Day 125 – Privateer:Righteous Fire

Posted on by
Reply

Its straight on to another add-on pack but this is the last add-on that Origin ever released for any of their games. Privateer isn’t the most obvious game to get a mission pack as the story was pretty much complete in the original game and you’ve already built up your ship. The first game was one of my favorites in this blog so far, however, so I’m all for more of it. I would like to see a bit more originality than SC-Tactical Ops.

There is a new intro which is more than SC-TO had. It’s not up to the standards of the original but isn’t bad for a mission pack. My fancy Steltek gun that I spent the whole of the last game acquiring has been stolen so the aim of this game looks like getting it back again. This sounds a little dull for a major plotline but I expect there will be more to it.

I start off the game with no idea of where to go. I can import a savegame from Privateer so I carry over all my equipment and money. This means I start the game with a fully equipped Centurion + 140,000 credits. However, its not a fully equipped Centurion any more. There is quite a bit of new equipment available in this game – my ship will now take shield and energy generators 1 size larger, there is a new gun type out (fusion), speed enhancers, advanced repair droid, new armor, shield recharger, gun cooler, etc.. In short its possible to improve every single aspect of my ship with these new parts. They are however very, very expensive. E.g. the gun cooler is 300,000. To buy the lot I’m looking at somewhere over a million credits which is going to take a bit of privateering.

Using my money from the last game, I immediately improve my shields, armor and generator. Even without all the other new additions my ship is seriously powerful now. I randomly take missions and check out every bar I arrive at to see if there is a plot character there. When I arrive at Perry naval base after a cargo run I run into a familiar face who offers me work. It’s a paltry 10,000 credits but I’m sure I have to accept all plot missions.

I blow a few Kilrathi up and its back for the next mission which is more or less the same thing at a different nav point.

Back again and this time its a patrol mission.

I return successful once more and get a final mission, another patrol.

I encounter some sort of new craft on this one. They register as unidentified and refuse to communicate so I’ve no idea who they are. The ships don’t look Steltek (they don’t glow green) but they do look a bit alien as they are all curves. I blow them up but I’m none the wiser at the end of it. They are quite quick but not too tough.

Thats the last mission for now. For plot missions, I’m not much the wiser – all I know thats new is that there are some new ships in the system. I do get a final mission of sorts to kill a Governer Menesche but I don’t know where to find him. For now its back to the random missions and looking in every bar.

In Pentonville, Taylor (another of my employers from the last game) is still around and has work for me if I want it. Its a pitiful 10000 again but its a short run. I don’t remember the Sherwood system being in Privateer – the sector has been expanded somewhat in this game.

Tayla meets me at the other end and has more smuggling work for me. This time the payment is a little larger.

I complete the run and get another even better paid mission.

One final mission, smuggling Brilliance. Despite what she says the Pyranees system isn’t that far off and no further than the last missions destination. I don’t complain about the 40000 payment.

I land with the Brilliance and another old face is in the bar. This guy tried to kill me in the last game – it seems a bit out of character not to take revenge at this point. He doesn’t have any missions for me as such but he also wants this Menesche guy killed and will wipe my records if I do it. This will presumably mean that everyone in the sector will be on friendly terms with me if he does this and would make life a lot easier. He will also do it for 200,000 credits but I think I’ll pass on that one, I’m still trying to outfit my ship.

That leaves me jobless again and still no nearer finding my gun. I end up at Oxford and find more work there. Going to all my old haunts from Privateer seems to be the best bet for finding missions. This guy actually says he will introduce me to his friend who should help with finding my gun which makes him my first lead since I started. In the meanwhile I get to fly a series of low paid missions for him.

I land with the shipment of books and see Murphy in the bar, who also has missions for me. I expect she is paying better so I take her mission before flying back to Oxford.

Next up she wants me to bust a blockade. These are the easiest missions as I just have to afterburn to the planet when I get there. When I land the merchants guild here has two missions paying 15,000 each to deliver cargo to Oxford. This is far too much to turn down when I need to go there anyway so I head back there next.

The next Oxford mission is a simple 3 nav point patrol. The Oxford missions seem easier than the others – I guess I should have gone there first.

Next its another delivery to Junction. I’m near to Murphys location so I stop off there on the way back.

Murphy has another delivery mission for me. Like Tayla her payments are going up each time so I’m starting to pile up the cash.

Her final mission is a patrol of the Metsor system. This place only has 2 nav points so how hard can it be. As it turns out its pretty tough with several waves of fighters at each nav point + more of those unknown fighters to deal with on my way back. My ship is pretty well equipped by this stage though so I’m close to invulnerable.

I complete the mission and get my nice fat payout. Thats all the work for now but she is also after Menesche. If I ever get this guy I can just travel round collecting all the bounties.

I head back to pick up the rest of the Oxford missions. Next up is an escort mission – its strange just how few escort missions are in Privateer.

I have to kill off quite a few waves of Retros – I’m not sure how much damage the cargo ship takes but this strikes me as a tougher than average mission and it looked to be taking a lot of hits. I have to wait for the cargo ship to fly the whole way to the jump afterwards which is probably why there are so few protection missions. Wing Commander coped with escorts and wings of fighters so I’m not sure why this isn’t in Privateer.

I have another delivery to make to Perry next which will have to wait for another day.

I’ve done quite a few missions but I’m barely any nearer to finding my missing gun and I can’t really say there has been any plot as such. In many ways, Righteous Fire has all the same faults as Tactical Operations. Its very much a case of more of the same with little overall story.

However, the concurrent plot mission structure works well and is highly preferable to the structure used in Privateer. I’m taking out non-plot missions at the same time to try to increase my income on each run and I feel far more like a privateer as I’m then using the income to improve my ship. Privateers plot was kind of an extra to start after you had the games best ship, I much prefer this structure where I’m buying the new upgrades as I go along.

I’ve got most of the upgrades available at this point and own the armor, gun cooler, shield recharger + 2 fusion guns. There are still speed and thrust enhancers + an advanced repair droid available. I could also buy more neutron guns but I’m not sure this wouldn’t drain power too fast to be useful.

I’m thoroughly enjoying playing this but there isn’t enough originality so far. Trying to get the new upgrades and the fact that I liked the original so much are enough for RF to get away with this up to a point. I’d like to see the plot get moving a bit after I finish the Oxford missions.

Day 124

Posted on by
2

The missions in Costa Rica carry on in the same vein. The ground support of the Rhinos isn’t in evidence for the first couple of missions although the planes they are flying go down very easily. 

The third mission is a bit more interesting. The Rhinos have called in ground support and we have to take it out. On the way we fly through their airstrip and I get to gun down the launching planes.

Its then onto the column of ground vehicles which we have to take out – there are plenty of them but they are undefended so are sitting ducks. Killing these off completes this mission.

At this point I was seriously low on cash but I guess the sale of the F22 must have gone through as I’ve now got 40 million in the bank. Its back to Selims – there is a new fixer there this time but I take the remaining mission from the first batch instead for now.


This time its off to New Siberia to destroy a bomber base.

It follows the usual structure taking out air support in the first two missions and then bombing the base in the third. There is a final bonus mission to take out 3 Hercules planes which I have to fly solo as everyone else has already packed up.

Its back to Selims with just the one option left.

This new fixer called Maxwell offers a mission paying 12 million in India protecting their newly discovered gold from the Nicaraguans.

After a couple of dogfight missions, I get to take out a building in a city in an attempt to kill the Nicoraguan leader. In the end he escapes and I have to shoot his yacht down in mission 4. The games still going and that was mission 22 so the box understated the number for some reason.

There is still only the one fixer left at Selims though and this time its off to British Columbia to help it gain independence from Canada. On the flight over there we stop off in Ireland and we learn that a load of Tomahawk missiles has been stolen and launched. We have to take down the missiles before they strike.

At least this is something new, although I’ll be seeing a few similar missions in Wing Commander games to come. After the mission the final cutscene kicks in.










It’s an inconclusive end where the Wildcats just land after completing the mission. Nothing in particular happened in the storyline overall and I was expecting us to find a new base outside of Turkey or something. Even if you really loved Strike Commander, you would have been a bit disappointed with this add on. It wasn’t too bad to play through but I really hope that Pacific Strike & Wings of Glory will have a bit more to offer and have something to add to the formula.

Next: Wing Commander Privateer – Righteous Fire

Day 123

Posted on by
Reply

After one more mission to finish things up in South Africa its back to base again. We need to get a new pilot in replace Baseline and get a new recruit straight away who used to fly with the Israeli air force.

Other than that its business as usual and back to Selims. This time I get a choice of 3 campaigns. I’ll no doubt be flying them all anyway so I just pick the first one and get sent to Hawaii this time to held destroy a naval carrier. This is a 4 mission campaign. Its all standard and easy enough until the final mission to destroy the carrier which is surrounded by warships firing missiles at me. I take a load of attempts to finish this mission but make it in the end.

I’ve still got 3 choices of mission at Selims – thats probably enough missions to finish the game unless these campaigns turn out to be a bit shorter. I pick the first one again, this time in Costa Rica, where just for a change we have to take out an air base. This time I’m flying against the Rhinos who have a different strategy using cheap planes with top ordnance and ground support.

Before we head out I instruct Manuel to sell the F22 as we just can’t afford to keep it in the air. Money is tight in general in this game and I seem to have less left at the end of each campaign than what I started with. The fact that my wingmen keep getting shot down isn’t helping this any but at the current rate I should just about last out the rest of the game before going broke.

Thats half the game done – apart from the new wingman who doesn’t seem any different to the others there is still nothing new to speak of and even the campaign storylines are cut down with short mission briefings and nothing imbetween.

Day 122 – Strike Commander:Tactical Operations

Posted on by
Reply

This is the final game Origin released in 1993 that I’ve still to play and was the one and only add-on pack released for Strike Commander. I’m going into this knowing what I’m going to get – more of the same. There are no new weapons, no new planes and as far as I know no new overall storyline although there must be story for each campaign. This makes this add-on basically a set of standalone campaigns like all the optional ones from the original game.

The last thing Strike Commander needed was more of the same as there was too much of that in the original game for my liking. With the epic scale of Serpent Isle it seems like a while since I played Strike Commander though so I’m actually keener than I expected to start this and there are only 21 new missions so it shouldn’t take that long to complete.

I can’t imagine that a load of similar missions with no plot is going to give me a lot to write about so these could be some short posts.

 
 

The game starts sixth months after the last one. The wildcats have been on holiday and are just returning back to duty. Virgil informs me that Turkey are putting taxes through the roof and we need to find some work. The first two missions involve taking out Turkish training bases where pilots are being prepared to enforce the new taxes.

I get to fly the F22 again in the first of these missions – the starting difficulty is a lot harder as you would expect from a mission pack but otherwise they are just the sort of thing I saw in the first game.
 
 

We wipe out the training bases, but we still need money as these missions were unpaid and we probably need to relocate before the  taxes are enforcable. I go to Selims to find a job and Prideaux is still hanging around and in business.

I only have the one job to choose from which is helping the South Africans in some border conflicts. Again for the first of these missions I get to fly the F22. The jackals appear to be supporting the opposition so we decide to take their base out in mission 2. I can tell somethings going on here when I don’t get to choose my wingman. Instead Lyle joins me at at nav 1 only to get killed by the Jackals later in the mission.

The mission is aborted at this point but we get revenge in the next one by blowing up the Jackals base.

Thats as far as I got for now. After thinking the change from Serpent Isle would be fun, I’m pretty unenthusiastic now I’ve started. It looks like there may be a reasonable plot to the game after all but the missions are just the same thing all over again and I’m pretty bored with them already. In short, if I wasn’t doing this blog, there is no way I’d bother playing this game.

I guess you could level the same complaint at the Wing Commander games but I simply find Wing Commander more fun to play than this + there is a little more variety in my opinion. I’ll stick with it but I’m not going to enjoy this one especially – it will probably be a case of picking off a few missions at a time until its done. Its only taken an hour or so to do 1/4 of the game so unless the difficulty level goes through the roof I should still finish this one up by the end of the week.

Day 121

Posted on by
Reply

Each time I go back to Xenka some new random topic seems to be available to discuss – this time its sacrifice. I suppose it could be coming from the prophecies but no one has mentioned sacrifice to me at any point otherwise. She tells me in a very brief scene that one of my party will have to sacrifice themselves and we draw straws and I lose. It takes about 4 lines of text to find out that I’m supposed to throw myself into the cremation machine in Monitor.

I suppose its no use arguing so I head to Monitor. When I get there Dupre won’t allow me to do it and jumps in the machine himself. I knew that he died in this game at some point but I expected a bit more than this somehow – it all seems far too brief and is over in a few seconds.

Xenka now tells me to head for the chaos shrine and also gives me a sword to use somehow on sunrise isle which is presumably where my final tooth will take me. I figure I want to go to skullcrusher first.

Gwenno decides to join up with us at this point.

My first task is to find some powder kegs to blow open the door to the chaos shrine. I know I saw some very early in the game but I can’t say where now. However, my mind goes back to Monitor and the secret plan of Spektor for exploding weapons + the key I got and never used anywhere. There is a secret door in the mountainside here, south of the crematorium which takes a little finding. The key gets me through the locked door just inside here.

I don’t have to go far before I find a load of powder kegs.

Its off to skullcrusher and the powder keg makes a mess of the door.

There is a lengthy maze like dungeon spread over a couple of levels at this point. It only takes about 10 minutes to work my way through to the chaos shrine. There doesn’t seem to be anything much here – I need to go through a secret door behind the two snakes.

This gets me to another wall of lights and a load of plinths looking ready for some objects.

I use the 3 banes + chaos serpent then put dupres ashes on the last plinth.

The chaos serpent appears – its soul and Dupres have now merged and Dupre is holding it off from attacking me. The voice acting for Dupre is typically horrible (he’s played by Denis Loubet). Xenka teleports straight in and tells me to go to sunrise isle next.

I’m teleported straight into a locked room with a load more plinths. First off I have to get the snakes from the corners and place them on the scales.

When I do this all the other plinths fill up with the various symbols for the 6 virtues of the Ophidians.

I pick these up all these items and the doors unlock. Just outside is a book telling me what to do next. I have to place all these items in their opposite temples to balance them as such.

This place doesn’t look like an island to me and is more of a void type area with big black nothingness surrounding everything. Its not too dangerous though and I think I only run into one flock of bats the whole time I’m here. Finding the temples takes a while but I slowly work my way through them all.

After placing the final object a book appears in its place. This book claims to be some sort of key so I take it with me.

Using the book between two likely looking pillars back in the middle of the map creates a blue firey bridge which I walk across. I then get another two pillars where I do the same and get an orange fire bridge.

The shrine of balance has still more protection in the form of various balance type puzzles to solve before I can get in. For the first I have to place a serpent candle on an ice plinth. This shatters an ice wall into blocks and I use one of these blocks on the fire plinth.

For the next area I have to gather cubes of chaos and order – I can’t believe this typo got through to this version of the game.

This puzzle is a strange one involving teleporting between east and west sections gathering keys to use on the opposite side. After struggling with this for a bit I get some chaos and order cubes.

Using these blocks fills in the middle of the central room with stairs one at a time. A scroll pops up with details of what I will need next. Despite what it says I don’t need to wear the armour and all that, just carrying them would seem to be enough as I walk straight onto the new teleporter without any problems.

This gets me to the long sought after shrine of balance.

All the serpents seem to be here although the order serpent has one last go at stopping me by sending a load of ice trolls at me. This is a pretty big battle but we all come through unscathed.

The earth serpent tells me what to do at each stage now. I place the 3 serpents, put the appropriate 3 serpent items on the altar and then the snake statue comes to life as the chaos serpent. It asks me to slay it with the serpent sword to send it back to the void. I do so and am then struck by lightning repeatedly until the endgame starts.

I’m sent to the void along with the chaos serpent – I get to watch balance being restored and learn that Dupre is content in his new role but am then left floating in the void. The guardian puts in an appearance and before I can go anywhere else grabs me out of the void to take me to “a different world”. Its a nice ending, setting up the next game without being too much of a cliffhanger.

There was definitely evidence of the developers rushing the later stages of the game, although it didn’t turn out too badly for all that. Looking at the games around this period from Origin, most were released prematurely but at least a lot of the problems were fixed in later patches so I’m a lot better off than I would have been buying them new at the time. EA’s influence is definitely showing by this stage.

Ultimately this game wasn’t quite up to U7’s standards for me although it was still way above average. I gather that the series will take a turn for the worse at this point with U8 although I’ll judge for myself when I get that far.

I’ve now finished 40 out of the 60 games so I’m 2/3 of the way through this blog. I can safely say now that there is no way I’m not going to finish them all as I’m far too stubborn to get this far without completing the lot. After turning out loads of RPG’s in their early days, Origin seem to be concentrating on flight/space sims from here on which are going to make up half of the remaining games with the only RPG’s left being Ultima 8, 9 & System Shock.

Next: Strike Commander – Tactical Operations.