Find a comfy chair. You'll be blazing guns and shooting down felons (or otherwise) for a long, long time.
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Gameplay - 7
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+ Decent for an expansive universe
+ Fierce dogfights
- Joystick compatibility
- If no joystick, keyboard is clunky
- Lots of shortcuts, cannot be accessed any other way
+/- Limited information display
We'll start off with the worst aspect of WCP (which actually is still pretty good). The game is expansive and Origin handles exploring such a universe remarkably well. The amount of stuff you can do, from trading to fighting to exploring, is mindboggling. Especially the combat. As you may have guessed, the Wing Commander series is reviered for intense space combat and breakneck maneuvering, and WCP is no different. Once you get into a fight with your first Dralthi or go toe-to-toe with a pirate's demon, you will never forget the visceral experience. Don't get discouraged though - the combat isn't insanely hard, but it will pull some hairs. Well then, Nick, why did the Gameplay get a 7 for this experience? Simple. Interface.
Sure, there's a lot of information going on at once, and sure, there's value in "style over substance," but as this is a game of substance, there's no excuse for a stylish-but-shoddy interface. And boy, can this game be shoddy at times! On newer computers, a lot of joysticks are incompatible. If they do work, the game has no button configuration system, so you'll wind up pressing random buttons to find out what they do. Of course, a keyboard will still be necessary due to the myriad of keyboard shortcuts that NEED to be memorized. The keyboard is unwieldy at best, and much of the in-game functionality, such as autopilot, weapons setup, lock-on, targeting, throttling, afterburner, nav screen, and ship monitor settings cannot be accessed in any other way (unless, of course, you have a joystick with hundreds of buttons on it). Also, much of the information you need to see cannot be seen at once. For example, if you have a 2 monitor configuration, if you want to see your weapon's layout, you'll have to switch off information about your target on monitor 1 if you want to keep your damage layout up on monitor 2, which poses a problem if you want to switch between several different views repeatedly and makes getting intel in dogfights a hassle. Of course, limited intel can be a good thing as it increases the challenge in combat, but overall the game would be better with a layout that displays all the information you will ever need already onscreen, especially considering that fights are already difficult enough as is. The docked-at-station interface is fairly straightforward.
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Graphics - 9
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+ 3D Bitmap Graphics
The graphics for WCP were pretty straightforward at the time, at least for the Wing Commander series. Even though the ships and objects in games seem archaic, in 1994, this was state-of-the-art. Ships we're drawn with bitmap frames that would allow them to fully rotate. Especially notable were the hand-drawn interiors of the space stations and the cockpits of the pilotable ships.
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Sound - 9
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+ High-Quality Music
+ Good Voicework
The sound quality of WCP is actually very good. The ambient music (such as when you leave a space station) sets off feelings of insecurity, which fits with as random a universe as WCP - you never know what you're going to encounter next. The spoken dialog (such as in the opening cutscene) is done quite well and has been compressed in such a way that there is barely any static breakup or garbled messages.
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Value - 10
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+ Go anywhere, Do anything
+ Autopilot
+ Supply/Demand Trade System
+ Mission Variety
+ Dogfights
Privateer perhaps has some of the largest value in any game - and for good reason! WCP boasts a huge universe with four separate galaxies, a massive (for the time) ship customization system, a multitude of enemies, random missions as well as an extended linear storyline missionset. There is always something new to do. And if you get bored of that, you can just go on and complete the linear storyline. Autopilot makes it easy to get from place to place in a rush (even though you can fly whereever you want in a sector, if you choose to), which helps evade empty space i.e. boredom. The supply and demand system is rather basic and straightforward but will throw you a curveball every once in a while. The missions also have a lot of variety about them, ranging from defense missions to escort missions to delivery missions to assassination missions to patrol missions, and any that involve enemy dogfights are intense indeed.
Overall: 8.9 - WCP does Elite proud.