Wing Commander ®: Privateer ™

I was so excited getting to play this again because I never beat it the first time around back in '93. And now I remember why. The third to last mission is impossible. Several attempts and several hours wasted and no progress. That's the exact opposite of fun. It was pretty great up until Taryn Cross's third mapping mission and then all the joy and excitement up until that point is demolished by wave and after wave of pirates and Kilrathi. There're no tricks or strategy to this one. Apparently the programmers were stuck in the mindset of Wing Commander where you actually had wingmen and some backup. This is PRIVATEER. You're alone. What goes through a developer's mind that 1 ship vs. 16-20 are totally reasonable odds? I'm sick and tired of games where developers seem to think endless repetition of missions until you get lucky is 'fun' and 'challenging'. My dayjob is challenging. I'm just here for the fun. Privateer, 20 years later, can still suck it. Pointless.

The game is fairly enjoyable once you get the hang of the controls. You have to grind quite a bit in the beginning to earn money for a viable ship, then it's a lot of fun until you start to approach the end. And end I'll never experience, I'm afraid. The developers saw fit to encumber the final several missions with ridiculous odds; fighting foes both ways ... they respawn ... while massively outnumbered, outclassed, and trapped in asteroid fields. The only way to prevail is pure luck. You go from challenging encounters that test your skills, but are fair and rewarding when you succeed ... to pure stupid. This is not my idea of entertainment.

The controls are absolutely terrible. The mouse is useless, as Privateer interprets the mouse as a joystick. The keyboard and joystick are so coarse as to make effective targeting next to impossible. The graphics were fine back in 1993. The pixel replication just looks lousy nowadays. The story, it's okay. Better than many. There are some parts that are extremely grindy, and the missions don't have a whole lot of variety. My favorite part was always running trade routes (especially contraband) and seeing how much money I could stack up, but the random nature of the encounters takes some of the shine off. Better controls, functional joystick calibration, and key remapping would boost Privateer up to three, or maybe even four stars. As it is, I'm being generous giving it a two. There's just no fun to be had here.

Full stop.

I still have to original 3.5" floppies at my parents' house, and also the expansion pack (Will it arrive to GOG?) - had a great time finishing them the first time around, and going for a second time soon. I guess I'll have to purchase a decent joystick now.