- Joined
- Nov 22, 2020
- Messages
- 2,205
What´s up niggers. So recently I was going through the GOG catalogue and noticed that Strike Commander was there for a few bucks and decided to buy it right away. For those not in the know, SC is a “realistic” off-shoot of the Wing Commander series of space flight sims. Its set in the alternative timeline 2012, in which many of the states (including USA) broke up into smaller entities for various reasons and are busy waging small time wars on each other, often with the help of various mercenary groups. You are a part of one of the “high end” merc outfits that includes a squadron of F-16s.
Some of the mechanics are taken straight from the WC series (A for autopilot that can take you between nav points), and just like in the WC games, there is heavy emphasis on story fag elements and dialogues. Your merc group consist of a bunch of characters that would be right at home in 1980s B-grade action flicks (greying leader dude with stronk morals who cares deeply about principles despite being a paid killer, a hot bitch that only cares about money and violence, stereotypical Texas cowboy dude who always jumps into action without thinking about consequences etc.) and while you cant select responses during dialogues, there is a ton of talking in between missions.
The story has you taking command of the Wildcats (which is what your group is called) after your stalwart leader dies in a shameful ambush and your home base gets fucked up by mysterious attackers(tm). After that you embark on the quest of personal revenge, but first you need tons of money which you make (hopefully) through a series of contracts all over the world that you can choose.
The “strategic layer” is pretty simple – you select a contract (a mini campaign with multiple missions), you can shop for munitions (missiles, rockets, bombs of various types – this is balanced nicely since once you git gud you can perform very well with the cheaper variants, especially the standard "dumb" bombs instead of the guided ones) and you need to make sure that your books are balanced (it is possible to go bankrupt of you don’t perform well during the contracts, repairs or replacement of your F-16s cost money, so you can actually lose money while doing contracts).
Individual missions consist of air superiority (ie shooting down enemy planes in certain parts of the map) and ground attack missions (usually it’s a bit of combination), sometimes there are also more specific things like escort and defence missions (at one point you defend Egyptian pyramids from an air attack that wants to undercut their tourist industry lol). Difficulty is fairly high, since the more skilled enemies can easily avoid the Sidewinder missiles (and more effective AMRAAMs are very expensive), so the cannon is usually the most reliable way to kill enemy fighters – if you can hit them of course.
As for the flight simulation – its not DCS, however it is fairly complex. The game simulates the effects of high-G manoeuvres on the pilot, ie. you will black out and suffer other effects if you turn to hard. The controls are manageable, though you should definitely read the manual and the reference card (both come with the GoG release). You can use autopilot to land for you (if there are no enemies nearby) or land manually (which isn’t that hard).
My first experience with the game came in the mid-90s, back then I was a little kid with limited English and no manual (obviously I had a pirated version) so I didn’t get that much out of the game. I actually tried the game again in circa 2011, which went much better, though without the manual I missed some fairly important elements (like gun camera and countermeasures), which make my current playthrough much more satisfying. Its pretty much a “Jagged Alliance with Airplanes” type of thing.
Of course the game has some drawbacks, after all the game design wasn’t all that advanced as a field in 1993 when the game came out. The mission briefings are very barebones and cinematic, so you get only very basic idea of what you are expected to do. Much more detailed mission briefings are actually in a separate document that comes with the game and I guess the player is supposed to reference it. Imagine if devs did something like that nowadays lmao. The difficulty can be rather frustrating at times as well – as I mentioned above the enemy pilots come with different stats and the “good ones” are nearly immune to missiles (especially Sidewinders), which can cause “soft failure” of missions when you run out of ammo while enemies are still in the air. You really need to be on top of your game, especially with cannon shooting, otherwise you are in for some hard times. Once you figure things out though, shooting down enemy planes and accurately bombing ground targets becomes very satisfying.
The GOG release works flawlessly on modern machines, I fly on keyboard and don’t have a joystick right now, so I can’t test it – I assume there wouldn’t be any problems with it either.
All in all, this is a really good game – a story fag flight sim with management elements. They don’t make many of those these days.
https://af.gog.com/en/game/strike_commander?as=1649904300
Some of the mechanics are taken straight from the WC series (A for autopilot that can take you between nav points), and just like in the WC games, there is heavy emphasis on story fag elements and dialogues. Your merc group consist of a bunch of characters that would be right at home in 1980s B-grade action flicks (greying leader dude with stronk morals who cares deeply about principles despite being a paid killer, a hot bitch that only cares about money and violence, stereotypical Texas cowboy dude who always jumps into action without thinking about consequences etc.) and while you cant select responses during dialogues, there is a ton of talking in between missions.
The story has you taking command of the Wildcats (which is what your group is called) after your stalwart leader dies in a shameful ambush and your home base gets fucked up by mysterious attackers(tm). After that you embark on the quest of personal revenge, but first you need tons of money which you make (hopefully) through a series of contracts all over the world that you can choose.
The “strategic layer” is pretty simple – you select a contract (a mini campaign with multiple missions), you can shop for munitions (missiles, rockets, bombs of various types – this is balanced nicely since once you git gud you can perform very well with the cheaper variants, especially the standard "dumb" bombs instead of the guided ones) and you need to make sure that your books are balanced (it is possible to go bankrupt of you don’t perform well during the contracts, repairs or replacement of your F-16s cost money, so you can actually lose money while doing contracts).
Individual missions consist of air superiority (ie shooting down enemy planes in certain parts of the map) and ground attack missions (usually it’s a bit of combination), sometimes there are also more specific things like escort and defence missions (at one point you defend Egyptian pyramids from an air attack that wants to undercut their tourist industry lol). Difficulty is fairly high, since the more skilled enemies can easily avoid the Sidewinder missiles (and more effective AMRAAMs are very expensive), so the cannon is usually the most reliable way to kill enemy fighters – if you can hit them of course.
As for the flight simulation – its not DCS, however it is fairly complex. The game simulates the effects of high-G manoeuvres on the pilot, ie. you will black out and suffer other effects if you turn to hard. The controls are manageable, though you should definitely read the manual and the reference card (both come with the GoG release). You can use autopilot to land for you (if there are no enemies nearby) or land manually (which isn’t that hard).
My first experience with the game came in the mid-90s, back then I was a little kid with limited English and no manual (obviously I had a pirated version) so I didn’t get that much out of the game. I actually tried the game again in circa 2011, which went much better, though without the manual I missed some fairly important elements (like gun camera and countermeasures), which make my current playthrough much more satisfying. Its pretty much a “Jagged Alliance with Airplanes” type of thing.
Of course the game has some drawbacks, after all the game design wasn’t all that advanced as a field in 1993 when the game came out. The mission briefings are very barebones and cinematic, so you get only very basic idea of what you are expected to do. Much more detailed mission briefings are actually in a separate document that comes with the game and I guess the player is supposed to reference it. Imagine if devs did something like that nowadays lmao. The difficulty can be rather frustrating at times as well – as I mentioned above the enemy pilots come with different stats and the “good ones” are nearly immune to missiles (especially Sidewinders), which can cause “soft failure” of missions when you run out of ammo while enemies are still in the air. You really need to be on top of your game, especially with cannon shooting, otherwise you are in for some hard times. Once you figure things out though, shooting down enemy planes and accurately bombing ground targets becomes very satisfying.
The GOG release works flawlessly on modern machines, I fly on keyboard and don’t have a joystick right now, so I can’t test it – I assume there wouldn’t be any problems with it either.
All in all, this is a really good game – a story fag flight sim with management elements. They don’t make many of those these days.
https://af.gog.com/en/game/strike_commander?as=1649904300
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