Strike Commander

Strike Commander is a combat flight simulation game developed by Origin Systems and published by mh:crappygames:Electronic Arts. Spear-headed by Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, it released on April of 1993 after four years of development hell and was re-released on GOG.com in 2013.

Plot
The game takes place in the year 2011 in an alternate timeline. Global instability is rising after the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War, due to rising natural disasters and the United States' economic policy has failed. During this time, the Turkish government is allowing private security contractors to keep them independent from Istanbul, as they are in need of security. The player controls a pilot in one of these security companies known as the Wildcats, led by James Stern. The Wildcats themselves are struggling to keep pilots on the flight roster because of Stern's policy against civilian casualties, despite the Wildcats being a veteran squadron. After a pilot, callsign Vixen, leaves the squadron, the Wildcats are offered by a South African dictator to go against his rival neighbors. However, during the operation, Stern is killed with the payment for the squadron. Now, the protagonist to lead to Wildcats to survive in the broken world. Along the way, the player discovers the true meaning behind Stern's death and about the other rival mercenary groups. The game ends with the Wildcats doing combat against their rival mercenary group, the Jackals.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The game introduces a few concepts that would be added to the later Wing Commander games.
 * 2) * Late in the game and in the Tactical Operations expansion, you can chose your wingman before a mission, each with their own stats that make them all different and you find one that fits your play-style, which would later be used Wing Commander III.
 * 3) * This game has a different killboard (a place where you can see how many enemies you and your wingmen shot down) is separated between enemies you shot down and the buildings you destroyed, which would later be a similar idea in Wing Commander III, where the normal enemies and ace pilots you shot down are tracked.
 * 4) * Rather than doing torpedo runs against capital ships, you do bombing runs on ground targets. Using your plane's bombs and other projectiles to use on ground targets, you manually aim your weapons on ground targets such as turrets, buildings, and tanks. Something similar to this would be in Wing Commander III, where there where some ground-based levels that required precision aiming.
 * 5) This game also successfully puts together the concepts on the mainline Wing Commander games and even the Privateer spin-off series and puts them in a different setting with some of the game's own original mechanics.
 * 6) * While it is somewhat a little less limited than it is in Wing Commander, you are able to command your wingmen in battle, telling them to break formation, to attack your target, or even just to check their status to see how much damage they have.
 * 7) * The biggest inclusion from the Wing Commander games is that there is a small but important money aspect in the game that works a lot like the Privateer side series. Based on your performance in missions, you will be given an amount of money that you can spend on missile and bomb weapons, or save it for later if you don't need to use it right away. However, if you get shot down and survive by ejecting out of your plane, you will lose a certain amount of money. This system makes the idea of using missiles and bombs in the game feel more systematic, as you may want to add and remove projectiles on your plane to fit your ideal budget.
 * 8) **You also take missions from different "fixers" in the Mercenary Cafe to gain money, also similar to Privateer's mission taking system.
 * 9) * Just like the Wing Commander games, you are able to eject from your plane if you take to much damage or if you are in big trouble, allowing you to continue the story without having to restart the mission if you would like.
 * 10) * In addition to having a somewhat different ejection system, going on a losing path isn't the only risk with ejecting. You will also lose money for the cost of buying a new plane, making ejecting more of a risk.
 * 11) The game is a lot more physics and realism based than the Wing Commander titles, although it is still a more arcade-like simulation.
 * 12) * The most obvious addition is that your aircraft can stall if you head to straight up in the air. Once this happens, your plane will lose momentum and plummet to the ground before firing its engines and soaring into the air again.
 * 13) * Another system is that the bullets you fire will go downward to the ground and will be affected by where you are steering your plane and you need to aim in a different position.
 * 14) * If you keep flying in complicated ways, such as doing a lot of barrel rolls, the pilot may be blinded by the G-forces, leading the screen becoming monochromatic and even blacking it out entirely.
 * 15) * Ejecting is also different, as you are able to eject from your plane while it is shot down and will be able to eject before it hits the ground, rather than immediately dying if you take to much damage.
 * 16) * Steering your vehicle is different, as turning in a horizontal direction will roll your plane rather than turning it in that direction, making barrel rolling easier and turning feeling more like flying an actual fighter jet.
 * 17) * The radar system is very different than in the Wing Commander games. While in those games, the circle in the middle of the display would show the enemies in front of you, and the four separate sections showed what was above, below, left and right of you. There was also an outer circle to show where the enemies behind you are. Now that Strike Commander takes place on Earth and therefore over ground, the radar system had to be changed to allow for ground targets. Now, the section at the top of the display show enemies in front of you, and the three other sections show planes or ground targets that are behind and to the side of you. The center circle on the display shows what is under you. The outer circle is also much larger to compensate for distance.
 * 18) The in-game camera is now a bigger focus than in other Origin flight simulators. In flight there are a lot more options on how to move the camera. the standard camera control is first-person view from the pilot in the cockpit and the standard chase plane (where the camera tails the plain in third-person) and weapon view (where we watch missiles that are fired head toward their target), but now you can also freely move the camera in the cockpit to view at different angles to view the world and battle. You can also track the enemy you are targeting with your eyes. It won't be as easy to fly your plane, but you will be able to see where your enemy is and try to intercept. Basically, the pilot and the plane are controlled separately.
 * 19) Your fight jet can be customized in a few different ways, which is really helpful. Before a mission, you can chose which types of missiles you can attach to your plane to fit how you prefer to play the game.
 * 20) An expansive training mode to practice the scenarios found in the game. There are three different options.
 * 21) * Search and Destroy is a simulation of bombing runs, where you have to find the target you are supposed to eliminate and take them out using a variety of the weapons you are given.
 * 22) * Dogfight simulates battles against enemy planes. You can chose which planes you want to fight and how many, the enemy skill level, and how high you are in the air.
 * 23) * Gauntlet is a survival test where you have to fight wave after wave of an infinite variety of enemy planes, acting as a sort of extended and more challenging version of the Dogfight mode.
 * 24) The music is very good and arguably one of the best soundtracks in a video game made by Origin. While flying missions, the music is dynamic, so it changes based on the situation, with more intense music playing in fights, victorious music playing when shooting down an enemy and landing your plane, and calmer music while flying normally.
 * 25) The graphics of the games where very impressive and likely some of the best on the market at the time, even though they have not aged well today. The game uses 3-D models for the planes, the structures, and the ground, with bitmap textures placed on them. The normal story sections are also done in the standard pixel art aesthetic and use pre-rendered graphics.
 * 26) * The in-game cinematics are probably the best part of the graphics based on today's standards. The most notable is the opening cutscene in the CD-ROM version, which heavily uses detailed pixelated sprites of the planes and missiles, as well as the changing backgrounds. The cutscenes where the player is talking to the other pilots in the area also looks good, with decent lip movement to match the dialogue and detailed character head-shots of all of the characters.
 * 27) The game is difficult, although not to the point where it feels unfair, mostly because of all of the more realistic game mechanics. The fact that your plane goes down in a few hits to the stalling if you climb to high make the game more realistic and challenging in a good way.
 * 28) * Thankfully for players, there are realism settings that new players can turn on or off to make their first playthrough less intense than the main game, or for veterans to make their next run of the game more challenging. These settings range from turning on and off the limited ammunition for the Vulcan cannon, making landing the plane easier manually, turning stalling on or off, and being able to change the skill level of the enemy pilots in the combat segments to a lower or higher setting.
 * 29) Almost doing every action in the game is incredibly satisfying. For example, landing the plane when you are out of fuel can give the player an incredible feeling of relief that they finished a mission the hard way. Another example is the sounds of your bullets as they hit the enemy craft, as they make a satisfying sound of armor being penetrating.
 * 30) As with most of Origin's flight simulations, the presentation is very good. The game begins with standard menu screens with a military-like font and with still images related to the game in combat. However, the presentation becomes great once we enter the main game, where all of the options such as saving and loading games, talking to pilots, and beginning a mission are displayed in the game world, such as beginning a mission by clicking on the plane outside and saving your game by clicking on a bed. The world itself is also nice to look at, with the pre-rendered environments and the warm colors.
 * 31) The maps in all of the missions are very large and have a lot of locations and it is worth exploring if you have enough fuel left at the end of a mission. Most of the maps contain desert, grassland, and mountainous environments, as well as some cities with different buildings.
 * 32) The plot and setting of the game is a very interesting take on the future (The future at the time, as since the game takes place in 2011, which was ten years ago, and the game released in 1993). It takes place in a broken world with the United States being broken and the IRS being the only thing that survives of it, as its own mercenary group. The military is also mostly a bunch of mercenary groups that are payed for the protection of countries. This world is pretty different from other military games that take place in a modern setting, and gives the game a fresher feeling, even more unique than some of today's titles.
 * 33) Unlike other video games, there is a playable mini-game at the loading screen before you enter a flight segment (This was before Namco had the patent to this mechanic). The game itself is a simple Pong-like game where you have to bounce a spinning CD disk using a red paddle. You even have a good reason to play, as if you don't hit the CD and it lands at the bottom of the screen, the mini-game will end you have to wait out the rest of the loading screen. It may be crude, but it is a decent way to stay entertained while waiting to play, especially when playing the game on its original platform as load times could be quite long in some levels back then.
 * 34) The expansions added some new and well-appreciated features to the game.
 * 35) * The Tactical Operations expansion added a whole new campaign of missions, new enemy craft, and even a new playable fighter.
 * 36) * The Speech Pack adds voice-acting to the flight segments and the cutscenes, making the game feel more cinematic.
 * 37) * The CD-ROM edition of the game includes both expansions, as well as a new intro for the game and expanded audio that wasn't in the Speech Pack.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) As mentioned in WIR#8, the graphics have not aged well, mostly the 3-D ones. Most of the 3-D models have about 10 or less colors on them and it doesn't help that you can barely see all of the detail on the other planes in the standard cockpit view unless you are really close to them. The models also barely resemble planes when they are faraway, looking more like a one or two colored dot. Thankfully, the graphics outside of the flying segments don't look as dated and still look impressive today.
 * 2) Controlling the plane feels unbalanced, as it can feel sluggish when turning your craft in a vertical direction, but also feels very quick when rolling it in a horizontal direction. For the former, I can sometimes take almost a whole minute before you can catch up to an enemy plane you are targeting, due to how slow your plane climbs and drops. And for the former, when rolling to move in a new direction in a bombing run, you can sometimes be turned off balance and lose proper aim of your target and may force you to repeat the maneuver again to get back on target.
 * 3) The voice acting can sound unnatural at times, mostly in the cutscenes. The voice actors can sometimes sound as if they have no emotion put into their roles. Thankfully, it sounds much more natural in the missions.
 * 4) The middle of the screen is so cluttered with information such as altitude and current amount of ammunition that it may be hard to see what is directly ahead of you sometimes.
 * 5) There is no way to pause your game in a flying segment which is really annoying, as some of the missions can take 10 minutes to complete based on your skill level. The only breather you even have in these segments is either when you get shot down, as a menu will pop up that asks if you want to retry, abort, or continue the mission, or you can just let your plane fly forward to its next waypoint, although that is risky, as you might lose altitude as time goes on.
 * 6) There is only two types of plane you can fly in the standard story mode, which is the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-22 Lightning. While the Tactical Operations expansion also adds the F-22 Lightning II and the F-23, it is still a small amount of ships that are available to you. Even the original Wing Commander had more playable craft (Having four craft in the base game and five with the second expansion).
 * 7) The limited ammo and fuel mechanics in the game, while praised for being realistic, can be very frustrating for players, especially if they are new to the game. You have only 999 bullets for your Vulcan cannon and it can take 100 bullets to shot down an enemy craft if you don't aim properly. This may lead to players resorting to exclusively using missiles, which also isn't good, as they are more limited than bullets, end up being wasted if you aim incorrectly, and cost money to gain more.
 * 8) * Even if the enemy plane is right in front of you, due to the realistic controls and the slight difficulty in the aiming mechanic, it can still take up a large amount of bullets to shot down an enemy craft.
 * 9) ** On top of this, you are entirely defenseless if you run out of ammunition and missiles, forcing you to restart the mission in some cases.
 * 10) * The limited fuel mechanic is also potentially frustrating due to how it can be largely depleted if players are in combat with a lot of enemies and still aren't used to the controls. You can even crash mid-flight if you run out of fuel before the mission is over, also leading to players needing to restart the mission.
 * 11) There isn't much post-game content besides getting a high score in Gauntlet mode and replaying the game at higher difficulties, which in itself isn't a very good motive to keep playing other than having bragging rights. However, this can be excused as lack of post-game content was common at the time of release.

Reception
Strike Commander received mostly positive reception from the few magazines that did cover the game. In the August 1993 issue of "Computer Gaming World", they stated that "Strike Commander is not and does not attempt to be a high-fidelity simulation... it focuses on action and combat" and "is designed to get players in the air and having fun in the shortest amount of time". The magazine also noted the game had a gentler learning curve than other flight simulations at the time like Red Baron and Falcon 3.0. They also stated that the game had better graphics than F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0 and Jetfighter. In 1996, the magazine called the game the 13th best vaporware title, due to the game supposed to being released in 1991, but came out in 1993. PC Gamer UK called the CD-ROM version of Strike Commander the 36th best PC game of all time in 1994. On GOG.com, the game has a user score of 4.6/5.

Tips

 * 1) For new players, make sure to go to the options menu in flight on your first mission (Use Alt-O) and make sure that Unlimited Ammo and Easy Landings are on, as it will make the game feel easier at first. You can then disable these options once you feel comfortable with your skills.
 * 2) Make use of the ability to track enemy craft while flying. While you can see where your target is based on an indicator in the HUD, the camera allows you to see exactly where your target is while mostly being able to control your plane well enough to intercept.
 * 3) * Also, make sure not to leave it on while firing at the enemy or doing a missile lock, as if they move away from view, you will be thrown off by the sudden re-adjustment of the camera.
 * 4) When you have returned to base at the end of a mission, just press the autopilot button to land easily.

Trivia

 * The game took over four years to make, due to the game being in development hell. Making the game took over a million man-hours of development. The project of creating the game took one and possibly more reboots to get the graphics engine working properly. Only a small amount of the development time was actually put into the final product. In the game manual, creator Chris Roberts compared the development of the game to the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, an account of how the film Apocalypse Now was made.
 * Strike Commander was followed by two other games called Pacific Strike, which took the game's engine and put it into a World War II setting in the Pacific Theater, and Wings of Glory, which took place in World War I.
 * In 2013, the same year as the GOG.com re-release, a reverse engineering project made a reconstruction of the game's source code and made it available on GitHub. This was likely done due to the source code likely being lost when EA took over Origin Systems. The source code can be found here.

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