Wing Commander™ 3 Heart of the Tiger™

Growing up with familiar surrounding titles of Ultima VIII and Strike Commander - Wing Commander no doubt series resonated the most to this day in 2018. Unfortunately, this new GOG version DOES NOT come with the original orchestraic music that was epic for its time. What was once intense and gripping no matter where you are in the game - now is replaced with tinny MIDI replacement. Who on earth came up with this decision to not include the original score? Licensing prohibition? The game without the original music is just lifeless. Hence, the 1 star rating. Everything else? I'd dare say WC3 blows Freespace 1 and 2 's uninvolving plot of "read this briefing, press next and away you go"; which pretty much summed up my experience.

Had a lot of fun playing this: word of advice - don't play on the easiest setting, unless you just want to watch the video cutscenes. I played through on the second easiest - and still found it a challenge enough for to be satisfying to complete! The video sequences are great: especially love the Kilrathi costumes with the (animatronic?) heads. Mark Hamill, John-Rys Davis, Malcolm McDowell, Biff and the rest of the cast are also entertaining to watch. The games only real failing is the space combat sequences - which is the actual game part of the game. It takes a lot of getting used to - you WILL need to read the manual - and somehow it just doesn't feel as slick as, say, the X-Wing series. I should add that, unlike X-wing, I never played this series 'back in the day' so this was my first time coming at it in 2018. Still, once I got into it I enjoyed it a lot. Enough to play through till the end, but its the characters and the story in all its mid-90s FMV glory that kept me at it. Note: This game does work on Windows 10, but tends to freeze up for a second before each video sequence. This is a DOSBox problem, and its fixable. Fix it by going into the DOSBox config file and changing the output line to output=openglnb At least that worked for me.

Very good game from one of my favorite franchises of all time, but i cant really get it to play properly unless i get another joystick. Without a joystick, when you use the mouse to fly, you cant use your afterburner key on the keyboard, you have to right click the mouse button twice and hold which will activate the afterburners but prevent you from turning or moving your ship which makes it pretty much impossible to play. Also theres no sensitivity control for the nouse look or the keyboard movement, and if you try to play with just the keyboard, its REALLY slow to turn or move so its impossible to play and shouldnt even be an option really. If i could just use TAB to activate the afterburners while using the mouse i could actually play. Such a minor issue but game-breaking for someone without a joystick. I would give 5 stars otherwise.

I love this game. It's not what started the wing commander craze in me. But it was one of the best games I ever played. The pc version of this game is terrible. I really tried to like it. The story and everything about this game is great. But if you want a better version. Break down and buy a panasonic 3do and get this game. That version simply flowed. The music was spectacular, graphics way better. It also had the television updates in the rec room, which were not on this version. Just playing the first few missions, ive noticed a lot of lag in between cut scenes. Buggy missions that are not completed, unless you specifically look up details of the a walkthrough of a mission. For instance, on the scramble fighter mission shortly after Flash shows up. When I immediately get in the dogfight enemies are over 65000 miles (or whatever you want to call it) from me. They are coming towards me, very slowly, so I use my after burners to get to them faster and use up all my fuel. I tried playing again and saved my fuel. And the Victory is extremely far away, and I cant even land or even target them, to see how far they are from me. Need clearance is the only option. Now, I know I could probably do a search online regarding this mission and there maybe a quick fix to it. But why should I do that, I mean this is just the 5th or 6th mission. Enemies being too far away for the most part. Having to wait on transports to jump out and not having auto pilot become available. These buggy missions bring this game down. In addition, when, I'm flying though space, the stars are moving away from me, and not towards me. Its like im going in reverse the whole time. Not big, but can be disorienting and confusing when you are flying towards your wingman go through half your fuel and see you're still 30000 miles? away from him. I would purchase this version for nostalgia purposes. But if you want a better version. Buy a 3DO!! Simply for this game, its worth it! You will not be disappointed!

Refer to other reviews to see the merits of the game. This review is looking at playabilty and fun from a series newcomer point of view. I never played the Wing Commander games in the 90s though I am well aware of the series reputation. It was because of this reputation that I tried to get into the series with both Wing Commander 1 and Wing Commander 2. Neither of the games clicked for me. They were confusing and clunky. After reading CGW's glowing review (April 1995 issue, I think?) of WC3 I decided to give a shot. Setting up my Xbox controller only took a few minutes and was hassle-free. Check the forum sticky for info on how to do this. The story and atmosphere of the game really sucked me and after I learnt the controls the gameplay did too. As someone with zero nostalgia for this title I can say that looked at objectively in 2021 it still holds up tremendously and I would recommend it for any action fans. I don't play flight-sims, dogfighting games or space-sims but I'm really, really enjoying WC3. This is an easy buy even when not on sale, 5/5.