Best and Worst WC ripoffs

Aside from what I refer to as teh "Dralthi factor*," none of the games are a complete ripoff. All, to one degree or another follow the basic plot of-humanity is well meaning even though we may be fighting with someone, and some unquestionably bad guys come along and try to wipe us out. Fly a variety f ships mounting an array of weapons to stop them.

Yes, WC has more backstory than anything outside of Star Wars, but really, c'mon, the basic plot's been around since HG Wells.

*The Dralthi factor is simply, in every space-sim, there will, nine times out of ten, be a ship that looks like a Dralthi. Freespace has the Ulysses, Starlancer had whatever ship that is on the box (I never played it), Tachyon has no fewer than four ships that fit the bill. I don't know from the I-War games or the newer Star Wars ones, but I'm willing to bet that there's at least one that bears a passing resemblence.

edit: I consider FS2 to be the best "rip-off" due to it's modability. I now use it exclusively for The Babylon Project mod. If you want impossible odds, try mission three of the demo campaign on "Insane" sometime.
 
Originally posted by Preacher
Well, how about BC Millenium?....

I'm not sure... I remember reading a short article about it in a gaming magazine once, but I'm not sure what's the deal with it. Have you played it?
 
IIRC you're a big big battlecruiser with lotsa weapons and you get to explore and all that crap

a rip of Star Trek more like it.
 
Originally posted by dacis2
IIRC you're a big big battlecruiser with lotsa weapons and you get to explore and all that crap.

Yeah, it came out about 2 years ago--turns out it was actually playable (unlike the atrocious BC 3000), and it offered a HUGE game universe to do whatever you wanted in, but everybody had already given up on the series.

I never played Freespace or Tachyon, but IWar 2 was pretty good, and Starlancer is pretty good too--I like the feeling of 'future-realism' that it has; versimilitude, and all that. Actually, I've been trying to figure out whether or not the Starlancer and WC universes are compatible with each other--LOAF? :D
 
Originally posted by Ender
I don't know from the I-War games or the newer Star Wars ones, but I'm willing to bet that there's at least one that bears a passing resemblence.

Neither Independence War game has Dralthi style ships. The closest any ship gets to the Dralthi is the Dreadnought class corvette, which is featured on the front cover art of the original Independence War (and which looks nothing like the Dralthi). Also worth noting is that the scale of ships is slightly different, with the player generally flying fairly maneuverable small starships as opposed to a fighter.
The afaik original space combat sim, Star Raiders, had a ship that looked like a TIE fighter, a ship that looked like a Cylon Battlestar, and a third enemy ship that doesn't really look like anything else. But since the ships were flat 2-D images moving in 3-D space, this is understandable.
 
Originally posted by Mav23
I'm not sure... I remember reading a short article about it in a gaming magazine once, but I'm not sure what's the deal with it. Have you played it?
No, I haven't. I'm waiting to see it hit a reasonable price at my local EB on the bargain rack (shouldn't be too long now, I would think). I have played Starlancer & Freespace 1, though.

I found both of those to be pretty good, to the degree that I played 'em. I esp. like FS's comm system and the "vibration" sense you got when using afterburners - pretty cool. Also, SL's ship selection system graphics and mission launch animation were great.
 
Originally posted by junior
...The closest any ship gets to the Dralthi is the Dreadnought class corvette, which is featured on the front cover art of the original Independence War (and which looks nothing like the Dralthi)...
It, in fact, looks rather like a fish!:p
 
Originally posted by Rampage3051
Yeah, it came out about 2 years ago--turns out it was actually playable (unlike the atrocious BC 3000), and it offered a HUGE game universe to do whatever you wanted in, but everybody had already given up on the series.


so.... you can blast planets? make suns go nova? are there any other ships to kill?
 
Nah, nothing that dramatic (the destruction of suns and planets, I mean)--at least, I don't think so--but there is combat. Quoting PCGamer December 2001, page 100: "75 planets, 145 moons, and over 100 space regions"..."over 60 different spacecraft and planetary vehicles available to be flown or driven"..."It's kind of like someone tossed you the keys to a starship and simply told you to 'have at it, sparky.'"
The last quote was really their only complaint about the game--its lack of structure. I never played it myself, but I trust PCGamer's opinion, and they gave it a 77 out of 100 (which ain't bad, especially for Derek Smart); yeah, it sounds alot like a free-form Star Trek game. You can control navigation, weaponry, engineering (aka power management) onboard your ship, beam or shuttle down to planets to explore, trade, etc...again, sounds like Star Trek meets Privateer. Personally, if I could find it in a bargain bin or cheap on eBay, I wouldn't pass it up.
 
So, now Independence War is a WC rip-off? What jealous freak came up with that? The only thing WC and IW have in common is joystick control (and BRender - used in IW1 and Privateer 2) and a space-setting. Saying that IW is a WC rip-off is like saying that Grim Fandango is a Monkey Island rip-off.
 
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