Gary Whitta Doesn't Like Wing Commander!

ZFGokuSSJ1

Rear Admiral
It looks like Gary Whitta of PC Gamer doesn't like Wing Commander (or any old game) anymore! His June 2005 column is all about how bad old games are. (Tell me if you need a bigger pic)

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Hehehe, it's funny because Chris and I were just talking about how Warcraft makes you stupid.
 
Yeah, it's sooooo much better that you can get eye candy from modern games, without pesky things like quality or gameplay getting in the way. :rolleyes:
 
First of all, how the heck do you have june already when May just barely hit the stands?

And second, this kinda figures, when in the may column he goes on about how great tie-fighter was...
 
LOAF beat me to the Warcraft comment. If you have a higher quality picture, I'll take it for processing down the line. It's pretty silly that of a million dorky old games, he picks Wing Commander to make fun of. It certainly holds up better than 99% of the other games made fifteen years ago.
 
i remember that fifty best games of all time thread came up here a while ago, it was pathetic. halflife was a great game, i'm not doubting that, but it was not the best game ever.

these kids.

where did we go wrong?
 
To come to the guy's defense, it is easy to lose what made you fall in love with a game when you start cramming them for Nostalgia reasons. Wing Commander is a reasonable example. I just recently managed to get it going again, and I have to say. First impressions were "Gee, I don't remember it being this *bad*." After all, all the fighters turn clunky, the keyboard works better than the joystick, the lock doesn't auto-toggle fighters, and I keep running out of afterburner fuel!

Then, I stepped back. I realized that I was playing the game as if it was a modern Wing Commander variant. I was constantly tapping the afterburner, husbanding my shots (on the Hornet's laser of all things!), and avoiding playing chicken with the bad guys. "Wait a miniute," I thought. "This isn't how I played the game originally!"

So, I then "forgot" everything I learned about flying in the later WC games and concentrated on relearning the old controls. And low and behold, I had fun again! But how many poeple take time to get past that initial reaction?

Another example. He mentioned the C64 controller. Well, I gave the Ms. Pac Man controller to my son for Christmas. He loves it to death (he's only 5), but I noticed that it was far too easy for an adult to get bored with the games. Then one day my sister's husband and I got into a Pole Position duel while I was over at my parent's house. Our little duel attracted the attention of the rest of the family, and soon everyone was having fun! Now why hadn't I remembered that the friendly competition in the arcades was the part that made those old games fun? After all, that's why the high score feature was there! Interesting how we forget those things. :)
 
I'm glad I already cancelled my subscription to that rag. It used to be good, but when they started complaining about graphics I find stunning and blabbing about how everyone should upgrade upgrade upgrade, I just got sick of it.
 
The typical example of an article written five minutes past everything else going to the presses:

Absolutely no content (does he ever say why old games are so bad?),
all filler (what's the whole WoW and starting threads stuff got to do with the title?),
catchy title (but oh so creative),
lots of metaphors (the "vaseline-smeared lens of history" is especially notable - my boss would have had my head for that)
and some snide remarks that can pass as "opinion" or "sarcasm" just because it's the last page of the magazine.

Gary, that was very very bad. I hope that thread you started about people voicing their dislike about your personality really goes on forever.
 
Insulting WC and X-Com in one column. Quite remarkable bad taste. The only thing I could agree on is that it might be wuite hard to play WC1 for the first time these days as the graphics will be quite a shock then. Hmm... I guess I have to buy a new monitor for mine as it must be Vaseline smeared for I play at least as many pre Windows games then post Windows ones...
 
"X-Com may be a classic, but today its graphics look sad."

Oh, I guess it must really be a terrible game to play, then!
 
wow, i think the reverse of that guy most of the time. modern games annoy the shit out of me....yeah, glitz and glam, but no depth. and i still hold to the dream of making an uprated sprite engine for wc....one day....one day....
 
The beef I have here is, he insults the games without truly explaining why. "Wing Commander plays like crap!" Is oh so definitive...(rolls eyes). Maybe he should considering expanding on that a little bit. Regardless of what he says, the truth is some games are "classics" and will remain appealing despite the advancing glitz and glitter of more modern games. Hell, I still enjoy Frogger as much as I ever have...no fancy graphics there. If I could find a working emulator of the old commodore 64 Popeye game...I'd play that too.
 
AKAImBatman said:
To come to the guy's defense, it is easy to lose what made you fall in love with a game when you start cramming them for Nostalgia reasons.

That doesn't make any sense. My all-time favorite games are long outdated graphically, but they're still amazingly well-done. Theres obviously a lot more thought in games of yesteryear than there is today; people just think that pretty graphics are the only benchmark in gaming. Thats as big a load of bull as any I can think of - I'd much rather play Syndicate than silly X-Box game (especially Halo - but thats just me)
 
Halo is great. Halo 1 at least... Although the last part of the game was dead boring, it picked up at the very end.
 
You're missing some killer XBox Live action with us every night Lehah. Disregard for new popular games is just as weird as people hating old nostalgic games to me.
 
Yep, Chris is right, Halo 1 (and Halo 2) are both great games in their own right. No, I don't think they're better than Wing Commander (also they're a different genre) but they're a blast to play. You should hook yourself up so we can play a few nights.
 
Indeed. While I'll sit down to any WC game or perhaps a good old fashioned game of the original Zelda, I can still appreciate Civilization III or on my set-top the Tony Hawk games...

I just wish they'd come out with a modern WC-style cinematic storyline flight sim type again... while they make good games today, they don't make them like they used to.... which is both good and bad.

Fortunately we've got people remaking privateer and making Standoff and the like in their spare time... hurrah for open-source!
 
Saying WC1 is crap & giving as the only reason for this statement is, like saying all Laurel & Hardy movies are crap, because they're in black & white and don't have THX Dolby Surround or DTS
If HQ graphics is the only thing he looks for in a game ... :rolleyes:
 
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