rank your fav wing commander games in order

Jdawg

Jdawg

Commodore
im just curious what order you rank the wing commander games, feel free to include mods. mine goes.

6. wing commander prophecy

5. wing commander 1

4. wing commander saga

3. wing commander 2

2. wing commander 3

1. wing commander 4
 
I'll give this a shot! I ignored ports, save Wing Commander III 3DO which is so different in gameplay and mission design that I consider it to be a different game.


1. The Secret Missions 2: Crusade

2. Wing Commander Privateer

3. Wing Commander I

4. The Secret Missions

5. Privateer 2

6. Wing Commander II

7. Special Operations 2

8. Special Operations 1

9. Wing Commander III

10. Wing Commander III 3DO

11. Wing Commander Prophecy

12. Super Wing Commander

13. Wing Commander IV

14. Wing Commander Secret Ops

15. Wing Commander Arena

16. Privateer Righteous Fire

17. Wing Commander Academy

(Of course, this is not to imply that I dislike the lower games in the list in any way... I continue to enjoy facing off in the gauntlet in Wing Commander Academy on a weekly basis!)
 
thanks ben for doing this you prob have forgotten more about wing commander than I will ever know. I still have to go back and play so many of those games. I think I have told my origin story I had to be 8 and my best friend at the time had a great pc, all I had was a Nintendo lol. that summer we played wing commander 2 until we beat it, we sucked it took forever, but I loved it. that same yr i also fell in love with another franchise bc of my friend matt and his great computer which was sierra's quest for glory lol. next yr my family finally got a pc and I immersed myself into adventure games, everything from monkey island to full throttle, to laura bow, and the dig also of course the quest for glory series and the kings quest series. to be honest I thin quest for glory is in my top 5 game franchises of all time. Im also a huge movie nerd and buff which is prob why I love wc3 and wc4 so much, the acting and story telling was amazing. it might also be why prophecy is my least fav in the series. the gameplay was good to great but I hated the story, and it had nothing to do with not playing as blair. It felt like the actors didnt care to be there, the maniac character was de evolved back to something worse than wc3 and the overall story just was so cliched and boring, that it did nothing for me.
 
I can never decide what to put in the first place: WC1, WC2 or Privateer.

I think my list goes something like this (with the top three positions being very close to each other):

1. WC1 (great story, great atmosphere, medals, promotions, great manual, blueprints...as perfect a game I have ever played)
2. WC2 (good story, my favourite Confed ship the Rapier II G, and coolest of all: speech!)
3. Privateer (just great fun with a good story and in its simplicity it had great depth, like e.g. the scanner upgrades)
4. SM2 (flying a Dralthi!)
5. SO2 (flying a Morningstar and meeting Maniac again!)
6. SO1 (capturing Thrakhath!)
7. SM (great ending cutscene, great atmosphere)
8. RF (it's always fun to shoot Retros)
9. SOPS(it was cool to see the aging Excalibur and Thunderbolt next to the top notch fighters. Much better story telling and atmosphere than in Prophecy)
10. Prophecy (atmosphere and story were awful when compared to most WC games but the gameplay really was fun)
11. WC4 (very cool interactive movie)
12. Academy (I spent countless hours building my own campaigns and great manual)
13. Armada (flying for the Kilrathi!)
14. WC3 (too radical a cut with the former games I thought and the least likeable cast of characters in any WC game. And boo for destroying Kilrah.)
16. Priv2 (weird story and setting and cool ship designs)
16. Arena (sorry Arena: you're a great little game with an awesome manual but the competition is just too stiff)

Just like LOAF said: it really does not mean that I don't like Arena or Priv2. But in a game series of awesomness they're just a little less awesome than the rest.

Sadly. I still haven't played SWC
 
Mekt-Hakkikt said:
I can never decide what to put in the first place: WC1, WC2 or Privateer.

I think my list goes something like this (with the top three positions being very close to each other):

1. WC1 (great story, great atmosphere, medals, promotions, great manual, blueprints...as perfect a game I have ever played)
2. WC2 (good story, my favourite Confed ship the Rapier II G, and coolest of all: speech!)
3. Privateer (just great fun with a good story and in its simplicity it had great depth, like e.g. the scanner upgrades)
4. SM2 (flying a Dralthi!)
5. SO2 (flying a Morningstar and meeting Maniac again!)
6. SO1 (capturing Thrakhath!)
7. SM (great ending cutscene, great atmosphere)
8. RF (it's always fun to shoot Retros)
9. SOPS(it was cool to see the aging Excalibur and Thunderbolt next to the top notch fighters. Much better story telling and atmosphere than in Prophecy)
10. Prophecy (atmosphere and story were awful when compared to most WC games but the gameplay really was fun)
11. WC4 (very cool interactive movie)
12. Academy (I spent countless hours building my own campaigns and great manual)
13. Armada (flying for the Kilrathi!)
14. WC3 (too radical a cut with the former games I thought and the least likeable cast of characters in any WC game. And boo for destroying Kilrah.)
16. Priv2 (weird story and setting and cool ship designs)
16. Arena (sorry Arena: you're a great little game with an awesome manual but the competition is just too stiff)

Just like LOAF said: it really does not mean that I don't like Arena or Priv2. But in a game series of awesomness they're just a little less awesome than the rest.

Sadly. I still haven't played SWC
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just curious you say you dont like the cast of wc3 but you seem to like wc4 which is basically the same cast as wc3
 
Jdawg said:
just curious you say you dont like the cast of wc3 but you seem to like wc4 which is basically the same cast as wc3
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In WC3, everybody tried to tell you how to do your job and most of them were lowly 2nd Lt., showing no respect (I am no talking about Catscatch style venerance but simple respect to a much higher officer and great war hero). Cobra and Flint were the worst (Rachel and Vagabond not much better), Vaquero was ok, Eisen eased up a little bit at the end) and Maniac was just annoying. And of course Tolwyn, after being ok with you at the end of WC2 is back to hating you. The only one who treats you well is Hobbes...so his betrayal is all so more bitter).

In WC4 everybody shows the respect that is expected without licking your boots (except Catscratch but he's supposed to be that way and Maniac is funny wirthout being too annoying or silly).
 
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Mekt-Hakkikt said:
In WC3, everybody tried to tell you how to do your job and most of them were lowly 2nd Lt., showing no respect (I am no talking about Catscatch style venerance but simple respect to a much higher officer and great war hero). Cobra and Flint were the worst (Rachel and Vagabond not much better), Vaquero was ok, Eisen eased up a little bit at the end) and Maniac was just annoying. And of course Tolwyn, after being ok with you at the end of WC2 is back to hating you. The only one who treats you well is Hobbes...so his betrayal is all so more bitter).

In WC4 everybody shows the respect that is expected without licking your boots (except Catscratch but he's supposed to be that way and Maniac is funny wirthout being too annoying or silly).
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so its not the cast you didnt like but the writing of wc3 ok I can understand that
 
I'm bad at lists, but sure.

1. Privateer (Excellent atmosphere, amazing sountrack, true sense of exploration and progress.)

2. WC1 (The Wing Commander experience. Excellent presentation, cinematic feeling, memorable characters.)

3. WC2 (Same as WC1, but slightly diluted in favor of the more prominent storyline)

4. Prophecy/Secret Ops (the most enjoyable to actually play after WC1 and WC2, shared since I can't decide between WCP's initially intriguing story and SO's nonstop-action.)

5. Armada (Fantastic concept, slightly behind on the execution. Still the WC-game I've sunk the most hours into.)

6. Academy (My first WC game and probably the one I have the most fond memories of, but not quite there in terms of what it was trying to do. Probably also fucked up guns forever.)

7. WC4 (Not a fan of the flight engine, but it tried to do new things and had a very epic 'space adventure' feel to it.)

8. WC3 (Not a fan of the flight engine and it simplified and took some liberites with characters and the story I didn't quite agree with.)
 
Wing Commander 3 was one of the first games that I played on my then brand-new 486/80. And like I was telling LOAF some time ago, of all the ships I've seen in all the scifi I've watched, the TCS Victory is one of those fictional places that seem like "home" to me. I feel like I know every inch of that ship and every stick (bolt?) of furniture. And for all its faults (the cutscene quality for one), I love everything about it.

After that would probably be the first WC - something about its "deep arcade" feel and the way the plot unfolds makes me very nostalgic. Not just nostalgia for the game or the series but that whole time in video gaming. Heck, I bought a SNES copy of the game (still in the box!) for $15 a few months ago just because!

I'm also a huge fan of Armada. I bought it out of a bin at (the now defunct) Toy Works. They had all the EA Classics for $8 or so, and I use to have a little bit of cash left in my pocket from my part-time job come that Sunday morning. Never thought that a game without a story would suck me in so deep; I absolutely LOVED the strategy tactical map stuff - as simple as it was. The game did lose a little luster for me when I realized I could just go straight through it by making Banshees but, hey, it was still a lot of fun.

Also: apologies to the guy I met on here and tried to play Armada MP via Direct Connect ISP. That was frustrating as heck and back in the day of dial-up 28.8 at my house.
 
I rank my games differently if I'm going strictly off of gameplay or off of story. Prophecy would rank significantly lower based solely off of story for example, but Its gameplay makes up for a lot of shortcommings. Privateer 2s movies and style more than make up for some pretty significant gameplay bugs. As a whole package... My list is as follows -

WC2
WC1-SM2
WC3
WC1
Privateer
Privateer 2
WC4
Wing Commander Prophecy
WC1-SM1
WC2-SO2
WC2-SO1
righteous fire
Armada
Arena
Academy
 
Ok, I'll only list the main games (on PC) for brevity, although I included their addons in my judgement.
1. WC1
2. WC3
3. WC4
4. WCP (almost a draw with WC4)
5. WC2 (perhaps because I didn't play it when it was released first, but years later)
6. Armada (didn't play much)
7. Academy (no story)

I admit I have never played Arena, I only play PC games. But I guess it would rank just above Academy.

The Privateer games are another genre, which is why I omitted them.
 
after beating wc2 again after many yrs, and for the first time ever its expansions wc2 is moving up over wc3 for me. I love the story of wc2 and special operations 1, I also love the mission designs here and it has some of the hardest missions of any of the games. special operations 2 was a little bit of a let down to me, very anti climatic ending and the missions were some of the easiest in any wc game to me. on the bright side I did get to kill jazz.
 
I still laugh my ass off at the conclusion of Special Ops 2. Poor Maniac, with his ideal dream fighter, marooned in space. When we got the voice pack we finally got to hear him scream, "Where the hell are you?!"

That still gets me everytime. Morningstar's are a sweet fighter to fly...when they work right. ;)
 
Whistler said:
I still laugh my ass off at the conclusion of Special Ops 2. Poor Maniac, with his ideal dream fighter, marooned in space. When we got the voice pack we finally got to hear him scream, "Where the hell are you?!"

That still gets me everytime. Morningstar's are a sweet fighter to fly...when they work right. ;)
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really I thought it was just okay slightly better than the sabre. the nuke missile was cool, but never worked right. I launched it into a formation of fighters and it only took out one, and did no damage to any other. using it on cap ships were great though. one of my problems with so2 was the fact that when the enemies flew the sabres they had more shields and armor than I did when I flew the sabre, it seemed cheating to me.
 
As Maniac said, you can detonate the Mace manually by shooting it while it is in flight.

Does the splash damage not trigger when the Mace directly impacts an enemy fighter-sized craft? I'm pretty sure that it does trigger when you manually shoot it.

Going from the Sabre to the Morningstar, you get twice the shields at the cost of your rear turret, and the too-widely-spaced-to-both-hit-a-small-target Mass Drivers are replaced by a third Particle gun. You do get only five ordnance hardpoints instead of eight (despite the Mace missile being so powerful) though, and I would have preferred to have an additional pair (four torps / 1 mace / 2 ImRec for multi-capship missions and two torps / 1 mace / 2 ImRec / 2 FFoe or HeatSeeker otherwise).
 
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