The Flight/Space Sim Thread

[MrPopo]

Because they're kinda like FPS's, but not really.

I started playing X-Wing over the weekend and made it through the first Tour of Duty (of three in the base game plus two extended ones from the expansions). I had previously played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and done all of those missions, but those are designed for large multiplayer groups, which means you end up being a small part of a larger force. In X-Wing things tend to fall squarely on your shoulders, due to either you being the only ship, or the other ships having a very specific mission that they accomplish before bugging out.

X-Wing has taught me to ignore some of the stuff I learned in XvT. The chief thing is that Proton Torpedos ARE worth using on enemy fighters in many circumstances. Since they have a range of about twice your lasers (after you account for lock time) they are great for neutralizing incoming threats or taking out someone who's gotten past you. They fall short in actual dogfights, but once the enemy is dogfighting with you things are good; most of the time the high-threat enemies are the ones who are ignoring you in favor of the mission critical craft.

The other thing I noticed is I spent very little time in the titular X-Wing. There were several missions where I was doing recon or close support in an A-Wing and a LOT of missions that required me to capture enemy craft, so I was sent out in a Y-Wing for the Ion Cannons.

[BogusMeatFactory]

The X-wing/Tie-Fighter series are absolutely fantastic. They really capture life in the Star Wars universe. I highly recommend playing X-Wing Alliance who want a much more linear storyline that is a blast to play and has one of the most entertaining side-kicks that people never remember or recognize. In it you play as a freighter pilot in a Millienium Falcon-style ship. Your family gets besmirched, things go down and you join the rebel alliance.

Such an entertaining game that a lot of people forgot, thanks to the wonderful mid to late 90's era of gaming where you can't get them to work on modern machines and have to emulate. Thanks to GOG it is available for purchase, and I highly recommend people play it.

I am not going to lie though, even though I enjoy the X-wing series a LOT, I found more enjoyment from the Wing Commander series. I enjoyed its cinematic execution, branching paths and storylines and unique cast of characters. They put an emphasis on character, which is something that is lacking a bit in the X-wing series (which was alleviated a bit in Tie-Fighter). Wing Commander had rival Kilrathi Aces and your wingmen all had distinctive personalities and play styles that you had to compensate for. Failure was not the end and simply a branch off into another path.

I won't even start on how awesome Wing Commander 3 is. One of the few games that pulled of FMV sequences properly and did a really good job of it!

[MrPopo]

Wing Commander, I'm a few missions in on the second game and I still have the two expansions for the first game to completely, but man, those are balls hard. I don't think I've actually successfully completed the first mission in WC1's first expansion.

[Gunstar Green]

Wing Commander 1's expansions are completely fucking insane, especially the second one. They love to throw nearly impossible escort missions at you constantly like Kurosawa 2 in the original game except YOU MUST WIN or game over. I really dislike the Secret Missions packs though the second one is relevant for story purposes. The SNES version of Secret Missions 1 is more manageable but it's also the SNES version so the gameplay is not stellar. It has extra scenes not in the PC version though.

Thankfully they didn't pull that crap again with Wing Commander 2's expansions which don't up the difficulty much from the core game.

Wing Commander 2 was my first PC space sim and it became one of my favorite games of all time. The story was so much more mature than anything I was used to at the time. The graphical style was detailed and unique. The setting was basically WWII's Pacific Campaign meets Battlestar Galactica with alien lion people. The action was intense and since I had the CD Deluxe version and a sound blaster compatible there was SPEECH! It was a mind blowing experience for me coming from playing Sega Genesis games.

I went back and played the first game and loved it. I ran out to K-Mart and bought Wing Commander 3 and while the changes were jarring it was an excellent cheesy space opera with famous actors putting in solid performances. Wing Commander 4's story was INSANELY good and the production values are a big leap over 3. I consider it one of the best space operas in video games. Prophecy was disappointing but the gameplay is solid.

I became a fan of the series for life and cherish the entire saga including the novel series (but not the motion picture ).

For whatever reason I still prefer the pixel-art graphics of the first two games and Privateer, probably because it's what I fell in love with originally but also because those games have a more arcadey feel than the polygon ones.

Of course I love many more games in the genre like the Freespace series and the Star Wars games, primarily TIE Fighter which comes close to the Wing Commander series for me in terms of nostalgia.

I could talk about these games for hours but this post is getting pretty long.

[BogusMeatFactory]

Everyone, let us not forget Clive Owen's work in Privateer 2. What an FMV masterpiece of crap!

[Gunstar Green]

Everyone, let us not forget Clive Owen's work in Privateer 2. What an FMV masterpiece of crap!

Ugh, there's a reason they left the Wing Commander branding off of that one. It does venture into so bad it's good territory though.

[MrPopo]

Why is that video 15 minutes long?

[BogusMeatFactory]

Why is that video 15 minutes long?

That is the intro to the game. It is worth every minute...trust me. The game becomes more and more absurd as you go along. Speaking of which, I haven't beaten that game since I was a teenager. Time to fire it up again!

To be honest though, Privateer 2 is a bad game. Your starting ship is so underpowered that dogfights can take about 10-15 minutes to take down a single ship. It is insane! Add to it that the open ended aspect of the game is very limited and not nearly as fun as the original. The FMV sequences show they put a lot of time and money into them, but they are so hamfisted that the actors are just chewing up the scenery.

[Pulsar_t]

I'm waiting on Star Citizen to mature into a full product. There's a plethora of space sims under development but they're all far from actual release (if they ever make it)

On the flying front, DCS Flaming Cliffs 3 and Vector Thrust.

Since you guys are big on Star Wars, you should check this out http://www.xwaupgrade.com/

[Gunstar Green]

I'm waiting on Star Citizen to mature into a full product. There's a plethora of space sims under development but they're all far from actual release (if they ever make it)

It is a really exciting time to be a fan of the genre. Once Star Citizen is really up and running I'll probably have to finally buy a new PC.

I'm probably one of the few people more excited for the Squadron 42 part than the Star Citizen part since it's a spiritual successor to the mainline Wing Commander games. I'm a little sad we'll probably never see a real new Wing Commander game but this is as close as you can get and has Chris Roberts at the helm.