Dekker points out that he told me I shouldn’t have released the Admiral when I tell him what I saw.

I check out the datacard I picked up and it shows the specs of the flashpack and the fact that it was authorised by Tolwyn.

Pliers shows up at this moment telling me that he’s figured out the flashpack himself and what it does. He could rig a few up in a week but there is no time for that.

The Vesuvius is making for Earth where Tolwyn will be attempting to get the senate to vote for war. We have to get there first but they are a lot faster than we are.

However, we are a lot smaller and we work out a shorter route through smaller jump points.

The snag with this route is that it goes straight past a superbase. Hawk suggests we take it out with the flashpack which Panther as ever disagrees with. We can’t be killing off civilians so I decide we just have to sneak past as best we can.

This is a fairly tough mission with several capships to take out along the way. I’ve not faced many capships in this game and this mission makes up for it by throwing 3 at me. I get us to the jump point on the second attempt – the first try ends up with the Intrepid being blown up.

We jump in right behind the Vesuvius as it nears the jump to Earth. It’s only 15 seconds to the jump point but to everyones surprise the Admiral turns the ship round to fight us. I don’t even get chance to save my game as we scramble all fighters.

I take out a load of fighters and get called back to the Intrepid.

The battle is still raging on while I’m landing.

Things are not looking good for us when the sister ship of the Vesuvius (the St. Helens) jumps in and joins the battle on our side.

Eisen has done more than we could have hoped and in commanding the new ship. He sends us the specs of the Vesuvius including weak spots – we have to launch and take out its turret and fighter defence.

This is the biggest battle I can remember playing in a Wing Commander game. The 2 huge capships are laying into each other, I have 3 wingmen and there are enemy fighters everywhere. I don’t do anything with the turrets but am called back to the Intrepid again once the fighters are down.

The Vesuvius has taken for the jump point and we all follow with the battle carrying on through the jump.

Pliers wants to get the flash pack ready to take it out once and for all. The snag is that is will only work on the inside of one of these supercarriers.

Tolwyn sends me a gloating message that the St Helens wasn’t really ready and shouldn’t have been jumping in the first place.

He then orders Seether to take care of me.

Eisen confirms that the St Helens isn’t going to be much help from here on. We have to take out the Vesuvius.

This isn’t too hard a mission with the flashpack. I after burn straight for the hanger.

Once in I just fire off the flashpack and its mission complete.

Tolwyn escapes again in a shuttle and is headed for Earth. Eisen says that since I got a good look at Tolwyns operations back in Axius, I should be head for Earth and tell the assembly what I know.

Seether is on the comm at the first nav point but not in sight.

He pulls off his mine trick and I’m left with him right behind me to start the combat.

He’s a pretty tough opponent but a missile takes him down the same as anyone else. It’s tricky getting one to hit but I get there in the end.

I have to go straight past the Earth starbase next. I don’t want to take this out anyway so I cloak and afterburn past it.

I fly down to Earth and meanwhile Tolwyn is accepting a promotion to Space Marshall and giving his speech to the senate.

He’s just finishing off as I arrive and has obviously stated that we should declare war on the border worlds.

I’m seized by guards the moment I get there and appeal to Paladin to speak my case.

Paladin comes to my aid and says if anyone deserves a hearing its me.

The end of the game is now played out with me and Tolwyn arguing against each other. I get to make choices 5 or 6 times of what path to take and how I do here will affect how the assembly votes and whether the war is prevented. This is a fantastic and fitting ending to the game. There’s enough challenge without it being unreasonably hard. Get it wrong and you have to beat Seether again but all the right answers make sense so it’s not simply trial and error.

I tell the senate about Tolwyns Black Lance troops and the bioweapons among other things. At the end I point out that he thinks we need tinkering with as a race, if a few billion die along the way they weren’t worthy anyway and ask if that is the price of freedom? Tolwyn then says far too much about needing to prepare for the next aggressive race and how the Kilrathi lasted for millions of years as they knew the need to prepare for combat. I like the fact that all of Tolwyns arguments are to some extent correct, he isn’t just some sort of typical nasty villain with a silly laugh (i.e. Seether). It hardly justifies the means he’s used though and Paladin says we’ve heard enough before he finishes his speech.

The vote is overwhelmingly to not declare war.

Tolwyn is taken away by the guards and the senate all rise in applause.

We are in the end cutscene now. There is a brief scene showing the trial of Tolwyn. It’s just brief clips of various people saying their piece.

Chris Roberts puts in a cameo on the witness box.

In the end Tolwyn is sentenced to death but doesn’t wait for it to be carried out.

We cut back to the Intrepid where I’m now an instructor. Paladin says I could have been a General or a Senator and had everything. I reply that everything means I keep flying. A batch of newbies come in with Panther. I say they can wait while I log some flying time and fly off into the distance.

It’s a great ending to the game and would have been the perfect ending for the entire series if you ask me. The whole last CD was a great climax in general with big battles and shorter more frequent FMV between them giving a real feeling of pace to these final missions. It’s certainly a lot better than the finale we got in Wing Commander Prophecy and I like to see this as the real ending of the Wing Commander series. I’ve not looked at Prophecy in a long time so I may like it more when I get to it again but I doubt it.

There has been a definite timeless appeal to WC4 and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. He’s no Kubrick but Chris Roberts must have some talent as a director despite all the abuse I’ve seen about his movie making skills and what happened with the Wing Commander film. It will have helped to have an experienced cast like the one in WC4 and I’d much rather have seen the movie use the same actors possibly in a retelling of WC3 picking up near the end of the war. I’ll force myself to watch the movie again at some point and write about it on here. For now, it’s onto the next game. I’ve won a copy of Longbow on Ebay and paid for it a couple of days back but I’ll probably be waiting a while before it arrives so I’ll save that game up for a bit.

Next: Privateer 2 – The Darkening

Catscratch and Sosa seem to be getting friendly. Catscratch has realised now that we are doing the right thing in helping the Kilrathi. They tell me that some new guests have arrived and are in the hold.

Our squad of marines has turned up at last, led by Lieutenant Colonel Dekker. Blair has a mission for them and wants them prepped straight away.

The Kilrathi space station is being occupied by enemy forces. We have to clear out the area and send our marines in to secure the base.

It’s a routine mission and Dekker and team clear the base out in no time.

When I land there is a cutscene showing some border worlds pilots running into enemy forces and having problems with their radars and guidance systems being jammed. Wilford sends us to look into this.

The moment we get there we lose all shields, communication, and radar. I order us to try to back away from the blind zone.

We manage to get clear of the zone but still can’t see anything inside it.

Our first mission here is just to look around and try to find out what is causing the problem.

I talk to Pliers on my way out. He has beefed up our shields and recommends that we move our shield power into engines to compensate for the extra weight we are carrying.

This is a strange sort of mission with no shields and its vital that I try not to get hit too much. On the bright side we can take down the enemies with less hits since they have no shields either but there are a lot more of them than us. There are some new bear fighters which are especially quick and tough.

At the end of the mission, one of the pilots ejects and Dekker suggests I tractor him in.

Hawk and Panther are giving him the 3rd degree when I land. The pirate is actually the vet that wanted cash in the bar right back at the start of the game. Since I helped him out then he agrees to help us in return. He’s not happy about the work he’s doing anyway. He tells us the jamming caused by some sort of secret cap ship which moves around on a preset couse which he plots for us. It is cloaked most of the time but comes out of cloak to fire its engines.

Wilford is presurising us to sort out this problem as it is seriously hampering our war efforts.

It means another mission flying without shields. The missions are definitely getting tougher today – we come up against serious opponsition including more Bears + Excaliburs. We find the capship at the end – we can’t use torpedos but a full salvo of dumbfires will take it out. The moment its dead our shields start recharging – I find it easier on my second attempt to take out the fighters first when they don’t have shields and then take the capship at the end.

The moment the capship dies a space station comes into view which had been cloaked. Someone is escaping from it in a shuttle and Dekker heads out to capture them.

When I land, Maniac seems to be in shock about who Dekker has hauled in and suggests I go take a look.

We’ve captured none other than Tolwyn himself. He claims to be out here investigating but it all looks very suspicious. He says we are still on the same side, both wanting to prevent war. He mentions various black ops that took place during the war that he is only just finding out about including the genetic enhancement program.

I get a choice of whether to release him or not. It’s not much of a choice as if I don’t, Maniac will so I choose to let him go.

Dekker doesn’t think I made the right call but I point out that we’d wouldn’t have a chance if we imprisoned a Confed admiral.

Wilford has another message with more instructions. He gives me a choice of two operations, one helping to defend a planet which is under attack and the other trying to get supplies from a Confed shipyard. There isn’t a right or wrong choice again. If I go for the shipyard missions, I’d get some ships and weapons which are unavailable elsewhere in the game but I go for the other option.

Whichever choice you choose, you get a nice FMV to set the scene. This one shows the tank battle raging on the planets surface being supported by space based fighters.

Before we fly the missions, I get to see Maniac and Dekker arguing about whether marines or fighters are tougher. Maniac manges to pick a fight with Dekker which is pretty stupid even by his standards – I step in to stop it but Dekker isn’t too happy about me standing up for Maniac. There isn’t any winning with this decision as I’m going to annoy one of them.

Not only do I get a choice of campaigns here, but I also get a choice of 3 missions. I’ll get to fly 2 of them.

I pick the first in the list which is to try to take out the tanks attacking a target on the planet surface. This is a tough mission as I don’t get long at all to take out the tanks + I have four fighters to deal with before I can even start on them. Once the fighters are out the tanks are sitting ducks but they still take a while to kill off as there are plenty of them.

Panther is cleaning her gun in the hold and warns me that I need to do something about Maniac as he is having a hard time understanding the words “No” and “Not interested”.

My next mission is escorting shuttles evacuating people from the planet to frigates that are in orbit. This is much easier than the last mission and I finish this one first time.

Maniac is offering flying tips to Catscratch and it looks like he is actually listening. I warn him against it but I don’t think he’s listening.

We get a thank you from one of the people down on the planet we’ve been helping. They have a listening network left over from the war and send us over a load of data for Sosa to look through.

Wilford pulls us off these missions. He has discovered that the Confed supply route, which goes through the middle of a nebula. We are ordered to shut it down. There is also a sattellite sending out some strange signals which Catscratch volunteers to pick up.

After a couple of nav points, we get a message from Sosa that Catscratch has had his craft disabled and is a sitting duck. I get to make a call on whether to scrub the mission or not and decide to go back and save him.

He’s already tractored in the sattellite. We wipe out his craft and tractor his escape pod in.

He’s looking sheepish when we land. This is what happens when you listen to Maniac. He’d fired off a couple of missiles as decoys as he suggested but then missed when it counted. I give Maniac a warning and mention Panther while I’m at it. I put Catscratch on probation for now as we are too desperate for pilots to ground him.

Pliers has been busy and has got his cloaking device working, thanks to a bit of Kilrathi help. I decide to take it on the next mission.

Hawk and Panther are discussing our chances of success. Its been 46 hours since Eisen left and we have heard nothing. We just have to hope that he gets to the right people.

The supply line still needs shutting down but Wilford also has an alternative mission taking out a command center deep in enemy territory. He has other forces to handle either mission – I get to pick which makes the best use of our resources. Since I have the cloak I pick the command center mission.

The cloak is working much better this time round but this is a really hard mission and I have to try it over and over. I’ve no wingman which doesn’t help but the first part isn’t too bad. I have to take out the defenses around the base then send Dekker and his men in via MIPS.

Once the mission is done, Wilford is on the comm again sending me to look into some sort of extraordinary Confed ship. I have to disable it.

The ship is guarded by Dragon fighters – these are the things I saw in the intro scene. I’m not sure that the Vindicator I’m flying is capable of taking one out. They tend to go into cloak and then come out again in full health. Even without that, their shields, speed and firepower are way more than mine. The only chance is to come into this with full missiles and take them down with IR missiles. I have to take out 2 in the first wing, then disable the capship with my leech gun and fire dekker in there. There are then 2 more to take out.

I get there in the end but this mission was a real challenge. Ironically when I do complete it, I don’t take a single bit of damage.

Pliers is looking round the captured ship and finds one of the disc weapons but he still doesn’t know what it does. We’ve also captured some Dragon fighters. These are truly state of the art and have a whole new power system which doesn’t need fuel for afterburners. I ask him to get one ready for my next mission.

We’ve received a distress call from a frontier planet and are going out to help. The plan is for Dekker + me to land on the planet to see what is going on.

The Dragon has a nice new red HUD. It has auto-aiming just like the Excalibur + a new fusion weapon which I can charge up by holding fire and then release in one blast (great for cap ships). It’s really an awesome ship and there is no reason to fly anything else from here on out.

By flying Dragons, we manage to bypass much of the combat as the enemy thinks we are on their side. We land on the planet and the people there think at first we are attacking due to our ships but we talk them around.

It doesn’t matter though as we are too late. The pirates have been attacking with bio-weapons. Rather than your usual virus, this is in the form of nano-probes which are analysing DNA and selectively weeding out the population. 90% of the population is dead and there is nothing left to do other than pull out.

I get back to the Intrepid and Sosa is lighting some candles for the dead.

This leaves Maniac on comm duty and he is struggling to get a message in from Wilford.

I show him which button to press. Wilford has managed to do some triangulation and figured out that the pirates must be amassing a force in the Axius system. We are to go and investigate.

We set a course for the system next to Axius rather than blundering straight in.

I’m going to go in on my own and try to have a look around. I’m hoping that I won’t attract too much attention in one of the Dragons.

We have to take out a few ships on the way to the jump point but the Dragons are a lot easier to take out now we are on equal footing.

I jump into Axius and the plan works. Everyone ignores me and I’m able to land on some sort of giant base.

I steal a natty black uniform from one of the guys on the flight deck and go to have a look around. I see the Vesuvius outside which is something of a shock and shows how deep the corruption in Confed must go.

There is also a big cache of weapons + the same cannisters that killed 90% of the planet I was just on.

Everyone is heading in one direction. I tag along and Seether is just in the process of introducing their leader to a gathering of Black Lance troops. It’s none other than Tolwyn himself.

Tolwyn goes on to make a speech about how our victory over the Kilrathi was a fluke and no clear verdict of our superiority. Some day we will face an enemy greater than the Kilrathi and we must be ready for them. A fundamental universal rule is “The strong will survive”. We need to seperate the wheat from the chaff and the Gen-select device is the tool for the job. Soon he will reveal the existance of the Black Lance and they will get the praise they deserve. He also commends Seether and holds him up as an example of what the genetic enhancement program has to offer.

Tolwyn leaves to go to the assembly. Seether spots me in the crowd and I have to run. He sends guards after me and there is a bit of cat and mouse in the corridors outside. I run into the bio-convergance scientist I rescued back at the start of the game. She is being forced to create weapons and helps me to get to the flight deck so we can get away in our fighter.

I manage to take out the guards but not before she is shot in the back. She hands over a datacard before she dies.

I take off with the information and now have to run for the jump point. I’m followed by the Vesuvius and have to make a run for the Intrepid as fast as possible.

When I land, there is a cutscene showing Seether informing Tolwyn of the security breach. He says I can try to catch him if I want but it will do no good.

That finishes off CD 5 leaving me just the one to complete tonight. The game has kept up the same standards and is building nicely to the big finish. It possibly lost a bit of pace around the optional missions early on – the choices you make here forced to story to slow down a bit for a couple of missions but it soon got going again. I notice that Catscratch doesn’t appear in any cutscenes after I rescue him also. This is to allow for the possibility of him getting killed if I hadn’t gone after him. Sosa was a bit cold on the comm when I got back the next mission also. This sort of thing is an inherent problem with interactive movies – they usually work best when the movies are just static cutscenes. I’m nitpicking as there have been a good few plot branches and it all works very well on the whole. It’s only really noticeable if you are looking for it.

The missions have been tougher on the whole today and required a bit more effort. This is as it should be now I’m getting further into the game although it was possibly taken a little too far with the mission where I had to capture the confed ship – I don’t think there is any way I could defeat a Dragon without using missiles. I still had to drag myself away from playing the last CD and there is no way I’ll be stopping before the end tonight.

I start out this mission by activating my cloak. This doesn’t entirely hide me but its good enough for this mission.

I close right in on the radar array before uncloaking so I can take it out straight away. This doesn’t work out too well as I can’t hit it when I’m this close for some reason so I end up having to try again.

Once its out Pliers is on the comm telling me that he miscalculated the half life of the crystal and my cloak probably won’t work again. It’s done its job now anyway. I take out all the turrets surrounding the station (another first for WC4) + a couple of ships that fly in.

Once its safe I fire off Vagabond and Sosa in their MIPS straight into the station.

I get a new cutscene at this point. Our intel was wrong – we expected a few engineers but the place is well guarded. Vagabond is shot while covering Sosa and only she escapes with the info.

I tractor Sosa back in using my rear turret in true WC2 style.

When we land, I hold a funeral for Vagabond.

The scene cuts to Tolwyn and Paladin back on the Earth space station admiring the now finished super carrier called the Vesuvius.

Blair tells Paladin of my defection and he finds it very hard to believe. He wants to know what is going on out there and tells Tolwyn that the Senate will vote on war in 7 days and the outcome of that vote will be largely decided by Tolwyns report.

Back to the Intrepid again and Eisen and Sosa are looking over the comm data we got from the station. It fills in the gaps but we still don’t know for sure what is going on.

In the lounge, Mainac is blaming himself for Vagabonds death due to beating him at cards and gloating so much….

For the next mission, we need to come to the aid of another convoy being harrassed by the unmarked ships.

When we get there it turns out to be the Kilrathi themselves just trying to get home and in a Wing Commander first we get to fight alongside the Kilrathi ships to beat off the attackers. Two of the arrows that attack us have cloaking technology.

The Kilrathi have data of their own about their attackers.

This includes video of the disc shaped weapon in action…

.. and at the end the familiar stunt with the mine.

Hawk has seen this before back at the academy. He says a rookie pilot called Seether was the only guy he ever saw who could pull off that trick but he was transferred out to some sort of special ops very quickly. He mentioned talk of a G.E. program whatever that is. He also says I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush to meet him if he was that good back then.

Panther and Catscratch are not too happy about us helping out the Kilrathi – I try to set Catscratch straight.

Hawk is in the bunks and isn’t happy about it either. He’d prefer us to have killed them all. I point out that every battle we win for them is a win for us as well.

I have a chat with Mellek in the bar. Unfortunately he’s not voiced by Tim Curry this time around and the acting leaves a bit to be desired in my opinion. It can’t have been easy for the rest of the actors acting against a giant muppet like thing like this either and it doesn’t lend this part of the game much credibility in all honesty. To be fair, it doesn’t look that bad but he does come across as grovelling and a bit pathetic which isn’t what i’d expect from a Kilrathi. He’s positively helpful and friendly and offers to help Pliers out with his cloaking in return for our aid.

Eisen has decided its time to make a move and is taking all our data with him to try to build a case to stop the war. He still has friends in Confed who he is counting on to help him out.

He assigns me to captain the Intrepid in his absense but I’m also going to be getting help from an Admiral Wilford who has been brought back from retirement to help out the border worlds.

We say our goodbyes to the Captain and I’m left in charge.

I’m giving the mission briefings myself that means from here on out although I don’t make any actual decisions at this point. The renegade Confed factions are attacking some Kilrathi planets and we have to go and clear out the nav points. This is a very traditional patrol mission and arguably the first in the game so far. I do get 2 wingmen so the fights are a larger scale than typical because of it. I complete the m ission and that finishes off CD3.

This CD was a short one as it also contained alternate video for if I hadn’t gone with Eisen. I would have continued to fly with Confed for a while (with Seether on my wing) and seen more evidence of the corruption in the system. This sort of branching storyline has much more appeal to me than the alternate losing branches as there isn’t a right or wrong path. I would have rejoined the Intrepid in the end anyway of course and Vagabond would already be dead. Like yesterday, I didn’t want to stop playing this again once I started but I never have much time on a Monday. It’s hard to make a case for this being the best Origin game in some ways as its not exactly groundbreaking or original but despite that it has to be the most entertaining and gripping game they ever made.

I was going to play Longbow next but I’ve discovered that the version I bought is the limited edition. Usually this means extras – in this case it means that the game is limited and doesn’t have the campaign mode. I’ll get back to Longbow when I’ve bought myself a complete copy.

So instead its Wing Commander 4. After a long wait for WC3, this came out relatively quickly. It was the single most expensive game ever made at the time and by a long way. This is mostly due to the movie sections which abandoned bluescreen in favour of real sets.

The 256 colour VGA is now replaced by 16 bit colour making this one of the earliest games to use this and the video really does look hugely better. I was originally going to play the DVD version of this but I had a bit of trouble getting it to run without crashing every now and then so I’m going back to the original DOS version for the first time in years.

The DVD edition was never available for sale but was given away as a freebie with Creative’s DXR package (a DVD drive + MPEG decoder board) back in the very early days of DVD drives. It’s not like there was much choice back then but it was enough to make be chose the Creative above other options. The DVD edition had VOB files with 5.1 surround and full DVD quality movies. It’s really the only version to play but the CD version isn’t bad either and I get the benefits of Dosbox scaling in the flight sections.

The CD version comes on a whopping 6 CD’s and considering the amount of video its amazing it didn’t need more.

The introduction starts by showing a fleet of cloaked spaceships attacking a medical convoy. They use some sort of disc shaped weapon to explode the ship, before the leader pulls off some fancy move where he lets of a mine, afterburns it then uses the shockwave to speed away.

This fades away into the great fedaration assembly, which I guess is a galactic House of Commons. Paladin is now a Senator and introduces Tolwyn who is giving a report on a situation of escalating violence along the frontier in space. No one is quite sure who to blame these attacks on although there is strong suspicion that the border worlds are behind it.

Tolwyn is given 2 weeks to investigate what is going on and then report back to the house to decide on whether to declare war.

From here we back out into a bar on a remote planet and in walks Blair. Since WC3 he has become a farmer of all things although its not going all that well.

I meet a vet asking for money at the bar and get to make my first choice of the game. There is quite a bit of this sort of choice in WC4. It might seem inconsequential at the time but makes minor plot differences later in the game. I help him out.

The bartender is telling me how things aren’t the same since the war ended and there aren’t enough jobs to go around when I catch a familiar sight in the background.

Maniac is getting turned down by one of the locals. He’s stayed on with Confed while I’ve been off farming.

We are chatting when a fight breaks out in the background. I’ve got the choice of whether to wade in or not. He decides to back down for now after threatening me with a knife.

Manac finally tells me why hes here after hes gone. I’m being recalled to active military service. I can’t have much reason to stay here as I’m ready to just head straight off.

We fly off into space and the first mission starts. The improvement in the movie parts since WC3 really is huge. The script, acting, direction and music are all way ahead of where they were and the real sets make a huge difference. I’ve certainly seen worse movies and its at least up to the standards of a prime time tv show.

Thats no use if the game itself isn’t any good though. I was a bit let down by the gameplay in WC3 going back to it after all these years. It definitely needed some improvement for this game.

First impressions are good. The cockpit has gone and been replaced by a nice HUD instead. This removes a bit of the Wing Commander feel but it’s far better gameplay wise. The graphics are similar but a little smoother, more detailed and with the occasional bit of colour which we never saw in WC3.

In this first mission, Maniac has set it up so that we have non lethal lasers and can have a dogfight to finally see who is the best. It’s easy enough beating him if you line him up in your sights before accepting this. We are attacked straight afterwards and have to wait while the lasers reconfigure before we can attack back.

When we get to our stop at the local space station an unknown craft is in the process of blowing it up.

He claims to be from the border worlds then pulls off the stunt with a mine that was in the intro leaving us to have to fly to a new station.

We land at Bluepoint station then immediately take a shuttle back to Earth. We pass the Victory on the way – its a museum now orbitting Jupiter.

I meet up with Tolwyn on the Earth space station. Two huge carriers are being fitted out which Tolwyn is very proud of. He tells me that he is sending me to the frontier to be his eyes and ears and also putting me back in the cockpit.

My new carrier is captained by none other than Eisen himself. He tells me to have a look around as it will be a lot different from my last tour.

Another familiar face is in the lounge. Vagabond was also in the active reserves – he hadn’t planned on ever actually being recalled.

The briefing room is a bit more flash than the old one with a fancy new table.

My first mission is to escort a supply ship and then relieve a patrol at a comms station.

The escort part of the mission is routine enough and the sort of thing I’ve seen before in WC3.

When we get to the comms station, its under attack. After killing off a few of the attacking craft we are ordered to tail the retreating survivors at a distance so we can discover the location of their base.

I complete the mission and a rookie pilot called Catscratch is just checking in when I get back. He’s got some sort of hero worship thing going on with Blair.

Next mission is to go and destory the pirate base. I get a Longbow for this. The loadout is all done through the one HUD now, the same one I use for wingman selection or saving the game.

I concentrate on the frigate and take it out with torpedos at the first opportunity.

My mission still isn’t done. There is a transport under attack which Eisen sends me to look after.

It’s already dead when I arrive. Some sort of new weapon was used on it which super-ignited the artifical atmosphere blowing it up from the inside. That would be what I saw in the intro.

In the bar, Maniac and Vagabond are talking about this incident. Maniac blames the border worlds but it seems unlikely that they would have this technology.

We jump into a new system with the aim of rescuing a scientist who is being held prisoner. I have to carry out a recon mission flying to several jump points and using a new gun mounted camera system to take 10 pictures at each point.

The graphics for the ground mission are a monumental improvement from WC3. Everything is texture mapped and it really looks pretty good.

I can just park up after clearing out the opposition to take my 10 photos.

After the mission I go and see Eisen in his cabin. He is allegedly writing e-mails to his grandchildren when I walk in but he seems quite secretive about it.

Thanks to my recon from the last mission we know where to go to extract the scientist. I have to fly in with a transport of marines. This mission has a host of new things. First off I get a wingman on a ground mission which never happened in WC3. Next I’m transporting marines to do a job. Finally, the marine ship acually docks with the building landing on its roof and I have to hold off the opposition while its carrying out its mission.

This sort of mission just didn’t happen in WC3. I had the idea before playing this that the gameplay didn’t change much with WC4 but it’s improved a lot so far. I’ve had changing mission requirements and all sorts of little quirks to all the missions so far. Things like tailing the pirates back to their base or having to take photos at nav-points are not all that complex but it just makes it so much more interesting to play.

When I land a shuttle is coming in. A Captain Paulson lands with new orders but I don’t get to find out what they are about.

Tolwyn has sent me a message asking for my appraisal of the current situation. I don’t have much to tell him yet but do ask about Captain Paulsen.

In the bar, Vagabond is teaching Catscratch how to play cards, the hard way. Maniac has caught a glimpse of the bio-chemist we just rescued and thinks she was worth rescuing just for the way she looks.

In my next mission briefing, Eisen has been replaced by Paulsen. Paulsen doesn’t see that there is any need for me to know why.

The mission is to recapture a space station which has been taken over by the border worlds. This is similar to the last mission in that I have to guard the capture operation.

When I get back, Maniac is trying his luck with the bio-chemist with the usual result.

The news comes on and includes an interview with Tolwyn. Confed are now requiring all border worlds ships to fly escorted which isn’t going to ease any tensions.

I ask Eisen what his new orders are and he tells me that he is just awaiting transfer and thats all he knows but that we shouldn’t worry about it.

Some border worlds ships are breaking the new Confed interdiction and flying into Confed space. We are told to stop them by any means neccessary. We issue a final warning and they claim that we illegally seized one of their space labs and refuse to follow orders. I have to blow up one of their cap ships to get them to surrender.

Tolwyn has replied to my message. He says that Paulsen is little more than a professional beurocrat and that I shouldn’t concern myself with him.

I talk to Catscratch in the bar and he is not happy about the last mission we just flew. It turns out he is actually from the border worlds himself. I tell him I’ll try to get some info out of Eisen.

Eisen is getting ready to leave. I mention that some of the men aren’t happy and he points out that loyalty to Confed was a lot easier when we were fighting the Kilrathi.

I bump into Maniac near the flight deck. He is trying to talk to one of the new pilots who just ignores him. A order comes over the speaking for everyone without Level 5 security clearance to leave the flight deck. Maniac heads off for the bar – I decide I need to see whats going on and stick around.

Whilst hiding out of sight I see a new pilot called Seether arrive. This is the guy from the bar at the start of the game and he seems to know Paulson.

I head to the briefing room and find out that Eisen and Maniac have stolen a shuttle and fled the Lexington. Paulson tells me that Eisen has been leaking information to the border worlds and we have to stop him by any means.

We fly off and Vagabond tells me he is not going to fire on the Captain. I have a choice whether to join him.

I trust the Captain and join up as well. Catscratch just goes along with my decision whatever it is at this point. That still leaves one wingman who we all turn on.

We follow Eisen and meet up with a small carrier called the Intrepid and land just before it jumps out of the system.

The Intrepid is in bad shape and took a lot of hits before we got there. We meet up with two veteran pilots Panther and Hawk who are trying to sort out the mess.

I have a brief chat with Eisen. He tells me that he was no spy but has been examining Confed data to try to find out what was happening. He claims that the trouble with the border worlds  is being provoked by forces within Confed and the data he is carrying could prevent a full blown war. He still hasn’t figured it all out yet though.

Before I get to look around the ship we have an emergency scramble and have to take out the ships we were flying with not too long ago.

After I land, I meet the ships chief tech – another veteran called Pliers.

Sosa is the ships communications officer. She is working on some of Eisens encrypted data but is stuck using paper due to the state of the ship.

The bridge was destroyed in the attack. All the bridge crew and anyone in the berths were killed in the attack – 2/3 of the crew including its Captain.

With no Captain, Hawk and Panther are arguing about what the strategy should be.  I manage to persuade them to accept Eisen as Captain.

The new briefing room isn’t as swish as the Lexingtons but at least Eisen is back in control now.

Its back to Nebula flying for the next mission while we attempt to retreat from the Lexington.

I’m now stuck flying border worlds ships. They aren’t actually all that bad. This banshee only has lasers but they fire very quickly and never seem to run out of power.

The nebula mission just changes the colour palette as in WC3 – the radar range is reduced slightly also but it makes no real difference to gameplay. We have to take on Excaliburs in this mission but the Banshee holds up well.

Missiles play a far bigger role in this game than in WC3. They appear to do a lot more damage and also to hit more frequently. A single missile hit can take out a lot of enemies which adds an extra strategic layer to the gameplay, in knowing when to use your limited supply. In WC3 a missile tended not to do enough damage to be that much use.

Pliers has just got done stripping our Confed ships for spare parts when I get back. I’ll trust that he’s done the right thing here as I probably prefer the border worlds ships so far anyway.

Our new accomodation isn’t looking too good. With the berths destroyed the bunks are all set up in the storage room.

We have found a backdoor jump point to escape the system but the Lexington is trying to get there first and block it off. I’m left with no option other than to destroy the Lexington. The avenger is a great ship for this job mainly because it has all of its 4 torpedos on separate points. There is an option to link all my missiles and fire them together so I can fire all 4 simultaneously. This is enough to take out the Lexington with ease and we just have to mop up any remaining fighters to complete the mission.

Seether and Paulson escape the Lexington in a shuttle and Seether makes sure Paulson doesn’t make any more such mistakes as letting me and Eisen live.

Sosa has been getting somewhere with Eisens data and discovered that there is a blank spot of 18 hours. Eisen decides we are going to intercept a communications relay to attempt to recover this missing data.

Before we can start the mission, we get a distress call from a border worlds fleet which has run afoul of the Confed edict so we have to fly out to help them.

There are a host of capship missiles fired at the border world ships in this mission. I’m kept busy taking these out as a single hit would destroy the transports.

I have a bit of a look around Pliers stuff after the mission and discover this MIP (Manned Insertion Pod). It’s a manned missile which can be used to deliver a marine into a structure when there isn’t room for a shuttle.

He even has a cloaking device hes been working on but he only has the one + he’s not sure how long it will last. I ask him to get it ready anyway.

There is a big crowd in the lounge area and Maniac actually beats Vagabond at cards.

After the distraction, its back to trying to get the comm. data. We are going to use the MIPS to send Sosa + Vagabond into the base. We are expecting some marines to arrive but can’t wait that long. I need to somehow take out the stations radar relay before it can send a warning – the cloak should be useful here.

That finished up CD2 and was where I stopped for now. When I went back and played WC3, it definitely didn’t live up to my memory of it. WC4 is a far better game than I remembered. The movie sections are really superb – its easily up to the standards of any TV series you could care to name. It is so much better than the Wing Commander movie it makes you wonder what went wrong.

I knew the movie sections were good but I hadn’t expected the gameplay to improve by this much. Every mission has been noticeably different, the graphics and engine have improved, the new digital music is superb and the whole thing just comes together to create one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played. If I had the time, I could play through the whole thing in one sitting.

The reviews of the game weren’t exactly glowing, if I remember right, although I’m sure that sales weren’t too bad. It got the usual abuse for being an interactive movie and the gameplay was criticised but in my opinion the gameplay and movies meld together very well and the whole package just comes together to tell the story. I suppose if you have too short an attention span to watch a couple of minutes of video without shooting something its a problem but personally I’d love to have seen more games take this sort of approach.