Wing Commander : Unknown Enemy - Day 2

July 3rd, 2009

It turns out the the Fralthi in Mission 2 was just a support ship and we still need to take out a Ralari in the next mission.

We get to fly captured Gratha’s from the Fralthi. These don’t really handle any differently from anything else I’ve flown but I do get a new HUD.

I fly against Salthi’s for the first time in a while. They are really small in this game and remind me of the little ships that broke away from the Manta’s in WCP.

We are supposed to go searching for the Ralari but get called back as it attacks the Dauntless.

This mission is tough but not to the extent of the previous one. The biggest problem is taking out the Ralari as the fighters are easily dealt with. My wingmen can take out its engines but the torpedoes are always shot down when going for the bridge. On one pass the Ralari just ignores me and I get in to point blank range and take out its turrets without it shooting back. As soon as these are down the torpedoes get through and its gone in seconds.

I get my next password for the fiction. I notice today that each type of fiction can have several sections. I managed to miss this yesterday and missed quite a bit of the story. It makes a bit more sense now. It is actually set in the SO time period. The border worlds just have to make do with old technology which is why we have all these ancient ships from WC2. Why we are up against the Kilrathi I don’t know but the main part of the plot concerns the Border Worlds mobilising to withstand the bug invasion which is where all our ships are going and why we have to make do with Scimitars.

There is another cutscene after the mission but they all skip by in seconds so I can’t tell you anything about it.

In addition there is an in-engine cutscene showing the Intrepid from WC4 being attacked by bugs.

Mission 4 has me investigating what happened to the Intrepid.

I get to choose a Banshee if I want this time. WC4 technology has to be better than WC2 so I go for this.

When we get to the Intrepid there is nothing but wreckage. One of my wingmen flies over to investigate and a load of bugs fly out of the hangar.

After fighting these then defending some transports, I’m called to defend the local starbase. I’m going to be seeing a lot of this place. This mission is pretty tricky and I try it quite a few times. Eventually I get the idea that I just need to hang around the base and take out any torpedoes launched at it. As soon as I go for this tactic, only one torpedo is fired which I take out and my wingmen + the Kilrathi from the Fralthi who are now helping us out take out the bugs in absolutely no time.

I get to dock and refuel before carrying on. Next I have to defend more transports, then its back to the base to defend that again, then off to the Dauntless to defend that, then back to the base escorting the Fralthi to yet again defend the base and finally back to the Dauntless . As soon as I go defensive, this mission is really easy but I hardly take out any torpedoes so I’ve no idea why it made such a big difference.

The next mission is a straight scramble and protect the Dauntless. This is the easiest mission in the game so far by a mile. I complete it first time with no trouble at all.

Mission 6 involves escorting two sets of transports to a jump point.

I get the first set to the point without any real difficulty.

I then have to refuel by docking with an Avenger. The technique for this seems a bit hit and miss. I’m supposed to close within a certain distance and slow to a particular speed.

This is easier said than done and doesn’t seem to trigger the docking. In the end rocking my throttle back and forth when I get close does the trick.

The second escorting proves to be harder and I lose two ships. I have to defang a capship as it closes on the jump point and the transports but don’t start this until too late. I’m aiming for the winning path so I’ll have another go at this mission before I go any further.

The difficulty level of this game has varied today but for the most part these missions are still extremely tricky. Some of them are really epic in length and failing at the last point is galling to say the least. None of the missions have been as over the top as the Fralthi mission and have been a bit better judged but you couldn’t aim this game at anyone except serious WC fans as they wouldn’t be prepared to persevere. I am going to get about a weeks worth of decent gaming out of UE by the looks of it though. When I started I was expecting to breeze through 11 missions in one night.

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Wing Commander : Unknown Enemy - Day 1

July 1st, 2009

Wing Commander: Unknown Enemy is a fan made mod for Special Ops created by the team that went on to do Standoff. It’s not a game I know much about and if I’m going into a game not knowing much I prefer to keep it that way rather than picking up any spoilers. I do know it was released about 10 years ago and created as an attempt to be the best WC fan made game available at the time.

To this end, it comes with a fiction viewer as well as the game itself. Completing a mission gives me a password which opens up a bit more of the text. This is a nice idea - it’s a pity it couldn’t be incorporated into the game itself but it’s not a big deal to exit and restart the game after each mission. The writing quality is fair, positively good for fan fiction but you probably wouldn’t get a book published writing like this. I could level the same criticism about the plot in most games, having said that. For a fan game, this stuff is well above what you would expect.

In brief, the plot revolves around a Border Worlds ship called the Dauntless where I am a Wing Commander.

The game even has an introductory movie. From what I can see, this looks well done but it speeds by at 1000mph and is over in a couple of seconds presumably due to my processor speed. I can see it’s more for show than anything else so I don’t worry about missing it.

There is a bit of an intro showing my carrier and a few ships taking off. The first things I notice here are that all the models are new and that this game is going to be set around the WC2 timeline judging from the ships. The Dauntless bares a strong resemblance to the Concordia only we get to see it in full 3D. There is new voice acting as well - the acting isn’t always too strong but it works better than you might expect.

The first mission is a simple patrol, with the option of inspecting freighter craft for contraband.

I get a choice of ship - a Scimitar or an Epee. I remember both well from Wing Commander 2 - I’d rather be in a Broadsword but maybe I’ve got that to look forward to. I go for the heavier Scimitar.

I get a better look at a few of the new models when I take off. They aren’t up to the level of detail of the original Secret Op’s models. However, they do look very faithful to the WC2 originals. It does look as though the sprites of that game have been brought to life, with perhaps a small loss of detail but even so it gives the game a retro feeling instead of just being amateur. It was a good choice to take the game back in time.

I can literally just autopilot 3 times and complete this mission but if I want to do it properly I discover that I have to inspect all the transport ships and one has contraband. It refuses to surrender and we get into a fight.

It’s joined in the fight by mining ships. These have no shields and are extremely slow. It’s a reasonably easy start to the game. My biggest problem is getting them in my sights but they drop in a few hits when I do. I’m also having to get used to actually aiming again after playing Starlancer.

I should mention the music which is all original to UE. It’s in the spirit of WC2 and while it loops more than I would like it wouldn’t be too out of place in that game. It changes track during battles just like WC2 picking up the pace. A lot of the radio chatter is original too but the taunts are taken from Secret Ops - some of these are out of place as they mention bugs or Casey but it’s easy to ignore this.

After wiping out the fighters we strip the transport of all its guns at which point it surrenders.

We escort it to a base and fly off to complete the patrol.

After completing the mission, I get my first password for the fiction. I’m struggling a little to tie the fiction in with the mission I’ve just flown + the one I’m about to fly. The story talks about the Dauntless losing all its squadrons as they are transferred out and the ship itself it prepared for retirement.

Mission 2 is capturing a Fralthi. This is the first time I’ll have been up against the Kilrathi in a while.

There is another example of the branching mission system used in UE early in the mission. There are two incoming groups of fighters and I have to pick which one to intercept in an attempt to find the Fralthi. I go for the Dralthis/Vaktoths. I don’t remember any Vaktoths in WCP - the models appear to have been stripped from WC3/4 and copied over into the new engine.

As soon as I arrive, I get a message saying the Fralthi is withdrawing into the asteroid belt and I have to afterburn to locate it before we lose it’s signal.

When I do see it, it just sits there and there is no sign of an asteroid belt but I’ll suspend disbelief for now.

Taking out the turrets on this thing is phenomenally hard. The ships in UE are more like those in WC2 in that you can die in a few hits. This makes taking on turrets nearly impossible.

I try this mission over and over again until eventually I luck out and my wingmen come through for me. We are also joined in the final battle by some more ships. They all have a habit of getting themselves killed which is where the luck comes in.

This gets me another password. I think this mission stepped over the line between challenging and frustrating. If the missions continue to get harder then I’m going to have problems finishing this game. I guess I have to bear in mind that this whole thing is only 11 missions long and would be over in no time with the same difficulty level as Secret Ops.

So far UE looks pretty good. It’s not in the same league as Starlancer but it’s not really fair to compare a fan game to a commercial release. At least this runs in XP, I just hope it gets a little easier.

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Starlancer - Day 4

June 30th, 2009

I watch the latest news report before I start mission 4. These mission reports are all the same and the woman reading them is slightly irritating. Out of all the things in the game I could remember from playing it 10 years back, the thing that sticks in my mind is her introduction and sign off which is always exactly the same. Our squadron gets a mention this time but only in a supporting role.

Mission 4 involves escorting some radar ships to plug a gap in our defenses. I’m sorry to say that this mission crashes at exactly the same point every time, just after I clear the first nav point and am receiving a message. At this point I officially throw in the towel. I’d like to play Starlancer again but it isn’t worth this much hassle. As soon as I fix one problem, it just crashes somewhere else in the next mission. This has to be one of the least XP friendly games ever created and short of building a PC which will run Win98 I’m out of ideas. It’s a pity as I think I would have quite enjoyed this. To fill the space sim gap I’m going to try my first fan game and play Wing Commander : Unknown Enemy next.

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Starlancer - Day 3

June 29th, 2009

In the end I hardly managed any time on Starlancer this weekend so I’ve just got the two missions to report. I spoke too soon in my last post when I said I’d fixed my technical problems. In the end I am running this on XP and I’ve had to turn off all the other cores in my BIOS which seems to have done the trick but I’ve thought that before. The imagecfg program was setting it to run on 1 CPU without any problems but it was running the icd and exe on different cores still which may have been the problem. 

Mission 2 has us meeting up with the Puma sqaudron to help more of our retreating ships. The mission has a few stages including escorting a cap ship while the Puma’s are busy elsewhere.

For the final stage of the mission, we come up against an enemy capship and we have no means of taking it out. It’s soon joined by a second. We are given the command to retreat but as soon as we finish off the fighters the cavalry arrives.

With a couple of torpedo bursts our ship takes out the opposition in seconds. There is a phased explosion on the capships as they burn to a husk from one end. The graphics in this game are growing on me - the advances from WCP are subtle and are in the explosions, ship animation and the like. There are little details like a slight corona appearing around planets when they are in the correct light. The actual models are arguably less interesting but the little details make up for it and this cutscene looks good by any standards.

My debriefing after the mission is in the form of a text message. Each mission has several sub elements - I’m assuming I could fail one or all of these affecting this text and possibly future missions. This works ok but it’s less interesting than Wing Commander 2’s cinematic equivalent.

For mission 3 I’m sent out to retrieve a flight recorder from one of our ships which was destroyed. Our rookie squadron is going to team up with a veteran one including ace Klaus Steiner. 

The recorder in in the middle of a mine field. I have to track it down using a homing device style beeper. Steiner speculates on where the enemy are coming from since there are not supposed to be any carriers around here.

We soon find out when we are ambushed at the next nav point.

We are all sucked into a wormhole…

…only to emerge at Neptune.

It appears the coalition has some new technology. I’m ordered to go and destroy it.

I have to fly in close and then blast these armour panels off before shooting the core inside.

This starts the collapse of the wormhole and I have to fly back in asap while its still open.

We make it in time with and the wormhole collapses behind us leaving us to mop up the enemy ships.

In yet another stage, I then have to disable this science vessel for capture. Rather than having ion beams I have to blow the engines off to achieve this.

I’m getting the hang of Starlancer now and found these two missions a lot easier than the first one. There are a few little quirks which take some getting used to, such as a varying turning speed depending on how fast you are going. The ships all have a blindfire which is taking a lot of the skill away. This is similar to the Excalibur in WC3 where it aims for me only this seems to be much more accurate. The laser recharge rate is quite high here and has a rapid refire which also helps. In some ways this feels closer to Privateer 2 than Wing Commander because of this. Even some of the taunts the pilots use are stolen straight from Priv2.

I’m impressed with the scale and variety of these two missions for such an early point in the game. From what I’ve seen so far this will be far better than I remembered although without the strong storyline I’m never going to like it as much as the Wing Commander series no matter how good the missions are.

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Starlancer - Day 1

June 29th, 2009

After directing Wing Commander, Chris Roberts broke away from Origin and started work on Freelancer which I’ll be playing at some point in this blog. He also took his brother Erin along who had previously worked on Privateer 2 and it was Erin who headed up the Starlancer team. They may have left Origin but this is hardly a change in direction and was very much on the lines of Wing Commander.

Things start well enough in that I can actually run this game on Win7 without any problems. Hypersnap have released an update and I don’t have any trouble capturing the video screenshots either this time.

The intro is fairly lengthy and impressive for the time. The action doesn’t rely on aliens to provide the opposition as is Wing Commander and this time the war is entirely human. It shows a peace treaty being drawn up between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. The East were just using this as a ruse though and a load of ships uncloak and wreak havoc. A news bulletin describes the devastation and calls for volunteers which is where I come in. I’m flown to my base ship and given the introductory talk.

The interface for the game in interesting in that I walk around my bunks in first person, 7th Guest style. It’s nicely done actually and adds a bit of atmosphere. I can just click to skip the animation if I’m feeling impatient and when the novelty has worn off will no doubt do exactly that.

My commander gives me a tour of my bunk via the video screen. It has all the usual areas seen in games like Wing Commander or X-Wing.


First stop is the flight simulator for some training.

There are 3 training missions. I start at the beginning with HUD training. I’m shown being shoved out of my base ship by a giant metal piston - this is nowhere near as nice as the Prophecy launch sequence.

Once in the cockpit I’m talked through all my instruments. This is a long process and the mission takes about 15 minutes in all. The interface is quite nice in that it slides in relevant bits as and when. These then vanish when nothing is changing giving an unobstructed view.

I get to blow up my first ship as part of the mission. The animation here is well done with the ship being blown into polygons.

I then get to blow up my first cap ship. I can blow turrets and things off this in the same manner as prophecy. The turrets are a bit more detailed than the octagonal blobs from WCP but its not a huge improvement. The ship is arguably a lot less interesting than the giant alien destroyers from that game.

After enough shots the capship blows up into pieces. I see electrical sparks and things but I’m too close up for a good view.

I dock back with my capital ship at the end of the mission. I know this is only training but I have to admit to being a bit underwhelmed by my first mission. This game came out years after WCP and I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t look worse. There is nothing new whatsoever in this first mission either and I know the story elements will be weaker also so this isn’t a good sign. It’s early days though so I push on to mission 2.

The second training mission is much shorter and deals with navigation. Here I have to assume escort formation by flying into the red box.

After a bit of escorting I then have the obligatory flying through rings bit. The rings are a long way apart even using afterburners and this is not any sort of challenge. It certainly pales compared to Xwing or Tie Fighters mazes.

I can’t get the 3rd training mission to start as the game just crashes. I decide to just press on and start the real missions. The first person FMV here even has me walking all the way to the briefing room.

I do like the first person FMV a lot - the video quality is excellent and far better than for the introduction. The mission briefing uses more FMV and has me escorting the British fleet.

I get to choose from one of four ships which is surprising at this stage. It looks like this is a game with a lot of ships from but I stick with the default option for now.

There is another FMV showing me running to start the mission.

The first mission has me taking out fighters initially, then intercepting torpedoes. It’s pretty tricky for the start of the game although I just about manage it on my first attempt with severe damage. At the end of the mission the game crashes. I’m sorry to say this was a bug that was also present in Vista and I haven’t managed to find a solution to it. I expect I’m going to have problems repeatedly with this blog and if I’m going to make any serious attempt to play these games I’m going to be forced into setting up an XP partition. This is going to delay things a bit but I’ll be back as soon as I get XP set up.

This post is a day late as it got left on my pen drive. Since then, I’ve set up XP in a new partition on my hd and the process was fairly painless if lengthy. The only problem I had was during the first attempt to boot from the hard disk. I had to use the Win7 CD to repair the boot record, then boot Win7, add the XP partition as an extra boot option, before booting it to continue the install. 1gb+ of driver and update downloads later and I’m all set up. Starlancer is running and the 3rd training mission works now so it looks like the hanging is fixed and I can get on with the game again.

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Starlancer - Day 2

June 27th, 2009

You may be reading this wondering what happened to day one. I’ve written the post, its on my pen drive and been left in the office - twice. Writing it again seems like far too much effort so if I ever remember to pick it up I’ll post day 1 then. My attempts to play Starlancer are turning into something of a non event so far anyway so you haven’t missed much.

In Day 1, I was struggling to get the game running and had managed to play a couple of training missions then completed mission 1 of the game proper only for the game to crash every time I tried to land. Since then I’ve installed Windows XP on a new partition on my hard disk and things look promising as the 3rd training  mission which I previously couldn’t play works straight off. This mission is target training and starts out with some armoured targets. I have to shoot them when the armour opens.

I then get a course when I have to fly through rings shooting more targets. The rings are in a dead straight line so this isn’t too hard. When I attempt to land I get the game crashing bug at the end of the mission exactly as before though.

Not to be put off I restart the game. On the way out, I have a look at my ITAC. This is where a lot of the games plot will be related via news stories and also has the killboard, ship details and I can go back and rerun FMV’s. I attempt to replay mission 1 at this point but don’t even make it through the briefing without the game seizing up again. I hate to give in but I think I’m going to have to admit defeat on this one. I’ve seen a lot of posts on the web with people unable to run it and nothing much in the way of solutions. Starlancer is a game I’ve played before right back when it came out at least. I remember being quite underwhelmed by it. The graphics were nice but the gameplay was uninspired and the plot very minimal. I was looking forward to giving it another go for all that as there has been a dearth of space sims in the years since. I’m open to ideas if anyone has got this running but failing that I’ll leave Starlancer and move onto the next game.

EDIT: It’s a couple of hours later and I’ve figured out what the problem was. I thought I’d get Thief up and running and started getting the same problem only I managed to find some help on the internet which pointed me in the right direction. The crashing was caused by running the game on a multi-core processor. Having been single core up until a few weeks back its not something I’ve seen before but its easily fixed by patching lancer.exe and lancer.icd using imagecfg so that the game only uses a single core.  I think there is an option in my bios to turn off hyperthreading + the extra cores in my bios also but this is a better solution. It’s now running perfectly on Windows 7 and I just completed the first mission without a scratch this time around and better still no crash when I tried to land.

It’s kind of interesting that I’ve seen a load of posts on the web with people who had the same problem on Starlancer and not a single one of them mentioned multi-core CPU’s as being the potential cause yet as soon as I try to get Thief running I find the answer in no time.  I know what I’m doing now to get these games running at least and will get a good few hours in on Starlancer at some point over the weekend.

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Wing Commander - The Movie

June 18th, 2009

On the whole movies based on computer games have never worked out well. One of the big problems is that there is no reason why a good game has to work in another format - attempting to convert something like Super Mario into a film just doesn’t make any sense. A lot of other titles like Tomb Raider were games that ripped off films in the first place so by the time the film was made it was hardly going to be original. My hopes were higher with Wing Commander. Here we were talking about a series of games that had always played like movies anyway and with Wing Commander 3 and 4 were as much movie as game. Not only this but Chris Roberts who had brought us the series in the first place and proved he knew where to point a camera in Wing Commander would be directing it. What could possibly go wrong? Lets find out…..

The titles show a very brief history of the Kilrathi war. The movie goes right back to the beginning and comes in more or less where the first game started although the plot is going to be very different. My first and possibly biggest complaint with the whole film is the music. The theme used here attempts to be epic and rousing but comes across as over the top to the extent that it would fit far better with a parody of the sci-fi genre. This is a bit of a problem as the same theme will be used constantly throughout the film. George Oldziey’s music in Wing Commander 3 and 4 was superb - this just isn’t on the same level and it makes it difficult right from the start to take this film seriously. The music at no time contributes towards generating an atmosphere which is vital in any film.

WC starts out showing a Confederation fleet…

…which is immediately attacked by the Kilrathi. The special effects here aren’t too bad although not brilliant by modern standards. The effects were done by a new company called Digital Anvil formed for this movie which would then go on to do work on Starlancer and Freelancer.

The Kilrathi invade the command ship (called the Pegasus) and go for its NavCom unit. The self destruct on this fails and the last we see is a desperate message being sent by the Captain.

This message is picked up by the Concordia which is under the command of Tolwyn (this time played by David Warner). The entire cast for this game has been changed from Wing Commander 3 and 4 which isn’t necessarily a bad thing provided you get the right people in. It is after all set many years earlier than the events in Wing Commander 3 so everyone is supposed to be a lot younger. We do see a few actors who were in Privateer 2 though including David Warner. Out of all the actors in the film he isn’t actually bad at all as Tolwyn but he is barely on screen and his character is quite different to the Tolwyn in the games.

If the Kilrathi have the navcom they can find a route to Earth and be there in 40 hours. The Concordia can’t get there for 42. There is however a nearer civilian ship commanded by Taggart and crewed by Blair and Marshall.

This is where we cut to Blair fiddling with a funny looking cross. You don’t find out for a while but this is a relic from his mother who from from a race of human explorers called Pilgrims. These Pilgrims have a mythical ability to feel their way through space and navigate without the need for Navcoms but they thought they were better than humans and were all but wiped out in a war with Terrans some years back. Blair is half-pilgrim on his mothers side but his father was a war hero. Both died when he was very young and he carries the cross for luck although it seems to bring him trouble.

This idea of pilgrims is a new one for the movie and I’m not keen. I prefer my sci-fi without mythical extras on the whole - I guess we have Star Wars to blame for that but it was done far better in those films.

Blair is played by Freddie Prinze Jr. I couldn’t honestly tell you another film he had been in. He isn’t too bad here given the material and his performance is best described as inoffensive.

Blair and Marshall are called to the bridge by Taggart. Taggart appears to be played by a Frenchman (although I’m guessing). He definitely isn’t Scottish at any rate. We get the message and instructions from Tolwyn to attempt to go with a message to the Tiger Claw about what the Kilrathi are up to. Taggart knows a shortcut and leaves Marshall to fly us to it.

The moment he’s left on his own, Marshall speeds up ignoring his orders. This isn’t a good idea as the reason no one uses this route is a mini black hole which we are now speeding towards.

Taggart orders Blair to fly us through the jump point while he is fixing the ships systems and Blair miraculously does this faster than a NavCom even though he has never done it before. He does this in the manner of a hacker in a Hollywood movie - i.e. he types a load of random keys really quickly for a couple of seconds. This is his Pilgrim heritage at work.

We get to see the Tiger Claw for the first time. Why the s was dropped from the name I don’t know. It doesn’t look much like the original either. There is a definitely WW2 thing going on with the ship design in this game with the cap-ships being submarines and the fighter’s WW2 planes.

We arrive and hand over the disk to the ships captain.

The captain is played by David Suchet who makes me think immediately of Poirot and definitely not of a ships captain. His second in command should be at home in a submarine as he is played by Jurghen Procnow who was the captain in Das Boot. He’s a decent actor and I especially liked him as the weary German army captain in The Keep but he has a one dimensional role in this film playing a racist anti-pilgrim antagonist who makes life difficult for Blair.

Blair goes exploring the ship with Marshall and climb into a Rapier for the fun of it. He gets to meet Angel and annoy her first by sitting in a dead pilot’s (Bossman) ship and then by mistaking her for a technician. She isn’t French but has an English public school accent.

The captain has a look at Tolwyns message. It tells him to proceed towards Earth and scout out what the Kilrathi are up to and if possible slow them down.

Blair heads for the bar with Marshall who makes the point of introducing himself as the best pilot on the ship.

Blair manages to annoy Hunter by mentioning that he sat in Bossman’s fighter. Apparently if someone dies around here they never existed….

Angel breaks it up but not before Hunter has pulled Blairs cross out exposing his heritage.

The captain isn’t inclined to believe the orders but Taggart convinces him by giving him a ring which has been in Tolwyns family for 16 generations.

Marshall and his new buddy Katie go out on patrol in the meanwhile. The fighters they are in look like a WW2 plane with short wings and no propeller. This is clearly deliberate and while you can make a case that WC was always about WW2 dogfighting in space, this literal interpretation just looks strange.

Marshall pulls off a stunt on landing flying in upside down. Katie copies him and it lands them both in trouble with Angel but it does earn him his Maniac call-sign.

The Tiger Claw arrives in system and Blair is sent out with Angel to scout ahead. They find wreckage from the Pegasus and also a Kilrathi listening satellite.

Blair thinks the Kilrathi are onto Angel who is hiding behind a satellite so despite orders to avoid contact they engage and destroy all targets.

This gives another opportunity for people to have a go at Blair accusing him of betraying them because he is a Pilgrim.

He does at least manage to convince Angel that he is on her side.

Maniac is getting friendly with his wingman when they are sent out to attack the Kilrathi.

Taggart is sent along as well but was of the opinion from the start that it was a Kilrathi decoy and a mistake to go after the target. His suspicion’s are confirmed and he reveals himself to be an undercover Commodore and orders the wing back to defend the Tiger Claw.

Taggart is correct and a fleet is attacking the Claw.

The captain is killed in the attack…

… but the fighters arrive in time and Paladin takes down the Kilrathi cap-ship himself with a 4 torpedo attack run.

Everyone is ordered back to base but Maniac + g/f head off to take out a few Kilrathi. This inevitably results in her ship being damaged and she crash lands on the Claw with no chance of surviving.

Angel wants to execute him for treason but is talked out of it eventually.

The Claw decides to hide in an asteroid from the main Kilrathi fleet.

They send out a decoy to distract the Kilrathi but some of them still carry on and start bombing every crater. This whole scene plays out like hiding from the depth charges in Das Boot except of course its nowhere near as good.

The ship is hit and suffers a hull breach. One of the pilots from Hunter’s squad is nearly sucked out but Maniac rescues him getting him a bit of redemption in the eyes of some of the crew.

The Claw needs fuel so the next mission is to capture some from the Kilrathi. This means a bit of combat on a Kilrathi ship. It’s very brief and try as I might to capture a screenshot of the Kilrathi they are on so briefly that this is as good as I managed. Blair discovers the missing Navcom which means that they now know the location that the Kilrathi will be entering Earth space.

Someone has to go to Earth and pass on these coordinates. Step forward Blair who is the only one who can do the job thanks to the quickest route being impossible to navigate by Navcom. He is sent with Angel to follow him but she gets her ship damaged by Kilrathi and he has to leave her behind for the sake of Earth in a scene that attempts to be touching but really isn’t.

A Snakeir spots Blair enter the jump and follows.

I get a decent screenshot of some Kilrathi at last. They look quite a bit different to those in the game although I was never entirely happy with the giant Muppet from WC4. These are if anything a bit of an improvement but I can see why they don’t get much screen time.

Blair makes it to Sol and broadcasts his message but in the meanwhile the Tiger Claw is having to fight its way out of trouble.

Tolwyn can’t give Blair any help as they have to cover the jump coordinates.

Conveniently for Blair he is near the anomaly from the start of the movie and manages to sucker the Snakeir in too close. In one of the more improbable plot features it mistakes the black hole for the Confed fleet until its too late. Blair escapes but is now out of fuel.

The Tiger Claw manages to survive its encounter and the rest of the Kilrathi get blown to bits within moments of coming through the jump point by the Confed fleet.

Blair is picked up by a pilot looking suspiciously like Chris Roberts and rushes off back to base.

Angel was found and picked up by Paladin and we get the obligatory “romantic” ending.

Wing Commander isn’t perhaps a bad movie but it certainly isn’t good. I can’t for instance point at any of the actors and say they were awful although some of the casting decisions were perhaps a bit odd. The real problem lies in its utter blandness. It flits between situations with little to no character development and fails utterly to generate any tension, excitement or interest in what happens to its cast. The film only lasts 90 minutes but it feels like a long, long time. By contrast if I start Wing Commander 4 it takes all day to play through and I find it all but impossible to drag myself away.

The script is extremely weak. It borrows from various sources and ends up being so generic as to contain nothing but the barest hints of originality. What story there is, is rushed, poorly told and predictable.

It’s hard not to point the finger at Chris Roberts as well and blame his direction. He had already shown a lot more ability than this in Wing Commander 4 but he had a very experienced cast to help out which may have made a difference. Chris Roberts blamed studio influence, however, and has said he would not have agreed to the project if he had known how it would turn out.

Apart from names and places this has little in common with the Wing Commander I know - this sort of deviation from the original formula just annoys the fans who are always going to form your core audience. Personally I would have done a retelling of the story from Wing Commander 3 with the same core cast as in the game. This would have taken advantage of the franchise and most importantly got the WC fans onside right from the start.

Like I said at the start Wing Commander isn’t a bad film, it’s just bland and extremely boring which is even worse. You can still get entertainment from a truly bad film. This film has nothing to offer whether you are a WC fan or new to the series. I honestly can’t think of a worse game adaptation than this and if that isn’t damning criticism I don’t know what is.

I’m going to have a break before I start on the next game. It won’t be anything major - Lands of Lore is working in scummVM now on my PSP and I’d like to have a go at adding in a digital soundtrack to it before I start anything new here. I’ll easily get that done this weekend and should be back sometime next week.

Posted in Wing Commander - The Movie | 1 Comment »

System Shock 2 - Day 7

June 16th, 2009

I start exploring the fleshy corridors again and this time decide to ignore the radioactive water for now and head the other way. I wouldn’t say that the place is exactly crawling with annelids but there are a few of the tougher ones around. The biggest problem I have is finding my way around in what is essentially a 3d maze. I lost my automap the moment I left the Von Braun and I’m kind of missing it. There is no way the automap’s 2D overhead view would have worked in here though with corridors going off in all directions.

I must still be in the Rickenbacker as I come across bodies, logs and some rooms sticking out of the flesh. There is even another chemical room but I never find the chemicals I need to research the alien armour so it stays unused until the end of the game.

A log I find describes how nerve clusters can be used to control sphincters in here. This is a bit vague but it turns out the thing in the screenshot here is a nerve cluster. There are two of them I need to find and shoot. The sphincter itself stands out as its blue. As soon as I find out about these it goes without saying they will in the two most dangerous areas of the ship so I swim through all the radiation using anti-radiation hypos as needed and sure enough this one is right at the far end.

The second nerve cluster is in a room with a floating alien. It isn’t that obvious and I’d have missed it if I wasn’t expecting it to be in here after being attacked by the floating thing.

This opens up the sphincter and gets me to the next area.

This gets me to what can only be described as giant sliding teeth. It’s the old platform game moving column although this first one just has to be avoided.

I get to a second set of teeth which I have to jump on and ride to get to and shoot another nerve cluster. This isn’t too tricky once I get the idea and there even seems to sometimes be a safe spot in the middle of the tooth where I don’t get crushed.

I come to a room which I’m told is the womb for the annelids newest creation. I’m expecting it to have some significance as the orifices on the wall are highlightable in the UI. If there is anything I can do here I never find it though and indeed the whole room is optional.

A bit more exploring and I find myself with a big drop down into some water. No turning back now…

About this time I end up (and its becoming a habit with me) of saving my game just before I get killed by a floating annelid. These things seem to respawn in seconds which is why I wasn’t expecting it. It turns out my nearest savegame was hours back when I load it. To make things worse as soon as I do load it, it wipes out my autosave leaving me without even the option of turning on god mode or anything….. I’m glad to say Windows 7 has a new feature (maybe it was in Vista as well) similar to a network server where it backs up changed files once a day. I didn’t even know this was there but I use it to restore my whole save game folder. I have to start back at the beginning of today’s session but I can live with that and now I know where I’m going I play through to here again very quickly.

I pass through a corridor full of floating annelid and at the end there is what turns out to be a never ending stream of rumblers. I try taking them all out for a while but they just keep on coming. In the next room is the reason why. I’ve found the heart of the annelids.

There is always a trick to these final bosses. In this one I have to shoot these little aliens in wholes at the edges of the room. I then have to shoot the three stars floating around and finally take out the spherical thing in the middle of the room.

This isn’t all that easy with rumblers constantly chasing me. I can just keep ahead of them if I keep moving but can’t afford to stop for a second. Just changing weapons and ammo is tricky. Once the core is blown up, I can climb up into it and jump into the hole I just made.

I follow through a series of tunnels and find a strange semi-transparent log. It turns out that I’m not quite done yet. Shodan hasn’t destroyed the Von Braun after all and is using its faster than light drive to warp reality into her vision.

This means I get to explore a virtual reality area similar to that in the training simulators right back at the start of the game.

Shodan has created her own virtual versions of the annelids which seems a bit out of character for someone who wanted to destroy them all so badly. They aren’t any different to the originals except for being transparent.

I’m traversing Shodan’s memory in effect and I soon arrive at the start of SS1 from Citadel station. In fact the whole of the rest of the level is a warped version of citadel. It’s funny how the graphics don’t seem to have been enhanced much from the original yet don’t appear out of place at all. Revisiting here is a nice touch for the fans of SS1.

After I bit of exploring I jump down a load of blocks that were not in SS1 and end up falling into a long glowing tunnel toward what I’m assuming will be the final encounter.

Sure enough Shodan is down here but protected for now by a shield. I’m told in a log I find that I can hack the terminals to lower this shield.

There are two problems with hacking the terminals. The minor one is that the floor keeps getting electrified so it hurts if I stand too close. The bigger problem is these virtual Shodan’s that keep attacking me. I don’t know if its a PC speed issue but the respawn time on these seems far too quick to me. At first its got the ability to make you jump, when you are trying to hack the terminal and you suddenly hear one laughing in your ear but this gave way to irritation pretty quickly after I’ve tried 50 times to hack the same terminal. Most of the time I could just about select the terminal and click start before I was under attack. A higher hacking skill would have been really, really, useful here.

After many retries I get the shield down and the rest is easy.

Shodan takes a few shots but my energy gun brings her down quickly enough and I go into the final cutscene. Hypersnap failed me again in capturing screenshots from the movie. In brief Shodan attempts to coerce me into joining her, I refuse, blow her up and find myself back on the Rickenbacker. In the meanwhile, I get to see the two escapees from the Von Braun in their pod and the woman transforms into another Shodan. You could see this one coming a mile off - it was the only reason I could think why they were allowed to escape in the first place. I’m not sure it makes sense but it did leave the door open for the sequel we never got.

I’ve enjoyed SS2 a lot but I prefer SS1. This was a worthy sequel in every way and did build to a good climax whereas SS1 fell a bit flat right at the end. I don’t feel the story delivered quite as well, however, and SS2 was definitely less innovative. It’s a lot more accessible due to its improved interface but is a little too similar to some newer games and ends up suffering in comparison. There is no way I could rate this above BioShock in all honesty, but if I had played it years back and had the benefit of nostalgia I might have a different opinion.

The latest Wallace and Grommit game came out today. I’ll be playing that before I start another game here but it probably won’t take long. In the meanwhile, I get to play movie reviewer and have a look at the Wing Commander film.

Posted in System Shock 2 | 2 Comments »

System Shock 2 - Day 6

June 15th, 2009

I start out searching for artwork and the missing athletics keycard. I find the keycard on a body that I’d somehow managed to miss in the crew quarters first time around.

I head for the athletics area and see a huge fleshy creature in the middle of basketball court. For some reason it doesn’t move at all and I bludgeon it to death with impunity.

Through the next area is a swimming pool complete with a floating body.

In a small room off here is a spot for a power cell. As luck would have it I’m carrying one of these around so I use it here but I have no idea what this achieves.

I find the transmitter soon afterwards but I’ve not seen any more artwork yet. I must have missed some so this means trawling around the level again looking for pictures.

Much later I find this in the crew quarters - just one more to find.

The final one is in an art shop in the mall. It’s on the second level which is why I missed it first time around.

I head back for the transmitter. I’ve only got two possible orders to try the numbers in and the first one works out.

Shodan still can’t manage to wipe out the infestation and wants me to help her gain complete control over the ship. She activates the lift I saw earlier to the command deck and sends me up there.

The command deck has a simple tram system that carries me between 3 stops.

When I get to the end of the tram journey I see two survivors trying to get to the one remaining escape pod. They are chased away before I can get off the tram.

I follow after them and arrive just in time to see their pod escape. They have left behind a bridge access security card.

I use this card to access the bridge elevator where I’m greeted by another giant mech.

Once through the mech, its straight to the bridge. This place looks a lot more advanced than most of the rest of the ship.

I find the password breaking gadget I’m looking for behind some smashable glass.

I then trot off and use this in the right place to give Shodan complete control to the ship. She decides that she will be unable to wipe out her children as they have infested every corner of the ship. We are going to have to blow up the Von Braun then evacuate to its support ship the Rickenbacker.

This next stage of the game involves me being sent all over the ship to carry out tasks. First off, I have to go to the engine core to start the self destruct for the ship.

Shodan gives me the code to do this and thats stage 1 done.

This opens up a new area for shuttle access on the command deck so I head up there. I need to stop the infestation escaping from here by blowing up the shuttles. When I arrive a midwife is tampering with some sensitive equipment which doesn’t look good.

There are two shuttle bays here. The damaged equipment would have dropped the shield of one of them. I can still destroy the second shuttle at least and it only takes a few shots to blow it up.

I need to destroy the shield generator for the first shuttle. Shodan tells me to hack the nearest replicator to produce a gadget which will do the job.

I do this then run away as quickly as possible while it does its work.

A few seconds later and the second shuttle is destroyed.

I need to get to the umbilical leading to the Rickenbacker. I’m told to go to the middle tram stop but when I get there my passage is blocked and I get a message to go and meet up with one of the aliens on the bridge. This doesn’t sound like a trap at all……

When I arrive on the bridge, we don’t even go through the formalities of a chat before I’m attacked. I’m expecting something of a boss fight but it turns out to be really easy. I just hide behind a console and lob a few grenades out until its dead. This opens up my route to the Rickenbacker.

This route is well guarded and I have to carefully edge past a load of turrets.

My first task in the Rickenbacker is to destroy 15 eggs containing some new sort of super-mutant. These eggs are spread all over the base and will take a bit of finding.

I do a lot of searching around taking out any eggs I find. I also discover this gravity reversal switch. Throwing it seems like a good idea and nets me 20 modules but it doesn’t affect my immediate area.

I explore for a while taking out eggs. There are more defenses than ever but nothing much new. There is one area of the ship with a hull breach and I also have a puzzle involving raising and lowering missiles to create a path. The difficult bit here is jumping onto the first missile. There seems to be a problem in the engine at times with jumping and it takes a few attempts.

I find my final egg and head for the next part of the Rickenbacker.

This is where the gravity has been reversed. I walk into a church which now has an upside-down cross.

I find some potentially useful alien armour but I need to research it before I can use it. I’ve no idea if I’ll see any more chemical rooms or if I should go back but decide to press on.

When I get deep enough into the Rickenbacker, Shodan tells me that the infection has spread and now surrounds the ship. I have to head right into it for all that. She also seems to almost be getting fond of me and how I am becoming closer to her as I improve my cybernetics. I don’t entirely like where this is going - I was expecting her to turn on me before now and I’m not sure I expect a happy ending.

The infection is surrounding the windows here in a giant fleshy mass. I notice now in this screenshot that there was another permanent upgrade panel which I didn’t take advantage of.

This is due to being attacked on all sides.

In the end I take the easy option and run for the escape pod and launch myself into the fleshy mass.

I must be nearing the conclusion of the game now but I have to explore this place first and figure out how to destroy it.

Shodan can no longer maintain contact so I’m on my own. A lot of the tunnels are under water which is radioactive. My first first attempt at exploration leads to fatal poisoning. I was really tempted at this point to push on to finish the game but I decided to leave it for another night rather than rushing through.

When I’ve been playing this game, I’ve often thought how similar it was to Doom 3, with its email logs, sound design and the like. Now I even get a fleshy infestation taking over the station. I know Doom came first but it’s probably got less in common with its sequel than SS2 does - it’s similar enough that Doom 3 feels like a bit of a rip-off now. I’m actually quite a fan of Doom 3. While clearly being a technology showcase, it was still a game that generated a fantastically scary atmosphere. Years earlier SS2 has managed the same thing only with a far more interesting storyline and a load of RPG elements and gameplay options thrown into the mix.

SS2 is a game that would really justify another play through. The storyline isn’t always easy to follow as it comes at me in short emails in a somewhat random order. I do like this system for all that - the only snag is when one message gets cut off by another or if a monster attacks I tend to miss whats being said. It’s not always that quick or easy to find the email you missed so I do feel like I’ve missed elements of the story on the way through. Having the interface in a resolution it was never designed for probably doesn’t help matters here.

Aside from the story there are whole areas of abilities that I’ve ignored while playing this. I’ve not upgraded psi-powers at all instead concentrating on tech, weapons and combat skill. Even at this late stage in the game I’m a long way from maxing out most my stats even in these areas although I am clearly much more powerful than in the early game.

I’m curious to know where things are going at this stage, its still got me guessing. Clearly I’ll be attempting to destroy the infestation but Shodan will still be alive. I’m half expecting to end up being controlled by her due to my ever upgraded implants. An entirely happy and conclusive ending looks really unlikely.

Posted in System Shock 2 | 3 Comments »

System Shock 2 - Day 5

June 14th, 2009

There’s only one place to go on Level 4 for now and that leads me straight to the dead body of the woman who has been helping me out over email.

The walls slide away and I’m suddenly face to face with Shodan. This scene is incredibly atmospheric and I’m surrounded by her creepy multiple voices. I’d go as far as to say this moment would potentially be one of the best in gaming if I hadn’t already guessed it was coming. I’ve been expecting a twist somewhere along the way and it wouldn’t have been a System Shock without Shodan in it.

Shodan has been masquerading as the dead woman in order to build my trust. She elaborates on the backstory and tells me how the “aliens” from the world below are actually her creations that were jettisoned off Citadel station in SS1. They have turned on her and she wants me to help her take revenge and kill them all off. I have to get her access to more of the ships systems the Xerxes is currently controlling.

I find a new weapon which has been created by Shodan’s “children”. It’s another melee weapon but presumably more powerful than any of the usual ones. I need some skill in exotics before I can use it.

To override Xerxes control I need to track down 3 red cyborgs which have a computer chip each which can override one system. I’m given these details in a log I find. I don’t realise it at the time but this room has one of the red assassin cyborgs in it. The room also has a load of exploding crates which keep crashing down. I hide round the corner and the crates kill the cyborg off for me.

Aside from the assassin cyborgs I’m also running into these guys who throw grenades at me. Provided I can get close up quickly they aren’t a big threat.

I find the first of the computers I need to override but can’t do anything with it yet as I need one of the other two chips.

I keep exploring and find another chip and also run into giant spiders. These are extremely tough and best taken down at a distance. They have a toxin attack which is extremely nasty. As far as I can tell toxin never wears off in this game without the use of an anti-toxin hypo so I take them down with a shotgun while contstantly backing off.

I start overriding the computers and also upgrade my exotic skill so I can use the crystal shard. It possibly does a small amount more damage than the light sword but nothing major.

After a lot of walking around I finally find the final red cyborg and although it runs away I manage to get enough hits in to take it down relatively easily.

The final computer I have to override is very nearby. This opens up the next level to me.

Level 5 is the recreation deck. Shodan wants me to get access to a transmitter that has been set up here.

When I get here there is actually someone still alive but he is behind a glass screen and I can’t reach him yet. He breaks off from talking to me.

The reason why is presumably the biggest robot I’ve had to fight. This one fires huge and fairly slow energy balls which do splash damage even if they don’t hit me directly. I use my usual tactics and it doesn’t prove to be much stronger than the earlier yellow robots. I look around the area afterwards but if anyone is still alive I don’t find them.

I’m told in a log I find that someone has hidden a code in the artwork on this deck. I can use the art to flick between pictures and sure enough I find part of a code.

The recreation deck includes a garden area (which given the limitations of the engine doesn’t look much like a garden but its a change from metal panels.

I’m really building up my stats and upgrade my energy enough to be able to use this energy weapon. This fires the same giant blue spheres that the robot was using on me earlier and these take out nearly anything electrical in only a few shots.

Level 5 is very large and consists of some quite varied areas. I find a large square room with another elevator -  the elevator I’ve been using only went up to floor 5 but it looks like there is at least one more to go. For now I can’t use this elevator though.

I find a hybrid alien/human weapon but I’ll need to research this before I can use it. For now I have no idea exactly what it does.

The recreation area is complete with a cinema….

… and a shopping mall. I get to pick another permanent upgrade here and go for increased range weapon damage.

I also find another piece of artwork with a bit more code. I must still be missing one or two fragments of the code so I’ll try to find where these are next. I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around looking for something new to do in this session. I think I’ve seen most of the deck I’m on but there is an athletics area which I haven’t been able to enter due to not having the keycard. I don’t think I’ve missed any artwork (although it’s not altogether unlikely) but I must have missed this keycard somehow. I might search through my logs and see if there are any hints.

Since finding out her true identity, all my emails with instructions/congratulations have been coming from Shodan herself. I can’t help but feel that this can’t work out well in the long run but I don’t have a choice for now. She is certainly less than complementary about my species. I’m still a bit unclear exactly what Shodan is doing here in the first place. I suppose she must have escaped to the planet along with her children some how but I’m unclear on this. Maybe I will find out more later. I have seen logs talking about Diego carrying on the families work.

SS2 has for the moment settled down into a pattern of me exploring each area looking for for access cards, codes, cyborgs, etc… There isn’t a huge amount of story and I’m possibly having to do more searching around for items than I would like. The tasks on each level are all slightly different but the method is ultimately the same. I kind of miss the cyberspace sections from SS1 also which added a bit of variety to the mix. I think I’m ultimately going to prefer SS1 over SS2 although there won’t be a big distance between them.

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