Wing Commander : Unknown Enemy – Day 4

Today starts with a cutscene showing the capship blocking the jump point being destroyed. I was expecting to have to go after this myself but this makes life easier.

The next mission is instead escorting the Dauntless and the now fully operation Fralthi into the asteroid field.

On the way we have to protect 5 shuttles as they travel between the space station and the Dauntless with supplies. This part of the mission is fairly simple, the only trick is to fly out to the first shuttle at the start of the mission and take on whatever is closest.

We escort the Dauntless to the asteroids and then get sent to have a look at a radar reading that shows a huge ship approaching.

When we get there our ships systems go haywire due to some funny looking buoys and one of my wingmen crashes into it.

At this point 7 fighters jump in and I have to fight them in this crippled state.

My radar is showing dozens of false targets and my ship stops responding every few seconds and also gives off random commands. My wingmen are useless here and I have to take out all seven targets myself. I struggle with this a bit then try swapping my ship to an Epee at the start of the mission. The Epee has a stormfire which is seriously powerful in this game. I save all my ammo for this fight and get through it first time.

I then blow up the buoy. I guess I could probably have done this earlier and got my systems back but finding it might have been a problem.

I fly back home and get the next password. I discover that I can avoid having to retype all my mission passwords in the fiction viewer if I use the drop down box to select my name rather than just typing it in. This is a bit of a bug with the viewer if you ask me.

We are still hiding out in the asteroids so I have to make sure we stay hidden in the next mission.

The twist here is that I’m flying one of the Kilrathi asteroid ships from Wing Commander 3.

These ships are actually seriously powerful and have the best guns of any ship I use in the game. They take down a Manta from full shields in 5 hits and I breeze through this mission. The only real problem is at the first nav point where 2 mantas try to escape. They are faster than me and I have to know they are going to run before I arrive so that I can head straight for them.

When I get back there is another cut scene showing some of our pilots being attacked and scooped up by a Manta.

Our reinforcements are on the way but they are in the next system and we have to go looking for them for some reason. To this end we are going to send a modified Avenger through the jump point. I have to escort it to the point then hang around waiting for it to come back.

We have plenty of fighters to take out on the way in but the real action is at the jump point with a cap ship in the way.

The Avenger jumps out quickly leaving us to deal with the fighters. The fighters keep coming endlessly and I lose both my wingmen early on.

The Avenger arrives back having completed it’s mission a few minutes later. It brings a Vampire fighter with it but we could have done with a few more of them. There are far too many fighters to take on here so I end up afterburning away as soon as the Avenger shows.

I’m slightly surprised that this tactic works and the Avenger is still with me when I can finally autopilot. There is another skirmish at the Dauntless but this one is fairly easy.

That gets me to the games final mission. We have to head for the jump point to meet up with our reinforcements.

This final mission is basically an excuse to put as many ships on screen as possible it what is a monumental battle.

We have a load of capships to deal with just getting to the jump point but I do get to land and refuel after the battle. I’m flying a Kilrathi ship again and its quite slow for dogfighting. I end up being something of a spectator for large parts of the mission while the hordes of ships battle it out among themselves. I concentrate on getting a few torpedoes fired into the capships.

There are even more bugs at the final jump point. I’m told to take out the fighters which I do. I get a few but my wingmen are doing most of the work.

The reinforcements start to arrive after a while and things get a bit easier.

When the Eisen shows up with its squadron of Devastators and Vampires the enemy are beaten in no time. I actually finish this final mission on my first attempt which is a surprise given the earlier difficulty level. The final few missions have been considerably easier than the early ones on the whole.

The game finishes with a string of cutscenes. The first shows an Admiral arriving. The Dauntless is no longer going to be scrapped thanks to its performance here.

We then get to see the fleet taking the fight to the bugs and the plan working perfectly as their fleet is caught by surprise. That completes Unknown Enemy. This has been one of the more challenging games I’ve played in this blog and I’ve definitely enjoyed it. It suffers from perhaps being a bit incoherent in terms of story and missions. It seems that everything was thrown at this just because it seemed like a good idea and it was made to fit into the story accordingly. This isn’t such a bad thing but it certainly shows the games fan-made origins. I couldn’t honestly say anyone should play this over the original Wing Commanders or the likes of Freespace but it’s a great attempt for a fan game. If you’ve finished WCP and Secret Ops and want a real challenge you could do a lot worse. I gather Standoff improved on UE in many ways and I’m looking forward to giving it a go. The final episode still hasn’t been released yet though and I’ll hold off until it is.

The first episode of Tales Of Monkey Island is out today. I’m not sure how confident I am in it being any good but I’ll be playing that before I get back to this blog again. It had better be an improvement on Monkey Island 4 but I’m not too optimistic from the gameplay trailer. I preordered it ages back though so I may as well give it a go.

Next: Thief – The Dark Project

7 thoughts on “Wing Commander : Unknown Enemy – Day 4

  1. Well, I think Standoff is way better than this game. Graphically and storywise.

    Also, I don’t know how many ships there could be in that final mission, but standoff really has huge battles (some of them close to unwinnable, but there is a lot of branching so no problem with that).

    Another thing that it seems way better in standoff is how the fiction is implemented. Everything is in the game, no need for an outside viewer.

    So Tales of Monkey Island is finally out? I should try it…
    I personally liked the trailer, and I don’t think it can be any worse than Monkey Island 4.

  2. It came out too late for me to try it last night but I’ll give the new Monkey Island a go later today. I’m hearing that it’s reasonably good – I’m more confident with it coming from Telltale than Lucasarts. MI4 put me off so much that I wouldn’t have bought the new one otherwise.

    A load of old Lucasarts games are released on Steam today also, including Fate of Atlantis which is one of my favourites. It looks like the whole back catalog will be coming to Steam over time. And Monkey Island Special Edition comes out next week although I seem to be one of the few people who isn’t interested in it. I just don’t see the point for anyone who has the original + I don’t like some of the new graphics or the acting. I may pick it up eventually but not until its very cheap.

    Still, with the Tex Murphy games being released on GOG as well its looking like a good time for adventure gamers at the moment.

  3. I tried Tales of Monkey Island demo and seems ok. Better than Monkey Island 4 anyway.

    I don’t like the new graphics of the remake of monkey island either, but I’m interested in the added voices.

    I hope it’s possible to play with the classic look and the new voices.

  4. I’m still looking forward to read your playthrough of Ultima: Lazarus. I remember that when I played it, I had a separate page for each city in my notebook, but still had trouble fitting everything I had to remember. You see, the game doesn’t keep track of your quests so it is very easy to get lost.

    Thief will be interesting too 🙂
    Hope you finish your quest

    • I’d still like to play it myself and will get there sooner or later. Since I finished Enemy Unknown, real life has been getting in the way and I’ve not really had the time or inclination to start up on Thief in the last few weeks. I reckon I’ll get going on it within the next 2 or 3 days though. I’ll probably go for Standoff after that, then Lazarus.

  5. Lazarus is a nightmare of side quests heh I also had a really hard time trying to remember things (specially at the beggining).

    Standoff has finally been released, but you should wait until they fix some bugs they are having (specially the memory crashing bug… that one is really annoying). I don’t think that would actually take more than a few days though..

    Also the graphics have been updated and now the WCSO engine does not look anything like the original. It looks so good now that I can’t even put all the graphic options on in my computer (antialiasing and HDR at the same time does not work for me, it’s one or the other…).

  6. I saw that Standoff was out and that it was getting graphics upgrades. Waiting for the new features that stopped me from playing the earlier episodes before now. It’s probably going to take me a couple of weeks to finish Thief at the rate I’m going so with a bit of luck it will be all fixed by then. I can’t believe they managed to get HDR into the Prophecy engine and I’m really looking forward to giving it a go.

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