Posted on: May 30, 2021
rob.liefeld
Games: 1345 Reviews: 78
Wing commander 2.5 - straight to video
Epic space opera with needlessly complicated, yet very generic setting? Check! Action focused space-ship combat sim with the emphasis on "action"? Check! FMV? Errrr.... let's be generous and check... Budget? ... No, I cannot, in good conscience check that box. Engaging and fun? No. So, this was a first person space action game that came out in '92, two years before Wing Commander 3. In some ways, it's halfway between WC 2 and 3. Ion other ways, it's less enjoyable than WC 1. Let's elaborate: The game has FMV (full motion video) story-sequences, that tie the missions together. They got made in '91 or '92 so they look like that. They must've looked impressive for about a month or two when it came out, but today it just looks really badly made. Which it is. The missions themselves are pretty straightforward first person space-shooter fare. Except: the apparently game sports Newtonian physics. Meaning you can accelerate indefinitely in any way, since there's "no gravity". I guess it's more "realistic", but it doesn't really work in a game like this (it works way better in the Independence wars titles, since those games were much more about simulation). The fights tend to get short and deadly. But that's because most of the time spent in missions spent engaging the enemy and trying to reengage it when you inevitabelly zoom past it. That counts for maneuvering. As it's way harder to hit an enemy, the game has an autopilot-system. And about four other autopilot-systems above that. I recall switching between those, and almost never using plain-old manual controls. This is a weird, transitional game that never clicked with me. It has 3D space-ships (yet not textured), it has FMV (yet, only a few frames, and all look terrible), it has cd sound (yet only a few tracks and clips and all sound horrible), it has advanced physics (though they turn most of the gameplay into "staring at flickering pixels on a black backdrop). Again, this one's for collectors only.
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