Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

The Good
The cinematics are great. In terms of style, writing, directing, and acting, they're probably still the high-water mark of computer movies. (that's really not a slight, this one truly is feature-film quality - better than the official movie by far) It's worth playing the game just to watch the film, especially Malcolm McDowell getting to chew the scenery with a glee he hasn't shown since A Clockwork Orange.

The Bad
The gameplay sucked. Period. Just about every mission was dull and generic - just swarms of bad guys all over you again and again. The difficulty level at "normal" is actually quite high, which would make it challenging, but you just can't care about the missions like you could in the old days. Even the new fighters were generally uninteresting. At least it didn't have 5-minute mission loads like its predecessor - I read entire books while playing that one.

The Bottom Line
If you have a chance to pick it up for cheap, snag it, set the difficulty to its lowest level, and spend a few days watching a sci-fi miniseries with brief pauses for carnage in-between. In that respect, it's still more entertaining than a large number of the sci-fi films at Blockbuster.