Origin has been widely criticized for their server problems with Ultima Online, and I feared this would be the case with SO... and so it was. I was fortunate to drop by their site on August 24th, about 10 - 15 minutes after registration started, so their servers were not yet swept by a tidal wave of people trying to get their usernames, but, as you'll see in Umax's review, he was not as lucky. I also happened to stumble upon ftp.download.com's release of it about 20 minutes before it was posted on their site, so I had a chance to get it off before their lines saturated, as well. In any case, this time, Origin did a better job, in my view, of mirroring downloads (well, fine, UO wasn't downloadable, but at least corporate policy didn't prevent them from offloading the WC:SO archive them to multiple servers). I believe they should've done a better job with mirroring registration, as I'm sure many people would've volunteered ATM links just for the Wing Commander cause.

'Mais retournons au nos moutons.' The idea behind SO is similar to that of a soap opera, but without the lamented crying and trying to figure out for about 15 - 20 years who is whose son. After the initial download, which includes 5 missions, there will be an 8-mission addon each week, for a period of 7 weeks. That idea sounds pretty good, until you try the game and find yourself compelting the initial download missions in under an hour - or so I did, anyway. A neat feature, incidentally, is that when you register, depending on the data you provide Origin with, such as your past Wing Commander experience, etc. your game settings will be somewhat different, in particular, game difficulty. Of course, you can chicken out and lower the difficulty, but I find it's still a neat feature.

A word has to be said about cutscenes. I'm not sure why this feature is so overlooked in most games - perhaps, because it's much easier to just do an FMV shoot and get it over with, but so far, I've seen two games that implemented it, one well, the other well enough - Final Fantasy VII and WC:SO. I'm talking about engine-rendered cinematics. What I mean by that are cutscenes, but which are rendered using the game engine - like you saw your character walk around, etc. but without your control. If done properly, like I believe it was done in FF7, it could help the game greatly, as you will no longer play a character that look a certain way, make up your own opinion of him, etc. - then have an FMV where he looks like a bum from that street next to you. Engine-rendered scenes, though, always use the same 3D models throughout the game, so you never feel like you're suddenly seeing some weird guy that you've never noticed in the game. There is, of course, the other extreme - fully FMV-based games, such as Gabriel Knight II, but that requires significant amounts of media, and stresses your CD-ROM a lot, thereby automatically raising the requirements plank. In WC:SO the engine-rendered cutscenes are not earth-shattering, but, on the other hand, the reason why it's so small (comparative to, say, Prophecy) is that FMVs are no longer used in the game, and they sure get the point across.

The gameplay closely resembles Prophecy, as well as the previous Wing Commanders, which is a great thing. Umax compares this game to Descent: Freespace, but I really doubt there's a comparison - Freespace is a _spinoff_ from a pretty good game, and Wing Commander IS the good game. It has a story to it, it has an atmosphere, it has the dedication of fans, it has something Freespace can never have. The flight models are somewhat simplified in SO, I admit - but many nifty tricks can be done, which truly shows off ace pilots: for example, the Vampire has incredible pitch rate, but a relatively low yaw rate - so when you need a quick turn to the starboard, you'd roll your ship right, then pull up - instead of just turning right - thereby doing a quicker turn than you normally would. There's also the autoslide, which is, perhaps, one of the cleverest inventions of all time - and other space sims don't seem to have it for some reason. The story of the autoslide is interesting. It was originally called the Shelton slide, and was implemented in WC2 on the Sabre, then later on on all ships in WC3 and 4, and then, in Prophecy (and SO) only on some, which was pretty disconcerting, if you got majorly used to it (given that it saved your life way more than once, you really should have). Missiles and guns stick to the tradition, which was briefly violated by WC3 where all guns looked similar, just with different colors. The Cloudburst is a pretty neat weapon, and the Swarmer AB is still there, as well as the usual array of Pilums, HSers, Imrecs and torpedoes. And one thing that I completely adore about Wing Commander, which LucasArts never put in any X-Wing games, or Volition in Freespace - is the waypoint idea. You never know what'll hit you on the next waypoint - it could be a lone Moray that strayed from the flock, could be void, could be a whole fleet - and it's always fun to find it out. (Although I preferred WC2's waypoints, where surprises were always much more accentuated - you'd fly into an area, and find three Dorkirs complete with a Jalkehi escort... now that was fun.)

The graphics in the game are very similar to Prophecy. The company states that improvements have been made to the engine - I reserve judgment on that, but so far I haven't seen too many. That is not to say they're bad - they're perfectly beautiful-looking... but there's something to the whole Prophecy line that I still can't put up with... I still maintain WC3 and 4 were the best Wing Commanders ever made (even though I know general opinion seems to tend towards them being the worst). And I still find the ships in Prophecy/WCSO are somewhat unoriginal. That is, the ships and the whole Aligned (=Alien) idea is original, but ... somehow I liked hanging on the tail of a Vakthoth in WC3, and seeing him get ripped apart with my cannons, see pieces of the ship fall off, then the explosion.... you see none of that in SO. And while I'm at that, why does shooting asteroids count towards your percentage hits? That doesn't make much sense.

And while I'm on the complaint bandwagon, here's one, which will no doubtedly raise some controversy - the flight stats. I was always proud that WC was story and skill-based, but where every shot you fire wasn't kept track of, a la X-Wing. Then Prophecy came... and I don't know if it's a good thing at all. Obviously, the kill score should be kept track of - that's sacred. But every single laser?.. I'm not so sure.

In any case, to the sound issues. I found the music to be pretty good, but not for long - it's a bit repetitive after a while. It seems to be the music from the ending credits of Prophecy, though - and back then I liked it, but I guess I never entertained the idea of listening to it endlessly during missions. The radio chatter is the same as always, but admittedly, some variety could be thrown in. In that sense, a neat feature of Descent: Freespace was when one of your wingmen would scream at you when you pick up a shadow - which is useful sometimes, in case you want to either drop a mine or got somewhat carried away with your pursuit. But then again, skill comes into play here - shake the shadow, and try to take him out. However, even on nightmare difficulty, I found it to be all too easy - those bugs just don't fly well enough. I mean, this is nightmare - why does it fly in a straight line when I get on its tail and start filling its tailpipes with explosives?

The overall feel of the game is great. There's still no force feedback support, but I find the shockwave of an explosion is so well-timed with the boom in the woofer that it almost gives you a realistic feeling. Granted, the shockwave is completely fake, as there's nothing in space to _produce_ one, but then again, this one's for fun, not authentic recreation of space.

In resume, this is an incredible addition to the Wing Commander saga. The storyline, at the moment, is at a cliffhanger - but that's the point. I find some missions could be made harder, say by exponentially increasing the number of enemies for nightmare level. And that 75% kill ratio bonus is just annoying... but that's my personal opinion. In any case, this game is most definitely worth your download time (I've wanted to say something like that for so long) - and, even though I whined about so many things in it, it's an incredible game. (Things balance out in life... you try to search out positive things in a despicably bad item, and you try to 'dump' on a good item... same here.) And the story truly justifies the 'Price of freedom is eternal vigilance...'

Pros: great graphics, good control, innovative idea of a free game, 'soap opera' idea sounds like it'll work out well, fast-paced, action-packed gameplay;

Cons: somewhat easy, relatively annoying 75% kill bonus (as if you don't kill 75% of the enemies, your mission score is lowered, so what kind of bonus is that?).

Graphics: 18/20
Sound: 13/15
Gameplay: 27/30
Fun Factor: 18/20
Storyline: 4/5
Overall Impression: 10/10