Privateer 2: The Darkening

The first time I heard of this game the title was only 'The Darkening' and the preview of it interested me. When it got the Privateer label I thought it would be even better, but I was confused because the preview described a game that took place in a different universe than that of the Wing Commander series, which is where the first game is set.

Regardless, this game has an interesting and stylish flight engine which I thought was really cool--except the fact that you can't hyper-jump when enemies are around, forcing you to fight them (very annoying). Not to mention some of the cool landing cutscenes and interesting computer interfaces in port.

However, the video scenes are pretty bad and have poorly mixed audio--half the time I couldn't understand what anyone was saying.

Man, I loved this game. It came out during the time I'd gone back to graduate school in my 30s, and it just about ruined one semester because all I wanted to do was play the game. Incredibly addictive, but the previous poster is right -- the game crashed all the time. The company finally got pretty free with cheat codes just so you could get through certain segments that were especially gnarly. I wouldn't have used the cheats except that without them the game would overload your CPU and you'd lose all your work! I finally finished the game, and it was pretty mind-blowing in terms of the ending. Also, the cast was outrageously impressive -- Christopher Walken, Clive Owen, John Hurt! Tremendous fun. Even after I finished it, I played it some more, until CPU speed finally made it obsolete. After I had seen the whole plot, I basically just became a pirate, blowing up as many cop-ships as I could, sacrificing my cargo pilot and ship to other pirates, etc. I can't believe how much fun that game was. Nothing like it these days, and though I tried one of those CPU-slowdown programs to try to make it work, it really didn't. Gone but not forgotten.

The first Privateer game was one of the greatest flight sims ever made. Not only did it include the excellent flight combat system that the influential Wing Commander games made famous, it had an intriguing story-line that took you through numerous systems and to interesting planets. It was also one of the most enjoyable games to play because of the fact that you could choose your own ships and missions, increasing the variety in an already vast and open-ended game.

However, for some reason, Privateer 2 failed to continue the trend of innovation that Origin had been known for. There were many problems with the game. First off, it was behind the times in that it was a DOS-only game. Windows 95 had been out for a very long before this game was released, giving the developers ample time to convert whatever they needed to to make it a Windows game. I was especially perturbed at this because the game was delayed for several months, and the developers STILL did not decide to convert it. Second, the game had a high degree of instability. Often I would try to land at a planet or a star base and the game would crash. This would make me very upset because there was no in-mission saving, and if it was an especially difficult mission, then you would have to start over completely.

Other problems were that it did not have the engrossing story-line that the first one had. The story was too short, and not very in-depth. While I enjoyed Christopher Walken's cameo, the story was just too confusing to follow completely, and then it abruptly came to an end. The missions also did not have the variety of the first game, so while you were trying to get to the next part of the story, you would not be having as much fun as in the first game.

As a whole, the game was simply "all right." It wasn't horrible, and it was sufficiently similar to the first Privateer, but it was definitely not a worthy sequel...

Privateer 2 broken down into it's movie parts could, with better audio, have been a cult classic if it was made into a full movie. Visually, pure genius. The characters; vibrant and charismatic each in their own unique avenue of personal expression. The comedy and style of the movie combined with amazing acting, direction, cinematography as well as the natural interaction between the characters and the portrayed technology was genius...nothing less. The high quality of actors really showed their stripes; Jurgen Prochnow, Christopher Walkin, Clive Owen, David Warner, John Hurt...just to name a few of some of the most professionally respected actors in the world. If someone actually rescues that footage and makes a full movie out of this, not only would I watch that movie in the theater, I'd buy the video as well...and you would find it in the 'cult classic' area of your local video store. So I'd give the movie portion of this production a 9.5 out of 10...it would have been a perfect 10 except the audio is a little sloppy.

The game portion of this production has a couple of really good points and a couple of really bad points. I like the idea of a lot of different styles of ships to choose from...each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Of course the more expensive the ship, generally speaking, the better it is likely going to be. The interface was incredible...very visually creative and appealing. The enemy pilots looked like they were cut and pasted together from old 'National Geographic' magazines ... really sloppy. They always said the same thing, which, after hearing it for the 300th time gets a little stale. The flight engine makes it look and feel like you are going quite slow, regardless of how fast it says you are going and can freely bounce off of most ships without any difficulties. It feels more like 3D bumper cars with guns than what I imagine space combat to be like.

It almost seems like this production was put together like a patchwork quilt made up of silk and burlap.

The movie parts of this game were incredible. I only wish you could view them separately to the game, as it sadly no longer works on modern systems (WinXP etc.) ... the original release was full of bugs and I never actually got more than half way through it, as the darn thing kept crashing ... but I would love to find out what happens later on in the game / movie.

Clive Owen was, as usual, awesome. The cinematics blew my mind when I first played this ... I actually still have a boxed copy waiting for the day when I can dig out an old system and play it again. Maybe one that can play it all the way through without crashing continuously!! :) Ahhh the good ol' days...