Of all the Wing Commander games I've played up to this point, this is easily my favorite. For context, I've played WC 1 - 3 prior to this one along with all of the expansions available. Yes the engine in WC3 was superior to this one, but this game represents the pinnacle of the old engine used in WC1, WC2 and Academy. No more do you have to worry about DOSBox running too fast or slow in the missions due to your CPU settings. General MIDI music also means that pretty much everyone should have access to the best music available. Everything from a technical standpoint is great with this game. Now let's talk about the gameplay. It's VERY open ended. The beginning of the game can be rough, but once you get your feet under you and figure out what cargo to run, you can get a better ship in no time. It took me about 8 hours of playing before I upgraded to a Centurion. Speaking of which, you can go straight to whatever ship you want. You don't have to buy a slug boat if you don't want to, unlike the main WC games where you were stuck flying a ship that you hated depending upon the mission. Heck, you could even ignore the main story if you want, but I don't know why you'd want to. It's actually pretty good. I'd even say that the majority of missions are pretty well balanced or even easy if you will. The final missions of the main game and the expansion pack can be tough, but I never felt the need to turn on invincibility. If I was going to lobby a complaint against the game, it would be that there are long stretches of you just flying through asteroid belts as you can't auto-pilot through them. Also, getting hit on the rear of your ship can be a death sentence even if you're fully upgraded. Having said that, these are minor complaints. If you like space sims, you'll love this one especially if you ever felt like playing a Han Solo type character.
I compare this game to other games of the time that I recently played like Space Quest. A good comparison would be Space Quest III since that game and the Enhanced Edition of Maniac Mansion came out at the same time. MM has an arguably better interface and graphics, but SQIII has a really good soundtrack that is completely missing from MM. This game is also more cryptic than SQIII. It has better replayability, but only a little. Only 4 of the kids really have a way to beat the game. Once you play through the game once, you'll breeze through it again for the second or maybe third time. I personally felt that the humor wasn't as good in this game compared to the SQ games, but that's just a personal thing. It was ok, but a bit dry. It's worth playing, but it's a product of its time for sure. The lack of any discernible soundtrack for the supposedly Enhanced Edition really hurts this game when other games that came out at the same time had good soundtracks. I never played this game, so nostalgia isn't really something that affected my decision here. I can't understand why anyone would want to play the 1987 version. Both the graphics and sound are worse than the Enhanced Edition and the sound wasn't really anything to write home about in that version either. I played this on Linux and the built-in version of ScummVM that came with this didn't play well with KDE. Using ScummVM from the Ubuntu repos worked perfectly though.
This game actually has quite a few improvements over its predecessor. Let me start with the in-flight graphics. I wasn't really sure how much I'd like the jump from sprite based to polygonal based graphics, but it's actually quite good even without any 3D acceleration. It took some adjustments to the more precise weaponry for me, but nothing too major. The general midi musical score is only a slight improvement over the MT-32 music in previous installments, but that's not a bad thing as the music was really good in those games. I don't want to paint everything in glowing terms though. The planet side graphics which you only saw a few times were actually really bland like something from the EGA era of graphics. Many people have probably mentioned this before, but yes the CGI cutscenes haven't actually aged all that gracefully. The story is adequate, but nothing to write home about. Like Wing Commander II, there is a big plot hole again revolving around a traitor. It's not as ridiculous as that game, but it still is a bit dumb. The mission design can be quite uneven, but thankfully the options menu to adjust the difficulty is easily accessible. In fact, just having different difficulty levels is a nice touch. It's just a shame that some of the missions are so over the top that you have to resort to changing the difficulty to beat them. Overall I'd say there's a noticeable improvement in regards to space combat and performance overall. The mission design can be uneven and the story just above average, but definitely a fun time that you should give a chance. At this price, that's really not that hard of a sell either.
Let me start off by saying that I don't believe the first Wing Commander game is unplayable. I'd say you get used to the slowdown and can even use it to your advantage at times. For the most part, it's actually really easy to stay on the winning side of the mission tree. The only system that gave me fits on my first playthrough was Brimstone. When I went back to replay some of the other systems I hadn't seen, I found out it was actually pretty easy to avoid that system. The story itself is ok. Nothing really to write home about, but it's serviceable. Now let's talk about the Secret Missions expansion packs for the first game. They're bad. Just pull the band aid off and admit it. The performance of SM1 is actually noticeably worse than the main game. Performance was greatly improved in SM2, but both of these games have a far worse problem; their mission design is absolutely horrid. I was forced to use the Origin -k cheat code multiple times for these packs. They just aren't fun. Wing Commander II works MUCH better in DOSBox. There are times when it is a bit too fast, but that's another thing you can get used to. The last mission of the game was tough, but I never had to resort to cheats to beat this game. You do have to suspend your disbelief towards the end there for the story, unfortunately. The Special Operations expansion packs are also well designed. SO1 did drop the ball at the end with a couple of impossible missions though. Up to that point, it wasn't too bad. SO2 was playable from beginning to end without any problems. One thing I'd like to point out. I played this with a Roland MT-32 for sound and it's a HUGE improvement over the Adlib sound. These devices are hard to come by, so you may want to look into the MUNT emulator for sound. You won't regret it. Overall, I'd give WC I a score of 3 stars and WC II a score of 4 stars. Great games worth playing to see where the space sim genre got its start.
Not only is the music good, but for previous owners of Baldur's Gate II, you get a suitable upgrade. The number of bonus tracks is substantially upgraded over previous Beamdog offerings. The music itself continues to have that epic feel as befits the Baldur's Gate games. This soundtrack as well as the Neverwinter Nights soundtrack are the only ones I can recommend from Beamdog for previous owners of their enhanced edition games. I should point out that this criticism of the other OST's doesn't apply to NEW soundtracks as those are items that weren't previously available.
Beamdog doesn't have the greatest track record with the soundtracks that they're selling with the enhanced editions of their games. What was previously free with the purchase of the game, they're now asking you to pay money for. For the cost of admission, your tracks are upgraded to FLAC instead of MP3's. There IS a small addition with this soundtrack of seven bonus tracks that weren't there before, so that's better than what you get with the Icewind Dale or Planescape Torment soundtracks. Still, I can't recommend buying this at full price, but at least previous owners get something extra for their effort. The three stars is for the music itself as it's suitably epic in scope.
Like the soundtrack for Icewind Dale, this one only offers FLAC versions of a soundtrack that used to come for free with the game. Not only that, but instead of any bonus tracks, you LOSE a track. As with that soundtrack, I'll recommend it for people who don't have the soundtrack already, but only if it's on sale. For those of us who previously had this game before the enhanced edition came out, avoid purchasing this. The music itself is good, so for that reason I'll give it 3 stars, but it's still disappointing that no extra effort at all was put into this OST.
If you previously had Icewind Dale and the soundtrack that came with it, you're paying for FLAC versions of the main soundtrack rather than MP3's. There aren't any extra songs at all and the Heart of Winter soundtrack isn't even upgraded to FLAC. The only reason I give this three stars is because the music itself is actually very good as you'd expect from Jeremy Soule. Unfortunately, Beamdog put no effort into providing any extras with this package so the price of admission is only justified if you don't have the soundtrack already. If you do, then even getting this on sale is hard to recommend.
I've played quite a few old school shooters and I have to say that this one was the hardest by far. That's comparing it to Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen and even Blood which I thought was pretty tough until I got to this game. Other people on the internet said how tough this game was due to hit scanning enemies and boy were they right. When playing on hotshot or normal mode, they'll rip right through your shields in just a few seconds. Homing missile enemies are likewise brutal. These two types of enemies are always lying in wait to give you cheap deaths. Combine that with the fact that this plays more like a 3D shooter with extra lives and they just crank up the difficulty through the roof. You will die over and over and that's by design. Sometimes dying is a good option to get more health and energy for your weapons, but if you die in a bad spot, good luck getting all of your equipment back. Some of the equipment sucks pretty badly too. The supposed strongest gun in the game, the fusion gun, just doesn't work well at all. I didn't find much use for proximity mines either. I used the DX Rebirth mod to update the visuals and controls so I can play on my TV and I have to say that it works really, really well. The visuals are basically just upscaled, but I didn't turn on any of the new special effects since I wanted it to look as close to the original graphics as possible. Playing this game with a controller worked really well also. I had to tweak it a bit, but eventually I got it just right. Hopefully my ranting about the difficulty doesn't turn you off, but if you want a less frustrating time do NOT play on hotshot difficulty your first time through. The first few levels will trick you into thinking it isn't that bad and then wake you up to reality real quick.
Absolutely awesome game that has been updated for modern systems without losing the feel of the original. I turned on all of the higher graphical options, but it still looked like the original game albeit at 1080p. That's a good thing in my opinion. Granted I haven't played the original Blood in a long, long time. This comes with the original in case you want to play it also. Not only that, but you have modern controller options that are super helpful if you want to play on your TV. Now as to the game itself, it is really challenging. I figured I was pretty good at games like this after beating games like Doom, Doom 2, Heretic and Hexen on the next to highest difficulty (Ultra-Violence, etc.), but this game put me in my place right away. I had to play on normal difficulty, ie Lightly Broiled, and was still being challenged quite a bit. Don't feel ashamed to lower the difficulty here unless you choose the lowest difficulty. The first episode is probably the most challenging of the non-expansion episodes, just so you know. The atmosphere is great as well, but make sure you turn on the CD music. It's really good and adds a new level of creepiness to the game. If you're in to the so-called boomer shooters, you need this game. It's one of the best hands down.
