14 DAY TRIAL // The Kilrathi are back and humanity is on its backfoot once again, in dire need of new pilots and new carriers to hold the line against the advancing felines in space and maybe even extract a little bit of payback against the aggressors.
Wing Commander Saga – The Darkest Dawn is created by a group of fans of the original series from the ‘90’s. It uses the Freespace 2 engine to deliver an experience that runs parallel to the events of Wing Commander III and tells another part of the story of the desperate final moments of the war.
The fans have stayed close to the core concepts of the Wing Commander series and everyone who loved the space simulation should be instantly familiar with them. I found myself quickly resorting to some of my old moves, like with the matching speed and deceleration combo that extends the firing time on incoming ships by a few moments.
I always played Freespace 2 with a mouse and keyboard setup and it seems to work well for his game, as long as every player tweaks the endzone setting to suit their own needs.
The FreeSpace 2 game engine, even with the recent upgrades that it has received, cannot really deliver the same quality as modern AAA releases and that might put some people off from playing the new fan-made Wing Commander.
Fortunately, no modern space combat sims have been released for some time and that means that for the fan of the genre and of the Wing Commander universe it is pretty much a choice between playing a game that looked good circa 2007 or not playing anything at all.
Fans also need to know that Darkest Dawn does not have an actual branching campaign, but compensates this limitation of the engine by delivering a pretty long single-player campaign and a varied array of missions.