Wing Commander™ 5: Prophecy Gold Edition

back when I was a kid in 1997, we had recently gotten our first computer. needless to say that back then, games were more difficult in some areas. this was no exception. after installing this, my brother played it for 3 days, without a flight stick. never even left the first disc. I asked one day if we could get a flightstick, naturally... i got one. I then proceeded to attempt to get to the second disc. at six years old, I felt like a pro-pilot. I recently re-installed this a few months ago on my laptop, same flightstick as well. still stuck on the second disc.

Wing Commander V: Prophecy is a game where you have to take the good with the bad. It's still a classic Wing Commander title with great dogfights and cinematic storytelling but it's quickly apparent that the same kind of love and care didn't go into the story as it did in previous installments. This time around you play as the son of the legendary Iceman from the original game in an attempt to pass the torch to a younger actor. Since Prophecy is much lighter on cinematics than the previous installment there's not as much meaningful character and plot development as there should be. The new alien threat, the Nephilim, is similarly underdeveloped. They're generic, bug like and poorly explained making them mostly just an uninteresting, faceless enemy comparing poorly to the Kilrathi and the Black Lance. To make matters even worse this game had planned sequels that never materialized and the game ends on a cliffhanger. While the cinematic-less expansion Special Ops does continue the story somewhat it doesn't really resolve anything. But it's not all bad, the story, while forgettable, is passable and the acting is still fine with Tom WIlson as awesome as ever in his role as Maniac. The actual gameplay is improved over Wing Commander IV with a completely new engine. The space flight is fun here and in some missions your radar will be swarmed with enemies leading to some of the most chaotic fights in the series. This can be a little strange as it doesn't feel quite like a Wing Commander game while you're fighting off hordes of inferior enemies instead of small wings of ships that are closer to your equal. The game is also generous with missiles making it simple to mow down opponents. Your mileage will vary on whether or not you view this new emphasis on action as good or bad, I think it's simply different. In the end it still has all of the hallmarks that make Wing Commander great and despite being a disappointing swan song it's worth owning for fans of the franchise.

Yeah i know, most people prefer WC 4 for it's FMV videos; i do too, they are epic but WC 4 gameplay is stiff, either with keyboard or mouse. I couldn't go on to finish the first mission because it's so hard to fly and aim, you either understeer or oversteer because 1 keypress or slight mouse motion translates into big moves on screen. In contrast WC 5: Prophecy is far smoother both with keyboard or mouse because it's the first and last one in the series that makes use of both Direct 3D api and 3Dfx glide api and you can use whichever you prefer. Storywise WC 4 is better because you get to pick a side and so the missions branches out into different endings. Here there's only one ending and it's not a completely good ending. There are difficulty spikes in 2 missions; one where you have to rescue an ejected pilot from Maniac's wing and another where you have to fend off waves of enemies at the comm station all by yourself until reinforcements arrive. On most missions i played at Ace difficulty; with the aforementioned 2 missions i had to drop 1 level down to veteran. Ace is in fact at mid level. There's Insane difficulty; you can try that on the first mission and see if you can cut it and how far you can go with it. Ships are more organic looking. Brought forth from WC4 is the Hellcat which is quite meh. Sadly the Arrow, a beautiful ship was retired and replaced by the ugly Diamondback. Enemy ship designs are more organic. The crab like thing enemy bomber has smaller ships dangling on it like earrings or frisbees; when destroyed the smaller ones fly in all directions and attack at all angels but they can be killed with 1 perfectly aimed shot. Aiming is easy with the lead target indicator. They are the easiest way to rack-up your kill scores and to elicit admiration from your wingmates. You can turn Victim Camera on which can show your confirmed kills in a short cinematic cutscene. Not many epic scenes but enough diversity and the aliens are more scary this time.

You are Lance R. Casey, son of Iceman from the previous games. You are transferred to TCS Midway along with your friend Maestro and you guessed it, you don't play with Blair, even though he is present. This space carrier is set out to investigate the intrusion of a new unknown enemy who came to destroy everything according to some old Kilrathi prophecy, hence the subtitle. The graphics are slick, missions not so annoying and controls work very well, best to play with a mouse. I loved this game because it felt really balanced and the videos really kept a good atmosphere and all the characters did their job. It probably isn't the best way to end the series for the old timer fans but it was good to me. I hope they will bring it back eventually, it has a potential and I guess I will never deal with absence of live action videos in the new games. These games had something special about them.