Wing Commander: Prophecy

"A Technical Marvel"

Introduction:

When I first put the cartridge into my GBA-SP system and pressed on new game, I knew I was in for a treat. While certain areas of the game seemed to lack spit and polish, the general presentation was great, especially for a game ported from a 1997 era PC game to the much less capable GBA. That fact alone still stuns me.

Gameplay: 6/10

Ah, the meat of any game. Since this is based on a once popular Space-Sim, you'd expect the gameplay to be similar. While I believe the game has some great dog-fights and it's very satisfying to defeat some of the capital ships, I do however feel that with the lack of buttons on the GBA and the dumbed down targeting system makes the game feel a bit simple. Let me give two examples. First, you cannot lock on to targets, you may only auto-target what's closest to your target reticule. Because of this, I found myself looking at the radar more often then the screen on most missions, the auto-target feature also gets troublesome when an ally pilot is close to the enemy pilot you want to target. My second example of the dumbed down targeting probably had to do with limitations of the GBA. There is no sub-targets on the capitol ships. That means there's no gun turrets on the really big ships, and it means you can't take out just the engines to bring them to a stop, etc. This makes the game all to easy in capitol ship missions and too hard when you're trying to defend the Midway(your home ship). With all of that said, I had much fun with the game overall despite it's quirks and failings.

Graphics: 8/10

Technologically, I believe these are the most advanced graphics yet to be seen on the GBA. True polygonal and textured ships, fluid movement throughout all gameplay missions, minor hiccups perhaps, but overall the game's graphics are smoother then I'd ever imagine 3D GBA games could be. I think that these graphics fall somewhere between what the PlayStation can handle and what the SuperFX chip could do on the Super Nintendo. There doesn't appear to be any more then 200-300(if that even...) polygons on screen at once, but they're all textured, and while there's some texture jumping and a few minor clipping problems, the whole effect is still amazing. Missiles shooting fast with smoke trailing, enemy ships blowing up in dazzling colors, all the special effects are very satisfying as well. All I can say is, I can't wait to see what Raylight does with the Blue Roses engine next. Very exciting stuff to me.

Sound: 6/10

Not particularly bad, but they seemed to be simple overall. basic booms, fwooshes, and laser sounds all around. The music fair a bit better, but some songs sounded overly synthesized, but the compositions themselves were nice.

Story: 7/10

The story is great, and on the original PC game, it was told fantastically through amazing cut-scenes that I felt were superbly acted, especially for a video game. However, in the transition from lengthy FMV's to still frame text boxes, the story looses a lot of emotion, and while I still enjoyed the plot, the more physical humor and emotion that was seen in the original simply isn't there in the GBA version. It's just the script line for line as far as I can tell, which without some of the accurate pictures, I think will confuse people who haven't played the original (such as the beginning scene with the 'contraband')

Overall: 7/10

Overall I think this game is a good port of the PC game. Wing Commander fans should definitely pick this one up, even any Space-Sim fan with a GBA should try it out. Great 3D graphics, Fun dog-fights, and a good Sci-Fi story make this a package worth playing at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/03, Updated 07/13/03