Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger

aka: Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger for Macintosh
Moby ID: 826

[ All ] [ 3DO ] [ DOS ] [ Macintosh ] [ PlayStation ] [ Windows ]

Critic Reviews add missing review

Average score: 89% (based on 37 ratings)

Player Reviews

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 110 ratings with 8 reviews)

Proved that interactive movies could also be kickass games.

The Good
Ah.... the famed Wing Commander 3, surely one of the most eagerly anticipated games ever, and for good reason too! The series may have waded into the void by now, but at it's time, before the proliferation of the fps genre and multiplayer gaming, Wing Commander was THE action game for pcs, nothing even came closer to it's stellar combination of sci-fi dogfighting, it's engaging space-opera plots and it's killer production values... However times radically changed since the last incarnation of the series, and with the advent of cd-rom drives, fmv technology, and newer, more powerful pcs, the new Wing Commander was gonna have a hard time trying to keep up with it's time-honored tradition of being the benchmark for technology upgrades (playing the latest Origin game, and especially the Wing Commanders, was the prime reason to upgrade your pc in the early 90's) and killer gameplay, in short, WC3 needed to be a MAJOR quantum leap, and boy, oh boy, that's exactly what it was.

The first and most recognizable aspect in which WC3 towered over it's predecessors was by it's use of fmv in order to tell it's plot instead of resorting to barely animated bitmaps or small animated sequences. The combination of live actors, pre-rendered imagery and even special effects such as the animatronic Kilrathis worked especially well, even if the video standards for those days where pretty muddy and choppy. Furthermore, Chris Roberts went the Interactive-movie route with this game so he didn't just slap some fmv around the game, he made the videos an integral part of the game, complete with the often imitated "decision time" moments that branch the plot in different ways.

The storyline itself has plenty of interesting moments and manages to become an engaging war-drama that won't win any screenwriting award, but is sure to be an entertaining joyride for sci-fi fans. The video itself suffers from the already mentioned technology problems, and the use of blue screen photography seriously cramps up the action, but the high-end production values and the fantastic performances make up for anything that the already solid storyline doesn't cover up. Mark Hamill does a decent job of portraying the main character and proves once and for all that he is the true king of trench runs. Malcom McDowell as well as John Rhys-Davies give some outstanding performances even if they don't get as much screentime as in WC4, and the late Jason Bernard is perfect as your main CO in the game. Even minor roles are carefuly casted and realistically portrayed, with some surprise performances by people like ex-pornstar (uh... or so I'm told... ermm... riiiight...) Ginger Lynn Allen as one of your possible romantic interests!

The one who completely steals the show however, is Back to The Future's own Tom Wilson, who portrays your long time buddy/rival Maniac, a hot-headed pilot that is a rude, annoying, extroverted lout and that'll bring the most joys when watching the cinematics. Really, Wilson plays his role with such gusto that he sets a new standard for videogame acting and provides one of the most memorable characters in all of videogaming history.

Moving back to the game itself, the new technologies also make their appearances here, with a brand new fully polygonal engine that essentially proves to be the same quantum leap that Quake was to Doom. There's no turning back anymore to bitmaps boys and girls, and once you fired up this baby you realized why: The textured ships had an amazing level of detail, and didn't explode into a sea of pixels whenever you would get close to them, laser fire, wingman communication, shield hits, and all other sorts of graphical gimmicks became completely overhauled and these things did have an effect on gameplay as opposed to being just eye-candy. The action was much faster and nerve-wrecking, and no longer would you be able to do things like scoring hits by hitting around a sprite's square collision detection area, now you either hitted your target dead on or you didn't (laser blasts would, for instance, be lost between a fighter's wings instead of hitting some invisible thing), but hands down the most impressive improvement was the treatment given to the capital ships. These monsters now had a believable sense of mass and you could for the first time get lost flying around them, or even inside them!! To the point that one could fly into a carrier's hangar and shoot the behemoth from inside-out!!

The Bad
Few things really, but considerable ones. The mission design is seriously lackluster in this game, being the prime example of the Chris Roberts "filler" mission design school. And the gameplay progression seems pretty archaic when you consider that this was the third game in the series (work your way up in rank, going from crappy ships, to better ones until you get to the WC-patented Ultimate Fighter (tm), and face the WC-patented Ultimate Challenge (tm))

Furthermore, the ground missions are very lackluster, and am I the only one who didn't like the BLUE space??? What the hell's up with that?

...Oh, and there's the "Hobbes issue" concerning the interactive movie part... A major, and I do mean MAJOR plot point is completely absent from the game!!! (see trivia section for more details).

The Bottom Line
The first really good interactive movie and still one of the landmarks in the genre, one that proves that fmv does not mean CRAP when you remember to merge it with a good game (or at least a slightly dated and repetitive, but still very entertaining and well produced one). This is really a game from a time long lost, when pc games where a true event and not just another marketing ploy, a time when games (and particularly those that were made by Origin) had to be the absolute best in everything. And you know what? Wing Commander 3 may not technically be the best in eeeeeeverything but dammit, it still wins by majority!!

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

A technical feast, but slightly tedious gameplay.

The Good
This was one of the relatively few FMV-games that managed to maintain a certain level of quality. The movie choice-branch thing is ever charming, and the space 3D-engine used to kick ass back in '94.

Specifically, I think Jason Bernard as captain Eisen plays his part convincingly. Comm-exec Rollins is an endearing character, and there's a couple of delectable female crewmembers also.

The Bad
The missions are repetitive and tedious. Nearly every mission is of a sweep-and-clear nature, flying your ship to a number of navpoints and clearing out enemy presence. This is the only major flaw of the game, but it is a huge one. Compare the missions in WC3 to those of Tie Fighter or indeed Wing Commander IV, and you'll see what I mean.

The Bottom Line
WC3 was a gigantic gaming-project; it had a budget size that was previously unheard of in the gaming industry, and was really hot stuff back in '94. Alas, all the live acting-business and technical mayhem (it was one of the first SVGA releases) stole Roberts' attention away from the stuff that really matters: the gameplay. If you want to play a better game, try WC4. In WC4, they rectified all that was wrong with this one.

DOS · by mobster_lobster (24) · 2001

Yet another masterpeice - three in a row!

The Good
Origin is to be commended; they knew what worked in WC's 1 and 2, and didn't change much.

Wing Commander 3 has everything those games had and more: Space battles extraordinaire. Great ships, fast, exhilarating missions, and a terrific, engrossing backstory supplemented by mid-mission cinematics. Like all other WC games, the missions are expertly designed, perfectly balanced, and bug-free, but in THIS game many of them are on a much grander scale than in the first two games. The fighters and capital ships look great and fight great. There's just no aspect of a space combat sim that isn't awesome about this game.

One nice (and, surprisingly, not-often-copied) aspect of the game is that the cinematics actually look like movies. Some reasonably famous actors (highlighted by Tom Wilson's boffo performance as Maniac) deliver some decent acting on decent sets; it's a shame this isn't tried more often. It adds to the super-immersive experience.

The Bad
I guess the CD-swapping can get irritating.

The character of Hobbes (a Kilrathi deserter) is sort of silly.

The Bottom Line
The third straight home run in the Wing Commander series, and this one's a grand slam.

DOS · by Rick Jones (96) · 2001

We sure waited a long time for this...

The Good
It was a solid game. We all waited nearly four years for the cliffhanger at the end of Special Ops 2 to be resolved, with mostly mediocre WC games coming out in the interim. At the time, the graphics were the best ever made, and the ability to get right up to a CapShip and fly down its length (or even inside it, Anakin-style) were wonderful. Plus, the use of the Strike Commander terrain engine for ground missions added depth that hadn't been there previously. Plus, of course, there were the ground-breaking cinematics with the best bunch of actors ever assembled for an "interactive movie." (and the full-sized anamatronics for the Kilrathi were impressive, even if they moved a bit too much like the Skeksis)

The Bad
It didn't feel like Wing Commander. The missions were fun, and generally had enough variety to be interesting, but somehow the tweak of gameplay that made WC distinctive was lost when they switched to polygons. (and never regained) Also, the script to the movie was more than a bit loose - it felt like they had two possible plotlines, and instead of picking the strongest, they strung them together with an extremely rough transition midway through. And, more bizarrely, a major plot twist (involving a surprise defection) is never explained - they decided to cut out the scene that let it all make sense.

The Bottom Line
Definately a turning-point in the computer industry; the first "interactive movie" style game that anyone took seriously and the first that the actors involved could list on their resumes without shame. Due to the somewhat dated gameplay, it's probably best played for the sake of the movie, but entertaining for that purpose.

DOS · by WizardX (116) · 2000

This game is the best of the series...

The Good
Strangely enough when I started playing this game I became immersed in the plot, the characters and the cool FMV. It took me back to when I first played Wing Commander on a friend's Amiga. I guess that when I played it solid for eight hours one evening, flying several missions and getting right inside the spirit of the game (something, with the exception of Wing Commander 4) I have not been able to recreate in terms of experience since that the true meaning of Interactive Movie became known to me personally. The game allows you to select various degrees of difficulty and the keyboard (the most important part) settings were at once intuitive and sensible. I had hoped that somewhere a gamer would create a game with WC3 compatble key stokes, similar to "Wordstar compatible" keystrokes. I miss this in other games. The fact it runs in DOS meant that I could play it full window under Windows 95 on my P75 with 24MB ram and 1MB VRAM card, unlike todays monstrousities which would be happier running on a server with a very fast CPU and tons of RAM, not to mention a graphics card with an amount of Ram of biblical proportions.

The Bad
The fact that it crashed when I had done four missions straight off and hadn't bothered to save it. The fact that I broke the joystick pounding away at Kilrathi. The fact that it it didn't like certain sound cards, and because it was a DOS based game took a dim view of Windows 98 attempts to "interpret" how it should run. I also found some of the missions truly insane, such as the one where if you don't cloak you go into an endless loop of Kilrathi fighters popping out of nowhere, etc. Some of the plot was a bit mediocre and when replaying, unless you had a suitable save game entry point you had to do the whole lot again to get to whichever mission you wanted.

The Bottom Line
An excellent DOS based space combat sim with cool effects, FMV and a decent storyline (unlike the Prophecy series which was just plain (a) boring and (b) virtually impossible to play on the machine I was using. If you play just one game in the Wing Commander series this is the one to get. Rec Sys Req: P90, 16MB Ram,1 MB graphics card, SB 16 P&P sound card,Port 220, IRQ5 DMA 1

DOS · by Richard Carrington (3) · 2000

Bigger, but not that much better.

The Good
Going to true 3D makes for a much more realistic experience and allows for better Kilrathi ship designs. Addition of ground missions (albeit extremely limited). The video sequences are much more engaging than the simple computer graphics...

The Bad
The CGI sets makes the camera angle static, and not quite realistic. Missions are sometimes quite repetitive, no improvements in gameplay at all (just faster/more/better ships/weapons), still no multiplayer.

The Bottom Line
WC3 is a logical evolution of the WC series. WC2 introduced better graphics and better cinematic angles. WC2 added true 3D space and real actors. The gameplay haven't changed... You still go from mission to mission, following the "mission tree" where the success of the Confederation war effort is in your hands...

As a space combat title, WC3 has no peer at the time, as Freespace is still in the future. The action is fast and furious. The ships are faster and more powerful than before. The AI is better as they will deploy missiles properly. The wingmen still doesn't behave that smartly though. Its single-player experience is unique in engaging you in the Confederation war effort.

However, its complete lack of multiplayer (a WC universe deficiency that was NEVER addressed) and lack of camera angles means the title has little if any replay value.

DOS · by Kasey Chang (4598) · 2001

A solid flight sim with an excellent story..

The Good
The graphics are good enough that you can tell what stuff is. The controls are pretty good. The story is terrific and all the movie cut-scenes are pretty good quality. The mission design is good.

The Bad
The graphics are pretty old. You have to study the manual to learn about the weapons etc. If you can't complete the mission, the mission doesn't quit. No analog controller support.

The Bottom Line
If you find this game, pick it up. It's a solid space-sim. With 4 discs, how can you go wrong??

PlayStation · by James Kirk (150) · 2003

A worthy successor to the Wing Commander franchise

The Good
With the large, multi-million dollar budget for this game, the cinematics are obviously top notch. The acting by the large cast of professional actors is right on the money, as are the special effects and digitalized set pieces. I can remember watching the introduction to this game, and for the first time I felt CGI in computer games was able to match up to Babylon 5 and Star Trek on television. There was obviously a lot of effort put into directing the movie portions of the game, kudos to Chris Roberts. The characters are convincing (with the exception of Ginger Allen) and most situations are plausible and interesting.

The story is also of professional writing caliber. Throughout the game the player really gets a feeling for the state of despair that has befallen humanity. The various weapons and strategies employed by the humans against their Kilrathi aggressors give you a sense of grandeur and purpose, you really feel like you are a part of this war. Without spoiling an plot-lines, there are quite a few surprises in store for the player, including a betrayal that really will strike a nerve with longtime Wing Commander players.

The ships in the game are a departure from previous Wing Commander games, but I didn't find this distracting at all. Instead of the more colorful, fanciful fighters of Wing Commander 1 and 2, the ships of Wing Commander 3 have a more washed out and used look to them. They also appear as more practical, with few superfluous edges and extra parts. A good example is the new Thunderbolt, which basically just looks like a big V with a cockpit. Players could go either way with this, some may dislike the new fighters, but I found them acceptable.

The fighting portion of the game does not disappoint on any level. Finally we were given polygons to destroy in space! There may have been a game or two before WC3 that used full polys in space, but WC3 perfected it. The physics are similar to other space sims, very relaxed without a shred of Newtonian realism, but that suits the game nicely. The detailed ships and polygon hit detection give you real sense of dogfighting, and the satisfactory explosions look very nice as well. Not only that, but you can now fly right through the landing bays of some of the capital ships! How great is that?

The graphics in the game were ahead of their time at its release, and I believe they still hold up nicely today.

The Bad
There are aspects to Wing Commander 3 that I thought were annoying or downright stupid. First off, some of the situations Christopher Blair is put into are ridiculous. A scene where the player has to choose which girl to make out with really doesn't belong in the game, I found it juvenille and silly. The whole romance part of the game, while successful in both previous Wing Commander games, falls flat here without Angel from Wing Commander 1 and 2. While I can see why Chris Roberts wanted to include it in the game, I don't think he handled it all that well.

Part of that problem is Ginger Allen. She plays a love interest, but not very well. Her acting is quite flat and unconvincing and cliched. I was not impressed with her performance.

Gameplay wise, the ground attack missions were unimpressive as well. While I applaud the developers for attempting the ambitious task of including a bit of atmospheric fighting in a space sim, it really doesn't work out too well. The graphics for the planet surface come across as bland and textureless, while the physics of flying seem to not have changed from the transfer from space to atmosphere. It would be a difficult thing to do correctly, and as it is, it feels quite tacked on.

The grey-scale in the game seems to be quite high as well. The entire game has a grey/blue haze to it that I found annoying. Space is not black in this Wing Commander universe, its blueish. This also includes your cockpit as well, everything has this hazy blueish grey color to it. I always wondered at the purpose of this, it was fixed in Wing Commander 4, which used parts of the same engine. I don't know.

The last quibble I have with the game involves a very important plot-line spoiler. Thus, I will just say towards the end there is a betrayal that, while emotionally intense, seems to come out of no-where. I read that the explanation for this betrayal had to be cut from the game due to time constraints, but dang, what a crummy thing to remove from the game.

The Bottom Line
Wing Commander 3 is a continuation of the Wing Commander series of games. It's a space combat simulator/action game in which you play the role of Christopher Blair, a hero (or villain depending on what you believe) of the war with the catlike Kilrathi. While the gameplay consists mostly of what you would expect from a spaceflight simulator, where this game really shines is in it's acting and story telling.

The game features a full cast of professional characters, spearheaded by ex-Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill. Other notables are Malcom Mcdowell, John-Rys-Davies, and Tom Wilson from Back to the Future fame. In between missions, and occasionally during them, the player is treated to some of the greatest FMV (full motion video) scenes ever created for a computer game. Through the multi-million dollar budget, the developers tell the tale of humanity struggling against the ruthless Kilrathi. Humanity is becoming desperate, and throughout the game smaller subplots evolve between characters as well.

Wing Commander 3 was a new standard in space sims when it came out, and I'm a firm believer that no game, save for its own sequel and Freespace 2, have ever topped it. While some say Wing Commander 4 was a good movie interspersed with an average game, Wing Commander 3 most definitely is a good game intersperse with a good story.

DOS · by MojoHelperMonkey (39) · 2005

Contributors to this Entry

Critic reviews added by Patrick Bregger, Parf, Apogee IV, Scaryfun, WONDERなパン, Wizo, shphhd, Jeanne, Tim Janssen, Alaedrain, Alsy, eradix, Cantillon, Picard, Big John WV, Omnosto, Sun King, mikewwm8, Terok Nor, Mr Creosote.