[HN Gopher] Wing Commander IV
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Wing Commander IV
Author : doppp
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-04-07 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| meitros wrote:
| I remember the early previews of sc2 had the same type of
| interactive movie interaction as wc4 - being able to select a
| conversation option from either the top or bottom of the screen.
| They eventually scaled back a bit, but the wings of liberty
| campaign structure was definitely influenced by wc4
| smrtinsert wrote:
| I remember feeling betrayed that Luke Skywalker had joined
| another sci fi franchise. Enjoyed the first WC until X-Wing came
| and blew it out of the water.
| kriro wrote:
| Me and my friend, both poor HS kids at the time pooled money to
| buy this game, played it over the weekend and returned it :P
|
| It was a great game and we felt so clever for "beating the
| system" but we didn't even leave the store with the money as we
| immediately spent it on Warcraft 2 which we kept and played
| forever.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Remember when you could 'rent' games? I remember renting games
| all the time and then copying the discs so I could play them
| after I returned them when I couldn't afford a certain game.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| While it is true I couldn't afford the games I played as a
| teen, I'm confident I would have pirated them anyway. It had
| less to do with the game, and more about the conquest. When
| you discovered that a certain game had a keygen or was
| cracked, and you could get it for free, there was a certain
| rush of endorphins that would occur. Many of these games went
| mostly unplayed in my collection while I moved on to see what
| else I could get (if I recall, I did most of my searching on
| IRC and the games were downloaded via DCC, but my memory is
| getting fuzzy on the details). What nostalgia... that was
| back when piracy went mostly unpoliced as only the uber nerds
| were doing it or knew how (just remembering we called pirated
| software "warez" back then).
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| I'm convinced if renting games wasn't a thing, I may have
| never discovered my love for gaming. I owned maybe less than
| a dozen total physical games in the 4th gen 16-bit era, but
| was able to play 4-5x more than that thanks to being able to
| rent them. Its the only reason I mowed lawns and shoveled
| driveways as a kid, so that I could rent a couple
| genesis/snes titles each weekend.
| ilyt wrote:
| MS gamepass is essentially that now
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| ehh having to use it on a machine that has ms store enabled
| and run their fat client to download 50s of gb games is
| quite different in many ways. while months at a time for a
| game is nice it feels more as a data collection spigot and
| loss leader for onboarding users, vs a fun weekend rental
| giobox wrote:
| Kind of.... My local video rental place back in the day
| stocked just about every release for all the major consoles
| though. You weren't limited in scope in the same way
| GamePass will limit you to only GamePass supported Xbox/PC
| games.
|
| I don't think there is a modern service equivalent to peak
| video-store era game rentals, at least none spring to mind
| right now.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Stadia tried, hah.
|
| GameTap was an interesting failure, too.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Pretty sure my local Blockbuster never allowed "renting" PC
| games.
|
| Even then, CD writers in the early days could be of dubious
| quality. I remember letting a friend borrow my prized copy of
| Starcraft so that he could clone it through his CD writer,
| and when it emerged from the disc tray, it was scratched to
| hell and back. I still have no idea how a the disc laser
| could do that.
| ace2358 wrote:
| Lol your friend ruined the disc by not handling it
| correctly. Trust me, I did the same thing with my friends 4
| disc copy of diable 2. I remember while waiting for the
| discs to burn I was playing with the old one. I had it in
| the case and I was spinning it like it would in the drive.
| I ruined his copy. He cried and told his mum. I lied and
| said it came out of the burner like that.
|
| Poor bastard. I stole his cd key and got it banned online
| for playing with cheats.
| bombcar wrote:
| It wasn't the laser, it was the tray; if any dirt got stuck
| to the tray in just the right way, the CD could be
| scratched to hell and back quite easily.
|
| Some CDROMs also could have the "wait until spun down
| before dropping down" mechanism not work, and you could
| hear it spinning in the tray.
| stusmall wrote:
| I don't think Blockbuster ever did PC game rentals. It was
| smaller independent places and I don't remember ever seeing
| them after CD-ROMs became a common thing. I remember it
| being a thing around the time the sun was setting on 5.25"
| floppies and rising on 3.5".
|
| For us we had a little store in a strip shopping center on
| the corner called "Floppy Joe's". When you rented the game
| it came with the full box it came in, disks and instruction
| manuals. We'd goto the library and xerox the manual for the
| copy protection questions then copy the game contents onto
| a repurposed AOL floppy disk. I remember my dad being so
| pissed when AOL switched to read-only disks. After we did
| that we'd return the rental game. It's not surprising that
| business model went away. It was just the thinnest possible
| veil over piracy.
|
| I still have really fond memories of Floppy Joe's though. I
| remember going in once and seeing two people playing Doom
| multiplayer. It blew my mind. I had no idea such a thing
| was possible. I kept trying to tell one of the guys about
| IDDQD so he could beat his friend. He was being really
| sweet and patient to what, in retrospect, was probably a
| super annoying nerd kid bothering him while he was trying
| play.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| WC in the general series were all great, but the first game
| (edit, first space sim I played I mean) where you had to grind
| that I ever played was Privateer and that was the greatest for a
| 12 year old.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_Commander:_Privateer
|
| Later on, I really enjoyed Freelancer but by then I was older and
| it didn't have the same effect on me.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)
| D13Fd wrote:
| Privateer was just utterly amazing to 12-year-old me. After
| years of playing Wing Commander games on rails, it felt
| incredible to finally be free to see the open universe and the
| perspective of the ordinary citizens. My only disappointment
| with it was that it only had some of the military and Kilrathi
| ships from the main games.
|
| Such a good experience, hard to imagine replicating it these
| days - both because modern games are different, and because you
| only get to be 12 once.
| lobmo78 wrote:
| I remember playing the hell out of 3 when it came out, but for
| some reason we were disappointed with 4. If I remember right,
| when this came out, we had built a huge IPX network in a three
| story office building, and after business hours would smoke
| weed and play Descent, Dark Forces, and Hexen all night. Good
| times for sure!
| bhaak wrote:
| Freelancer was pretty cool but the (pretty short IIRC) single
| player story felt like a prelude and when it finished there was
| nothing meaningful left to do.
|
| I always suspected that the game was developed with a
| multiplayer first approach and the single player mode seemed
| like an addon. Which was a pity I would have liked to explored
| this universe more.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Freelancer shared a lot of the same hype cycle as Star
| Citizen has had (and used a lot of very similar rhetoric from
| Chris Roberts). I know I didn't buy into Star Citizen's hype
| because I certainly remembered Freelancer. Ambitions versus
| practical reality versus available budgets.
| rythmshifter wrote:
| Hug of death?
| gabereiser wrote:
| looks that way
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| The only thing I remember from this game is how I heard "Eat shit
| and die gato" 1000x.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/tz7YY
| civilized wrote:
| I like the Wing Commander series better than Star Wars, and Blair
| in WC4 was Mark Hamill's greatest role as far as I'm concerned.
|
| Wing Commander is space without the opera. It's humanistic and
| free of woo. There are no supernaturally gifted gurus wielding
| magic. The good guys do not seem predestined to win. Everyone in
| this big cosmic drama is just an ordinary person (or other
| sentient being) muddling through familiar problems.
|
| Seems like this reviewer wanted the movie parts to be more wacky
| and fun. Given that the premise is essentially (spoilers) space
| Nazis attempting a coup, I'm not sure how this would have made
| sense. If you want wacky fun, there are plenty of other space
| movies that will oblige you.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I distinctly remember that Wing Commander had "good guys" not
| winning paths. My second most frustrating experience in that
| game was intentionally choosing that path and managing to
| succeed on the final mission after umpteen tries (you have a
| crappy ship and overwhelming odds), only to have the landing
| autopilot fly me into the side of the Tiger's Claw. RIP.
|
| The most frustrating part was getting halfway through the
| campaign, only to discover that disk 10 was corrupt. I had to
| send away for a new one, which was a bit of a process because
| companies at the time were loathe to give additional physical
| media to avoid piracy. It took about 3 months to finally get
| the new disk.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Lol. I had the corrupt CD problem during my play through of
| "The Longest Journey". I appreciated the irony, as it added
| several months to the experience.
| sillywalk wrote:
| Also, I believe in the original Wing Commander, if you lost a
| mission, the next branch of the mission tree would be
| _harder_.
| syntheweave wrote:
| I played through original WC in the early 2000's, trying to
| win all missions. I got stuck on one that you really were
| meant to lose(escort, large numbers of attackers meant you
| had to execute with speedrun precision to have a chance)
| and stopped there. Later I looked more carefully at the
| walkthroughs and learned that the campaign progresses along
| the win path if you win most of the missions in the sector
| - you don't have to get 100% of them.
|
| I always admired the series for its world-building
| sensibilities. It's simple stuff - Star Raiders had the
| essence of the gameplay in 1979 - but injected with a lot
| of atmosphere.
| tomca32 wrote:
| I agree. I enjoyed WC4 even though it went a bit overboard with
| fmv but the story held up and both Mark Hamill and Malcolm
| McDowell were amazing. The senate scene at the end when Tolwyn
| breaks is just great.
|
| Gameplay and story wise I really think WC2 is by far the best
| in the series. The camaraderie between characters is just
| beautifully portrayed, and so many moments of betrayal, death,
| and tragedy were very emotional.
|
| I will wait for you in heaven...
| npsomaratna wrote:
| Mark Hamill was fantastic in both WC3 and 4. Both games had
| other stellar actors as well--John Rhys-Jones, Malcolm Dowell,
| etc. At times, the acting rivaled that found in a mainstream
| move.
|
| On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game) also had
| acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars movies. In
| comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s) had
| blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time. What a
| bummer.
| kreskin wrote:
| Don't forget about Ginger Lynn. She was great in WC and all
| of her other films.
| taeric wrote:
| It really made for a head scratcher for how bad the movie
| was.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > On an aside: Star Wars: Jedi Knight (first game)
|
| Second game! It was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. The first one
| (Dark Forces) had charming 2d animated cutscenes. The second
| (Jedi Knight) had live-action video cutscenes.
|
| > also had acting that rivaled that of the original Star Wars
| movies.
|
| I remembered really liking them, but on revisiting the game a
| couple years back... well, if you haven't seen them in a
| while, give them another look.
|
| > In comparison, Jedi Knight 2 (released in the early 2000s)
| had blocky 3D cutscenes, similar to other games of the time.
| What a bummer.
|
| But much, MUCH better lightsaber fighting.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Acting in JK was hit and miss IMO, or maybe it was writing or
| directing. Either way, I don't recall it being well received.
|
| Still, I'm glad they tried and yet also glad they went back
| to CG.
|
| BTW, OpenJKDF2 is a nice way to play today, with some modern
| enhancements.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Don't forget Tom Wilson!
| dwringer wrote:
| Too bad he couldn't have at least a Golden Globe for that
| role or something.
| MBCook wrote:
| My immediate impression of all Malcom McDowell characters is
| "they must be evil" until we learn more about them through
| the plot of a movie.
|
| All because he was evil in WC3. And that's my touchstone for
| him.
| jmull wrote:
| Hm... a review of Wing Commander IV that is 26 years late and
| bafflingly off-base! (and hugged to death).
|
| HN totally delivers on a slow Friday for me.
| rideontime wrote:
| What's bafflingly off-base about it? I haven't played it so I'm
| not disagreeing, that's just a very harsh criticism without any
| elaboration.
| jmull wrote:
| The review is pretty long and has numerous complaints...
| pretty much none of which were seen as problems as the time.
|
| There are a lot of perspectives from which to judge a work
| from the past, especially a video game, where so, so much has
| changed since then. But this review doesn't seem to have a
| coherent perspective, other than the reviewer just personally
| didn't like it. (That's fine, BTW, we all have our opinions,
| but that doesn't make a review.)
|
| Was too much money spent on the game? Or were the production
| values too low? The review paradoxically complains about
| both. There's a half-hearted attempt to resolve that by
| suggesting some kind of uncanny valley problem, but no one
| ever thought that at the time... it's the authors now
| personal valley, apparently. (Perhaps the author is mixing in
| some modern expectations about video game production values
| into this, which makes no sense, of course).
|
| Also, I wonder if the reviewer is really considering the
| medium as it was. This game was designed to be played on
| 14-15" lo-res CRTs and play video off low-speed CD-ROM
| drives. It's pure nonsense to compare this even to movies of
| the day. The set detail _had_ to be simple, to register at
| all. Even if you were so up-to-date you had a DVD drive and
| could play the higher-quality version of the cuts scenes,
| does it really make sense to complain the sets designed for
| that medium looked "plastic"? They looked great back then.
|
| There are many complaints about the writing of the cutscenes.
| I won't defend it as great art, but... it's a sci-fi
| adventure. There are supposed to be campy, punchy lines. This
| isn't the place for the deep treatment of serious themes or
| subtle character development, or nuanced story-telling. It's
| just baffling to me to judge this game because of what it was
| never meant to be, could never have been, and definitely
| never should have been.
|
| (From my perspective, WC IV was somewhat worse than III... it
| was too expensive, too short, and really needed a more
| powerful PC than I had at the time, so it didn't play that
| great. I think I remember there was one mission that was way
| too hard too, though maybe I wasn't approaching it the right
| way.)
| civilized wrote:
| For my part, I just don't get the point of writing this.
|
| Within the part of the article that's actually about the
| game, the author does basically nothing but scoff at things
| like the "workmanlike", "not ... subtle", "primary colors"
| nature of the story, or the "cheap, sparse, painfully
| plastic-looking sets", or how the characters use the callsign
| rather than the full real name of a fallen soldier during a
| funeral. There is almost nothing there about the story itself
| or its characters.
|
| I played this game a lot as a teen, and I thought the story
| had a lot of deeply sympathetic characters and emotionally
| resonant themes. It felt great to be the protagonist who
| uncovers fascist treachery at the top and averts a war. It
| felt great to do that with a team of comrades who shared your
| values and vigorously debated tactics. None of that gets a
| single word in this review.
|
| Of course not everyone is going to agree about what's a good
| movie, but I thought it deserved better than a collection of
| nitpicks that doesn't engage with the story at all. It seems
| like the critic just wanted the game/movie to be in a
| different genre, something more sophisticated or "subtle"
| with more "shades of gray"? But what's the point of that? It
| seems like criticizing Saving Private Ryan for not being
| Apocalypse Now or Starship Troopers. Okay, it's not the type
| of movie you wanted to see, I guess? But isn't it a little
| cliche, in itself, to reflexively disdain everything that is
| straightforward rather than meta, ironic, deconstructive, and
| self-referential?
| syntheweave wrote:
| The author basically dislikes all the trends of 90's
| gaming, but he had already run through the old stuff at
| this point.
|
| Anyway, he does have a point in that as a piece of
| interactive narrative, it's more expensive, and adding a
| lot of production has its own charm, but it's also a step
| back from the very best Infocom adventure games when you're
| looking at the kind of play experience it presents, which
| is basically a CYOA book - the only experimenting to do is
| to choose option A over option B. This isn't necessarily
| wrong, even - visual novels have made a real art of that -
| but it's about the craft behind that kind of narrative, and
| not the direct engagement with technology.
|
| One respect in which I differ from Maher's view is that I
| don't really see the direct engagement as important. In
| most instances games are performing cartooning in their use
| of technology, and so adding more legible "player verbs"
| and "simulation elements" isn't necessarily adding that
| much to the message. Sometimes all you need to do to make a
| game narrative stick is to hide a major branch within a
| subtle decision, or force a replay to allow a different
| option to appear.
| StrictDabbler wrote:
| You probably haven't been reading The Digital Antiquarian
| over the past five years.
|
| The site is an enormous dissertation on the art of
| interactivity. You could call it an attempt to put every
| major development in narrative gaming into context for
| their era.
|
| Jimmy Maher went all the way back to the early Plato-era
| mainframe games. He's covering everything from Adventure to
| Zork.
|
| [I'm joking, those two games happened almost at the same
| time.]
|
| But for "the point of writing this", that's why. It's a
| history of all the major games and being included in it is
| a pretty serious endorsement of Wing Commander IV's
| cultural value.
|
| In the context of the history of interactivity Wing
| Commander IV doesn't do that well. They spent a ton of
| money to make a game that's arguably less interactive than
| the earlier games in the series. That was how the 90s went.
| More and more money spent on bad full-motion video, fewer
| and fewer actual game choices.
|
| It's hard not to snark on the production values when they
| spent $12 million to make it. Again, it's a historical
| account... videogame budgets for absolute classics six
| years earlier were like $100k if you were lucky.
|
| It doesn't matter if it's a fun and enjoyable game. It's
| part of the fall of adventure gaming. That's the story.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed. WC4 may not have been Chris Roberts' best work, but
| this review certainly wasn't Jimmy Maher's best.
|
| It would be just as big a mistake to blow off the whole
| Wing Commander franchise based on this review, as it would
| be to dismiss filfre.net as a collection of jeremiads about
| obsolete games. They are both great works in reality, and
| both have a lot more to offer than meets the eye in this
| instance.
| MBCook wrote:
| The main thing I remember about Wing Commander 4 was it came on
| quite a few CDs. Something like 6? All due to the video.
|
| I remember thinking it would make much more sense on a DVD, but
| I'm guessing nowhere near enough people had DVD drives at the
| time and it would have destroyed sales.
| tgorgolione wrote:
| Interestingly enough, they actually did release a version on
| DVD with full MPEG-2 video (more info here:
| https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/13753), but it was an
| extremely special edition that I think only worked with
| hardware MPEG-2 decoders. Nowadays, you can play this version
| with software decoding using some community hacks, but the
| GOG.com version has the high quality video and has done all the
| work for you.
|
| EDIT: I was partially wrong. After reading the article, there
| was a version that was essentially all of the CDs' data on one
| DVD, but that was replaced with the version I mentioned.
| bitwize wrote:
| "Break formation and open fire!"
|
| "Won't even know what hit 'em!"
| Tepix wrote:
| Decades after Wing Commander, Chris Roberts went on to launch a
| crowdfunded space simulation game called Star Citizen in 2010. It
| is still in early buggy unpolished alpha state after all these
| years, despite (or because?!) raising more then half a billion
| dollars. Too bad.
| hijinks wrote:
| i hated how the final mission was a trench run and they had Mark
| Hamill as the main actor. It just felt like the designers just
| gave up.
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