit to PC Format, another snarky review. This one comes to us from April 1995. It seems that deep down they did actually like the game, but really want readers to know they aren't happy that "Wing 4 is basically Wing 3 with better production values." As has tended to be the case with PC Format reviews, the last paragraph does have a number of nice things to say about the game.

​

Thanks to Pix for allowing us to repost these.

--
Original update published on August 2, 2012

 

[wcnut]

they are recommending rebel assault 2 over this? are they joking?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

THE ACTUAL END OF REBEL ASSAULT 2:

Lady Rebel: "Rookie One, I love you for some reason, let's make out."

Top secret cloaking TIE fighter explodes.

CREDITS ROLL

 

[LeHah]

THE ACTUAL END OF REBEL ASSAULT 2:

Lady Rebel: "Rookie One, I love you for some reason, let's make out."

Top secret cloaking TIE fighter explodes.

CREDITS ROLL

I beat that game in an hour I think. I still have the PS1 copy at home.

Why I kept it, I may never know.

 

[Farbourne]

Interesting that they don't like the gameplay. I always have thought that WCIV had by far the best gameplay of any of the WC games, and certainly is lightyears better than anything LucasArts put out. The excellent AI was part of that, the flight dynamics made posible by afterburners and the ability to cloak in a Dragon was part of that, and expecuially the deadlier missiles. In fact, their criticism of "it often reduces to a head to head chicken match" seems ludicrous. Of all the flight or space sim games I can think of, a head to head chicken match is probably the worst idea in WCIV (barring maybe Standoff...but only if you're counting fan-made games that came out recently). Whereas the standard approach in any LucasArts game was to shoot down as much in the head-on pass as you could, and then turn round and do it again, repeated ad nauseum.

 

[Quarto]

Interesting that they don't like the gameplay. I always have thought that WCIV had by far the best gameplay of any of the WC games, and certainly is lightyears better than anything LucasArts put out. The excellent AI was part of that, the flight dynamics made posible by afterburners and the ability to cloak in a Dragon was part of that, and expecuially the deadlier missiles.

I don't think it's as unusual as you believe. I personally hated WC4's gameplay - I believe it's the worst of the main series (counting the spin-offs, it's second-worst, beaten with a huge margin by Privateer 2). The deadly missiles in particular were awful, because they added a random feel to the combat, where you would get killed in one hit, and almost nothing you could do about it. In general, WC4 gave me the same vibe that these guys suggest - that someone wanted to artificially extend the game by making it harder.

The absence of cockpits didn't help either. The thing that bothered me the most, though - and it's odd that I've changed so much over the years, but still very much agree with my fifteen-years-younger self on this - is the comments you got after you died. The game's difficulty had been pointlessly ramped up since WC3... and on top of that, someone thought it was a good idea to throw insults at the player when he died? Definitely not a fan of that.

As for the LucasArts comparison... well, I don't think there's much point going there, but I will say this: afterburners are not some amazing feature that LucasArts just couldn't figure out. They intentionally rejected afterburners, because they wanted to create a different kind of experience - and they very much succeeded. To me, comparing X-Wing to Wing Commander and claiming that one has better gameplay than the other, is like arguing whether a bomber is better than a fighter. You can prefer one over the other (I certainly prefer Wing Commander, though I like the X-Wing series a lot), but there's tons of people out there who will have the opposite preference, and the things you like in WC are precisely the things that make them prefer X-Wing. And by the way, notice that after X-Wing came out, Wing Commander tried to change its gameplay mid-stride to follow in X-Wing's footsetps: why else would WC3 introduce power management all of a sudden?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

The thing that bothered me the most, though - and it's odd that I've changed so much over the years, but still very much agree with my fifteen-years-younger self on this - is the comments you got after you died. The game's difficulty had been pointlessly ramped up since WC3... and on top of that, someone thought it was a good idea to throw insults at the player when he died? Definitely not a fan of that.

It's clearly a result of games like DooM treating the player with that sort of gentle ribbing faux-macho attitude... but I remember being extremely bothered at the time, it absolutely does not fit with the tone or the scale that Wing Commander IV was going for. WC4 suffers from a lot of similar divides between the movie Chris was making and the game the team at Origin was left to (VERY quickly) put together. Another weird flag is the quit message. "You stop that, you scare my chickens" is clearly some kind of in-joke that was hilarious to the development team... but it feels like a rusty nail sticking through a painting in context. Giant glitzy Hollywood production on one hand, close-knit development team hamming it up for fans on the other.

(I feel like the story of Wing Commander IV is yet to be told. Doing that game in ten months just seems INSANE, and it explains a lot of the rough edges that the game tries very hard to pretend aren't there.)

 

[cff]

Personally I cannot understand the least bit why someone would prefer the X-Wing engine over the WC one. Aside from all mission design and fluff around it I found that one really bad for flying. Actually prefer pretty much any other engine over the X-Wing one.

 

[Quarto]

(I feel like the story of Wing Commander IV is yet to be told. Doing that game in ten months just seems INSANE, and it explains a lot of the rough edges that the game tries very hard to pretend aren't there.)

On that note - this review's mention of real sets triggered something in my brain. It occured to me that while real sets would of course have looked better, and probably Chris Roberts' movie fantasies played a role, the main argument behind them would probably have been that you can throw money at them to build faster. Moving from a rough sketch to a finished set is a couple of weeks, and you can build all the sets at the same time. On the other hand, the CGI sets would have probably been all done by the same art team (likely the same team that developed the rest of the game's graphics), and so would almost certainly have to be made one at a time. Certainly they would take longer, and what with all the other art that needed to be made for the game - no chance for a ten month schedule.

All in all, the question I find myself asking is: why? What was it that made it so crucial to release WC4 within a year of the previous game, when it may well have been cheaper the develop it over a two-year period?

 

[Mace]

They intentionally rejected afterburners, because they wanted to create a different kind of experience - and they very much succeeded.

Tie fighter first expansion, defender of the empire, the missile boat. it uses the "SLAM"-system, that actually works as an afterburner, doubling the speed it already has, making it more then twice as fast as the A-wing, while still being smaller then the unshielded T/F Tie, and having the offensive power to down a rebel fleet singlehandedly.

The only critical point I can place on WCIV is that it had little replay value compared to wing1, where a simple mistake could unintentionally put you on a different, losing track, regardless or not if your mission was a success. While in WC4 it was so painfully obvious of the mistake you made.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

All in all, the question I find myself asking is: why? What was it that made it so crucial to release WC4 within a year of the previous game, when it may well have been cheaper the develop it over a two-year period?

This was a demand from Electronic Arts and it really was what started the franchise' death spiral.

The thing that everyone forgets is that Chris Roberts never wanted to be the /Wing Commander/ guy. He wanted to push the boundaries of immersion, use the latest technology to turn games into a cinematic experience. This goes all the way back to Wing Commander I. The success of WC1 meant there had to be a WC2, of course, but Chris stepped away from that entirely and used his new fame to fund Strike Commander. The fact that he made Wing Commander meant he could use Origin (and then EA)'s money and patience to experiment with how to create an interactive action movie. He sold the project by telling the company it would be a "Commander" game, but he wasn't so much interested in flying as he was creating Hollywood blockbuster-style sense for the player.

And of course Strike Commander was over budget and way, way overdue. It was a success but it wasn't a Wing Commander I-style industry-changing affair... and it had a LOT of money invested in it. So Chris came back to Wing Commander... but he did so because he saw it as a means to get the budget to keep advancing games-as-movies, not because he loved the Wing Commander universe. EA would gladly hand over four million dollars to make the next Wing Commander great, they weren't that interested in doing that for some other idea.

And Wing Commander III was bigger than Origin had dared to hope, sales were amazing. And Chris rightly took credit for that and believed it meant Electronic Arts should invest money to let him try whatever he wanted... and EA said no. Wing Commander III is such a hit that we are turning it into a series mass media franchise and we want Wing Commander IV yesterday... and you're our Gene Rodenberry and you have to do this game. Chris' passion project was something called Silverheart and EA said no, you have to shelve that and do Wing Commander 4. Which he did, but wasn't happy about it... and that unhappiness is one of the reasons the game spent SO much money and why he walked away from Origin after the game was released. There's likely some truth to the idea that Wing Commander IV was more of a film school and a resume than it was a game for him.

Why did EA want Wing Commander IV immediately? Just because Wing Commander III was suddenly a hit and they hoped they might be able to take it to the next level, have a franchise like Star Trek or Star Wars. They were innundated with licensing deals in 1995 and now instead of giving Origin time to create another world they needed a game that was on the shelves to go alongside the Wing Commander cartoon and the Wing Commander card game and so on that were on their way.

The only critical point I can place on WCIV is that it had little replay value compared to wing1, where a simple mistake could unintentionally put you on a different, losing track, regardless or not if your mission was a success. While in WC4 it was so painfully obvious of the mistake you made.​

Somehow everyone in the proto-internet was obsessed with figuring out how to get on the Confed path... even though it really had to be obvious that such a thing *did not exist*.

 

[Wedge009]

I thought I had read this before... we saw this back in March 2003. But nothing wrong with reposting it, of course.

Interesting story about Chris Roberts. Seems a bit of a contrast to all the 'I still love Wing Commander' sentiment I recall from recent years, but I can see how he was pushing towards his desire to making films, too. Yet another 'what-if' - what might WC4 have been if Origin had more time to complete it?

 

[Mace]

Somehow everyone in the proto-internet was obsessed with figuring out how to get on the Confed path... even though it really had to be obvious that such a thing *did not exist*.

I chose to fly with my comrades(obvious choice), and the "confed path" was there was it not, until you got a second chance to defect, again with seether present and the racial slur washout from Paulson an obvious choice. Also, if you don't defect in that mission, you get the "traitors never win"-screen.

 

[Dundradal]

I thought I had read this before... we saw this back in March 2003. But nothing wrong with reposting it, of course.

My bad. I'll have to do a more thorough job of checking to make sure I'm not reposting stuff.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Don't worry about it, no one could be expected to remember one post from 2003. The new scans are better anyway, good to have them in the archive (which is why I wanted to start reposting all Pix's excellent work anyway.)