Wing Commander: Prophecy
Is the latest (last?) installation of the Wing Commander saga also the greatest? Well, let's start from the beginning ...
... which in this case, as in all the later WC games, is a quite long cinematic. It tells of an old Kilrathi prophecy and shows how a mysterious alien race attacks the Kilrah system. Then it introduces the main characters, among which is your alter ego Lance Casey, son of Iceman. That's right, you're not Blair anymore! Our old hero is becoming older and is about to retire, so you won't get to play as him. At least he's still around, you'll even get to fly with him, and he's still played by Mark Hamill. The only other familiar faces, as far as I can see, are Maniac and chief mechanic Rachel.
The story is, as usual, mostly told through the numerous cinematics which all feel very JPEG-compressed. I quite like the story (apart from a small thing at the end, which you can probably guess if you've seen it), and everything feels better connected and more involving than in WC3 and earlier (haven't played WC4, so I can't say anything about that). However, I often got the feeling the dialogue could need a bit of work here and there, it just doesn't feel very well written. It gets the job done though. I still like the small cut-scenes the WC games have always used, like taking off, landing, briefings and so on. You never get that feeling the cinematics are completely unrelated to the missions, like in some RTS:s ... Right, enough movie talk, let's get into space!
The first thing you notice is how good everything looks. Ships are large, some capital ships feel truly enormous, and detailed, and blow up in very satisfying ways. Then you get to your first alien encounter, and it might be a tough one. There are hordes of bugs waiting for you, and they move fast and fly well. So fast and well I got really stuck right at the beginning of the game before I got up to speed. Once you get into the action, Prophecy delivers all you want and more. Space combat has never been this good before, and I think I've thought that for every WC game I've played so it's no small feat. The satisfaction in nailing bugs is total, especially as they keep taunting you to their last breath. Overall, I like the constant radio chatter very much. A lot of it is heard quite often of course, but there's still good variation and it increases the tension another couple of notches when you hear your wingmen scream as the bugs get them, or boast when they nail bugs for that matter.
Other sounds are good too, but you don't really think about them (except that the sound when your shots hit the hull of an enemy ship sounds very much like the sound in WC1 ...). The same thing goes for the music, it's there, it's good and you don't think too much about it (though I miss the strike mission music from WC1 ...).
Wing Commander lives, and the action's better than ever before! (even if they don't let us play Blair ...) You won't even miss the Kilrathi!
