Topic: WING COMMANDER!!!

[Successor The Cruel]

This is one of my favorite game series. I've been revisiting it lately, and it reminds me why I love it so much. Looking at it now, it's amazing what these games did for video games as a whole. Before the first game there was absolutely nothing like it, and it's full of trail blazing ideas.  If you're not familiar with it, this is a pretty good video I found on Youtube that kind of explains what the series is about.

Wing Commander (Review) + 2, 3, 4 Overview

Really fun games. I love them all, but the pinnacle is Wing Commander IV.  That game is sheer brilliance.

[Abnormal Freak]

I sucked so bad at these games. So bad. But I watched my brother play all the really important story bits of the third and fourth games. So good. Definitely really well-written stories with excellent acting.

Perhaps I'll install the games on ye olde gaming rig and go through 'em; maybe I won't suck so bad these days. I'd really like just to go through the stories again. They're like really long, excellent movies.

[X]

Didn't the make a Wing Commander movie just a few years ago?

[Abnormal Freak]

If by "a few" you mean twelve, yeah. :o It wasn't very good.

[Aridale]

yeah it was horrible... I mean it had Freddie Prinze Jr and Matthew Lillard in it... cmon now...

[Successor The Cruel]

I have never seen the Wing Commander movie and never really wanted to. Knowing what I do of it, though, I wouldn't let that color my perception of the game series, which is incredibly remarkable.

I think Wing Commander games do have a bit of a steep learning curve, as games go. In a sense, that's kind of cool to me, though. It makes them feel more life-like. Just like we have to learn to effectively drive cars, there is some effort put into learning to fly space fighters, and each fighter/bomber class you fly feels different, which is really cool. For example, a Hornet light-fighter is going to be notably different from a Scimitar medium fighter. There is a lot of care put into these games, even in the subtle details, and it shows. The cool thing about Wing Commander is it keeps things interesting for us while we're learning, as it introduces intriguing characters and the story unfolds.

I also have to applaud the missions you go on. When I recently replayed the first game, I was surprised that you never do the same thing twice. Out of all those missions (or sorties, as they're called), there aren't any redundant missions. They all involve shooting down or escorting something, but there is always a new twist that makes them different. For a game as old as Wing Commander 1 is (1990), I am really blown away at how detailed, mature, and intricate it is. It gets you pretty personally involved in the game. When my Wingman is in trouble, I do get worried, because s/he's an actual character that can go away for good, and I like practically all the characters in the game. It sucks when they die, and it's not very hard to get killed out there : /

Just the other day, after as long as I'd been playing this, an enemy fighter practically ruined me in like three seconds with a series of direct blows (a heavy fighter with really powerful guns, I was flying a medium fighter), so my wingman and I just turned around back to the carrier and failed the mission. Better that than dying. Unfortunately, it was a very important mission and caused the story to take a bad turn, but that's just one of the things that makes the game so great.

[Juno106]

I had Wing Commander II but could ever get into it and even when the 3rd one got released with its all-star cast it failed to pique my interest. The only big deal I could see was that Ginger Lynn Allen had a cameo 

[Successor The Cruel]

I didn't even know she was a porn star until well after I played Wing Commander 3. Hmm, Wing Commander 3 - play as Mark Hamill, fly a space fighter, your side kick is Biff from Back to the Future, you blow things up, and have a porn star love interest. Nerd's dream.

[Abnormal Freak]

Don't forget Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies. Them some coooool mufuggerz.