Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Wing Commander III for Free?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2014

The good news:

Origin is giving away Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger for free today.

The bad news:

It’s a very temporary deal, so if you got here late, it’s already changed.

The ugly news:

It’s EA’s Origin online service.

 

I dunno. Even though I do have a rarely-used account on Origin, I’d rather pick up Wing Commander III from GOG.COM.

While I personally consider WC3 to be the weakest of the original series (Prophecy, Academy, etc. don’t count) both in gameplay and storytelling, it was still a fun game for its time, the first “true” Wing Commander (meaning: not counting Armada) with actual 3D models for ships, and the first with actual actors doing their best to emote on green screen. And Tom Wilson – well, the guy’s just awesome in general, but he makes a great Maniac.


Filed Under: Deals - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



  • McTeddy said,

    Yep, not even that’s worth picking up origin.

    Besides, I bought the full Wing Commander collection over the summer sale on GoG. Money well spent.

  • Xian said,

    WC3 was the first game I remember playing with full motion video. That was pretty amazing at the time. Tex Murphy Under A Killing Moon was the only other game I had played that used FMV; I didn’t play The 7th Guest until after those. It’s strange that I enjoyed it so much, many times just wanting to complete a mission so I could watch the story progressing. These days I usually abhor cut scenes, but they were new and shiny back then.

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    LOL – I know exactly what you mean! WC4 had a story that seemed (at the time) to actually be worth following as a movie. I’ve since seen it in movie form that some fans did, and it doesn’t quite hold up… but it’s still better than that Wing Commander movie that Roberts & Microsoft produced back in 1999 or whatever.

    The thing is… I think part of it wasn’t so much that it was new, so much as that it was your first time through and actually interested in the story… which was true in Wing Commander 1 and 2 as well (with more primitive technology that actually holds together better today).

    It’s not necessarily a bad thing to dangle story progression as a reward for completing gameplay. The problem – which I guess was started with the Wing Commander series but has gotten a lot worse since then – was that this became an excuse for a bunch of lame Steven Spielberg wannabes to make their crappy animated home-movies the focal point of the game, rather than the game part of the game.

    There’s a very uneasy alliance between gameplay and narrative that I don’t think will ever be resolved. One is about giving the player control, and the other is about taking control away from the player. They can compliment each other, but the balance must be in favor of the gameplay.

    Then there’s the whole matter of having to sit through a 30-second cutscene or three EVERY TIME you have to repeat a section…. *grumble*….

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