Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Origin

Combat Simulator

• Computers: Intel486 DX4/75+ MHz with double-speed CD-ROM drive, Pentium, or 100 percent compatible
• Digital Sound Boards: Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE32, Pro Audio Spectrum, Roland SCC-1, Rap10, Ensoniq Soundscape, Gravis Ultrasound, Gravis Ultrasound Max or 100% compatible
• Graphics supported: 256-color VGA or SVGA (VESA driver required for SVGA play)
• RAM and HD Storage Requirements: 8 megs RAM; 30 megs hard drive space

Quintin Stone

I will say it again and again: Origin needs to improve their Wing Commander flight engine. The original X-Wing engine is better than Wing Commander's current one. It's so bulky, monstrous, and annoying, that the only way I could even play it on a Pentium-100 was on lowest detail in the lowest resolution. Even then it was slow and unresponsive at times.

So I won't be able to rave about the detail on the enemy ships, and that fabulous texture mapping in combat, because I never saw it.

On the other hand, this game made a great movie. I didn't think that Mark Hamil would be able to escape his Luke Skywalker past, but he did a good job of portraying his character, Colonel Blair. The supporting cast was equally entertaining, and there was no shortage of attractive young women to admire. They did a good job with the cast on this film, err, game, and the scenery and rendered cut-scene animation was just as good.

Unlike some space-simulators, WC4 did have a consistent and omnipresent plot between shoot-em-ups. The shortcomings of the flight engine often made me wish I could skip the battles altogether and just watch the cut-scenes.