A shameful way to disgrace the Wing Commander franchise....
User Rating: 2.8 | Wing Commander Arena X360
When I originally saw that this game was coming to XBLA, I was incredibly excited to duke it out online with other players in what I thought would be a touched-up version of the original WC games. How incredibly wrong I was... Upon first starting the game, I thought that my controls were messed up or I didn't pay attention to the configuration because there was no y-axis. Every single ship stays on the same level plane, which makes for *incredibly* boring dogfighting (if you could even call it that). Sure, you can pull off loops and rolls; but they are there only for aesthetic value as I found no tactical advantage in the slightest by using the loops and rolls. The arenas are more of a maze than an actual dogfighting arena since there is no vertical axis to play with. I found myself simply hiding around corners for AI ships to turn the bend, then unloading missles on them which quickly turns very boring since there is no challenge to the gameplay. The sound and graphics are also below average even for an XBLA game. What's worse is that the track which loops continuously while you're playing the game doesn't even loop correctly; it will break mid-tune to start back at the beginning. The graphics I would compare to be on par with those of the original Blasteroids arcade game, though the explosions and weapon effects are a few notches better. At best, this "Wing Commander" game is more of an online-capable version of Gradius and will likely hold your attention for 10 minutes tops. For those of you who grew up playing the original Wing Commander games on the x386/x486 platforms, do yourself a favor and steer completely clear of this title. It in no way resembles those classic games of old, and the only Wing Commander traits it shares with the old games is the ship names/designs. Nothing else in this game is even comparable to the original WC franchise. Shame on EA for attempting to stamp a legendary name on a poorly designed concept and pass it off as a legitimate relative to the WC universe. All I can do now is pray that perhaps Lucasarts will revive the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series to make up for this miserable mess.
