Wing Commander Prophecy Review

By Martin Taylor Published 11 July, 2003

Martin gets into a lot of fights. In space, this time.

Version tested: GameBoy Advance

Yes, space combat can be done on the Game Boy Advance, but with how much success? Well, Raylight Studios certainly seems to think it can be done, as the developer has taken as much of the concept of the original PC Wing Commander as possible and squeezed it into everyone's favourite diminutive console.

Plane text

'Wing Commander Prophecy' Screenshot 1

Despite the game's best efforts to convince us otherwise, Wing Commander Prophecy's storyline is largely unimportant. You are stationed as a rookie pilot aboard a large carrier called the Midway, which comes under threat from a previously unknown alien race known as the Nephilim. The game's plot revolves around finding out as much as possible about the new threat, and making various vain attempts at getting shot of them. The plot is played out through an absolutely mind-numbing amount of text, recalling the FMV dialogue from the PC version down to the letter. Much of this banter is completely unnecessary, doing little to advance what could be otherwise interesting dialogue and forcing the player to skip through all of it just to get to the action.

Prophecy boasts some 48 missions to plough through, but much of the game focuses on a very basic routine: fly out of big ship, shoot smaller ships down before they shoot you, return to big ship. There is little deviation from this routine save extended missions in which you need to knock back different waves of enemies in succession before being able to return to the Midway, or missions in which you need to get shot of opposition within a time limit. We'd just like to get this out of way now: putting time limits in space combat games should be punishable. It's a terrible attempt at creating tension in a tensionless environment, and only serves as a bloody irritating frustration instead of an enjoyable challenge.

Out of control

'Wing Commander Prophecy' Screenshot 2

The fact that you need to smoothly rotate through 360 degrees with fine control and accuracy to prove even remotely successful at hunting your foe in space gives Prophecy a nice kind of 'Christ, this is impossible on a tiny little four-way D-pad' atmosphere, as you patiently wrangle the GBA or SP in your hands and overshoot your aim for the umpteenth time. It also gives you cramp. No, the controls aren't Prophecy's strong point at all, with some frankly annoying button combinations hampering your attempts to, say, chase after an enemy ship and switch weapons, as the commands for doing both of these things are linked to the same buttons.

Getting some kind of smoothness in the action is impossible - you'll find yourself twitching through space as you attempt to keep your enemy in the reticule. Couple the tricky controls with an evil learning curve that expects you to learn the vagaries of piloting and combat within two or three missions, and you're left with a distinctly teeth-grinding, hair-pulling, GBA-stomping experience most of the time.

Ray burnt

'Wing Commander Prophecy' Screenshot 3

The above said, Raylight has done a sterling job of getting the textured polygonal space of 1997 moving inside the GBA, and combat is usually pretty fluid with a few ships darting about the screen. The only times the engine appears to struggle is when the larger carriers and motherships come into view, but even then the game remains quite playable, control issues notwithstanding.

You start to get the feeling, though, that the game has been built around the technology, and not the other way round. The lack of variety from one stage to the next begins to grate, and the sheer frustration of the irritating control scheme will see you turning off and throwing down your GBA in a hail of frustration and profanity to rival Rusedski on a bad day [I'll bear witness to that -Ed]. While there are a vast number of levels for space combat fans to delve into, how long you're willing to stick it out is a matter of patience.

We weren't particularly sure this was a genre that could be pulled off at all well on the GBA for the very reasons that have been outlined above. Wing Commander Prophecy is at times a wonderful effort and a tremendous tech demo that kept us entertained for all of a couple of hours, but that's all it eventually feels like - a tech demo. As a game, it's woefully shallow and it left us wanting something more.

6 / 10

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About Martin Taylor

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Comments (20) Latest comment 9 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • MORBO #1 9 years ago

    wing commander I was one of the very first games i loved playing. 10 years back it was a milestone in gameplay....through the years i enjoyed playing the series and also some others for example privateer......however the gameplay didn't change and got old.....and playing the game got boring: always the same wingman commands, hunting after just the next alien ship.....for me the problem seems to be the very poor AI of these games and the total lack of any strategic or tactical elements or extensive upgradeability of your ship.....rts games had the same problem years ago, but due to much greater competition the game evolved much stronger....
    the mentioned poor controls should do the rest

    maybe lucasarts should do another tie fighter to revive the genre

  • Kru #2 9 years ago

    Ah well it was good to see someone try something other than another snes port, shame it was a tad ambitious for the lil gba.

  • Nemesis #3 9 years ago

    Where's Freespace3 *shakes fist in fury*

    Prophecy was OK, first WC game to use real 3d ships and card acceleration and not those dodgy sprites. Got veeeeery samey very quick, but I was determined to finish it. WC3 was the king of the series for me.

  • mouse Verified Graphic designer, Eurogamer Network #4 9 years ago

    I forgot to mention that the wingmen are pretty much useless, and you might as well be fighting on your own for the most part.

  • Nemesis #5 9 years ago

    No change there then!

  • FWB #6 9 years ago

    Alt-del, I think it was, that destroyed any target you'd locked onto.

  • Tricky #7 9 years ago

    Nem - WC3 and 4 used polygons, it's just that obviously they didn't have 3D acceleration back then and had those dodgy looking texture maps over the polys. Not bad for their day though.

  • Nemesis #8 9 years ago

    Noooooooooo they didn't. They used sprites for the ships, just lots and lots of images. No polys.

  • bluebird #9 9 years ago

    Nemesis, I think you mean Wing Commander 1 & 2. WC 3 started with polygons, I remember how amazing they looked in those days.

  • Nemesis #10 9 years ago

    See, if I go to google, some say - sprites, some say textured polys. Maybe it was a combination?

    I remember it being awesome at the time (WC3), but I went back and played WC4 a couple of years ago and......ouch. Not good.

  • Eldritch #11 9 years ago

    Tech demo... if I didn't know it better, I'd say it was done by a German studio.

    "Look, Ma, no game!"

  • Tyronne #12 9 years ago

    is this the one that took an amazing 4 months/weeks to make gba ?

  • deadlock #13 9 years ago

    The only thing that I remember about Prophecy on the PC (apart from Mark Hamill and Biff Tanner out of Back to the Future is that it featured the most god-awful Oirish accent ever comitted to any medium ever. Even Brad Pitt's oh-so-hilarious traveller accent wasn't as bad.

  • simiankid #14 9 years ago

    "Ah well it was good to see someone try something other than another snes port, shame it was a tad ambitious for the lil gba. "

    It could well be a SNES port, Wing Commander came out on ninty's machine in 1993. Go here.

  • sickpuppysoftware #15 9 years ago

    "The only thing that I remember about Prophecy on the PC (apart from Mark Hamill and Biff Tanner out of Back to the Future is that it featured the most god-awful Oirish accent ever comitted to any medium ever. Even Brad Pitt's oh-so-hilarious traveller accent wasn't as bad."

    Somebody clearly hasn't seen Charlies Angels 2.

    One of the main baddies has an Oirish accent that goes all the way from Scottish to English and even Brummie without ever once sounding even accidentally Irish. I had the joy of watching it in Belfast and hearing everybody giggling every time he came on screen.
    Edited by 1 at 11/07/03 @ 14:16

  • Takashi #16 9 years ago

    One of the main baddies has an Oirish accent that goes all the way from Scottish to English and even Brummie without ever once sounding even accidentally Irish.

    Ah, so it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me, then.

    As for first polygonal ship thigie, didn't SW: X-Wing beat it to that spot for a couple of months? Even if the texture job on that game was not mutch more than the odd Imperial or Rebel logo on the ships?

  • Nemesis #17 9 years ago

    Yeah, I think it was polys too now. Stand corrected. Ignore the earlier waffle

    :-)

  • deadlock #18 9 years ago

    sickpuppysoftware:

    i don't think i'll be watching that particular turd any time soon...

  • Nemesis #19 9 years ago

    Kilrathi. Tigers. Grrrrrrrrrrr. They were excellent, you should of seen the shit they put out for the film. TERRIBLE.

  • deadlock #20 9 years ago

    Oh god, that film was a turd. It's actually worth watching, it's that bad. My favourite bit was when they were hiding in the asteroid, waiting for the Kilrathi cruiser to go by. SONAR!! In SPACE!!