Hell yeah! The original Privateer was glorious. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play the game very long when I owned it- our computer had some issues and, for one reason or another, stopped running Privateer; then we upgraded to a different system. I must have spent a decade intermittently trying to install and run Privateer. The closest I got was playing a near-duplicate on my new computer in 2009, designed to be as much like the original game as possible.

Gotta love the Wing Commander series

Yet ANOTHER “I was FROZEN today!”? You're really milking that, aren't you?

What a nice surprise upon returning home. Thanks for another classy (um… sure) video Spoon-dog! Don't let these kids front you N-slice, keep the reviews old school and we'll force them to watch the videos so they learn some history.

Awesome review as always Spoony, I knew you were going to use The Thing's dancing heads joke again the minute I saw the looping characters, lol.

Awesome, too bad the darkening is nothing like the quickening though…

I would love to see your review on Ultima IX. I've heard a lot about it, but I've never actually seen it in action. That is, if I construed your “Aww, man!” correctly, hehe

This might not have anything to do with this, but I showed your Phantasmagoria and Ripper reviews to my mom, and she kindly asks that you make them longer. She gets engrossed in those things to the point where it's like she's watching a really good movie. More of those, please, thanks.

I kind of wish someone would take the videos from the site Spoony mentioned, compile them into Windows Movie Maker or something and make Privateer 2: The movie! Who would watch it? I would!

I can't find the site that the high quality version of the FMV is from, anybody got a link please?

haha, kinda dug your own grave at the end didn'tcha Spoony? Fuck, too bad they don't make games like they used to back in the days, I really missed out being a console baby.

The reason that Privateer 2 sucked so badly is the same reason that all of Origins later games sucked, EA pushed them to release games faster and cheaper. The original Privateer snuck out the door just as EA took over, and their taint can be detected in Privateer's lackluster expansion Righteous Fire.

Freaky; I was JUST browsing TopatoCo's shirt store and saw that very same shirt you're wearing, just a few minutes before checking your site for new videos. Crazy world.
Ha! I've had that “crashed when I tried to quit” error many times, and I share your pain sir.
Jesus, that mail taking over your screen came back in “Deus Ex: Invisible War” with people messaging you in the middle of combat and getting their face plastered over the center of your UI.
Weird seeing that old “PC Gamer Editor's Choice Award” stamp on the cover on the box; were they just dazzled by the prospect of a game that included Clive Owen and Christopher Walken together? (Seriously, that needs to happen again: another game with Clive Owen and Christopher Walken, together again!).

Wow, the acting does seem a step up from the usual stuff you parade around, Spoony. A shame they could not throw in a few lines of code to fix the encounters and crashes. Still, something tells me the reins they put on the player would have caused trouble anyway.

I wonder if Spoony got his habit of randomly looking off-screen from this game. Watch the heads talking to you; they seldom keep eye contact. o.o

I actually really liked this game way back in the day. I never even played the original privateer.

It was definitely buggy though, i mean…you came to pretty much depend on the fact that the game would crash if you did certain things, so you'd try to play the game to avoid the things you know for certain will crash the game, and….well it still crashed even then, but less. It did make the game pretty much unbearable though.

They actually did put out a win95 version of the game, that was actually WORSE than the dos version in terms of bugs and crashes and all that. I made it through to the end of the game a handful of times with the dos version, i dont think i could make it past the starting planet with the win95 version.

I didnt have any problem with anything else in the game though, i thought it was pretty kick ass….if they made a game that actually worked, it would of been great.

The cutscenes were pretty corny though, yeah. I also came to hate them because anytime one loaded up, there was like a 50% chance of the game crashing.

there's no good nostalgia for Ultima Exodus other than the character creation.

Dammit…ever since I set “I WAS FROZEN TODAY!” as the text-message alert on my phone…I start looking for my phone whenever I hear it…like in this vid!

so what's your next Christopher Watkins related project?

Nobody noticed, but at 9:48 the hitwoman on the right is Amanda Pays, who was Matt Frewer's partner on the old “Max Headroom” show; she was some sort of real-time editor and he was a one-man tv reporter/camera dude wandering through a bastardized version of a William Gibson urban hellscape.

If you're shocked about David Warner being in this Spoony, then rent Sam Peckinpah's “Cross of Iron” where you have Warner, James Mason, Maximillian Schell, and James Coburn playing Germans (!) on the Eastern Front, 1943. Warner gets a good speech in that one too.

sigh… just wanna see part 2 of FFX.

“Don't mind the mess; mess the mind.”

Come on Spoony: how could you not include that line?

WCNews' Holovid pages for the win. Great review.

Loved the Dune reference.

I don't know what to think about this. I can't believe the quality of some of the actors they got. Maybe it explains why the actual game sucked balls, spent way too much money on that part.

Speaking of Walken Spoony, I don't know how you will react to the Nostalgia Critic's Top 11 Awkward Christopher Walken Moments video this Tuesday night, but I'm sure your mind will be blowned away by awesome Walken-ness!!!

I remember the days when Origin didn't suck. Ultima VII, Wing Commander III, Ultima: Underworld…
*sigh*

Pretty disappointing game. Even though the story got me hooked I never finished it. Still, I don’t think it was entirely Origins fault the game turned out that bad. EA began to dismantle the company with more and more ridiculous timelines. IMHO the very disappointing Ultima VIII was the beginning of it. Still Ultima IX is even worse (hell did they fuck with the continuity of the series) and might forever remain Origins most atrocious product. There are quite a few interesting interviews with Ultimas creator, Richard Garriot, on the net where describes how EA brought the company to it’s knees und how the shitstorm, known as Ascension, came to be as it is.

Hmmm. Wonder if he ever played Descent: FreeSpace. That game kicked ass for it's time. Ahhh 90's computer games. I actually had Orion II but could never figure out how to play it. PC gaming SHALL NEVER DIE.

You know, Noah, I know a freeware game designed after Privateer. You might like it. It's called Vega Strike. The playerbase has made mods to turn it into Wing Commander, Privateer, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Might be worth a look.

Perhaps a Freelancer Mod that would include the storyline and movie scenes from Privateer 2 should be in order. Any other game developers/modders out there interested? Freelancer: The Darkening

Yeah i had the original privateer. I managed to beat the expanison to it “righteous fire”, however for the life of me couldn't beat the story mode of the first game. I spend maybe 2 years off and on playing that game until our computer just died. Windows 95 came out shortly after and couldn't play any dos games on it anymore. Thanks for doing the review, I wanted to get this game seeing how good the first one was, but now I see I saved some money here. Great review.

Yeah, this game was a real disappointment. It's not like this was Origin's first ride in the space-sim rodeo, either – by this point they had hit so many home runs on that particular court that Privateer 2 becoming another blockbuster seemed inevitable. (on a side note, please forgive the massively mixed metaphor)

I'm a little surprised that this review isn't under the “FMV Hell” label, since I'd say it qualifies – there's just too much emphasis on the cinematics, not enough on the gameplay. The performances in this particular game look great in a “it's so cheezy it's totally awesome” sort of way, so it might not quite fit with the “it's so cheezy it's totally awful” theme most FMV Hell games have got going, but that's no excuse for such a blatantly phoned in gaming experience. The money that no went toward just one of those FMV cast members and a bit of time could well have fixed most if not all of the gameplay problems.

Personally, I still think Wing Commander: Prophecy was pretty good, though admittedly not the high point of the Wing Commander series. It was developed by Origin the following year, so I'd argue that Privateer 2 wasn't necessarily the end for Origin, and that they were still capable of making decent games if they had had a bit longer to get their act together. In the end, though, that one little jagged bump of “pretty good” on the plummet just added to the pain when it became clear Origin was definitely dead.

Also, the little sticker you've got on the front of your box there reminds me why I don't trust professional reviewers, now or then… “PC Gamer Editor's Choice”? I just can't see a reasonable explanation to that award that doesn't stem from a sickness within the game review system. Was the editor playing a different game? Maybe they shipped copies of Privateer 1 to reviewers, hoping reviewers wouldn't realize? Or did an EA rep just hand the editor a big sack with a dollar sign on it while he twirled his Snidely Whiplash-style mustache and laughed maniacally?

Anyway, fans of the original Privateer might want to check out Privateer Gemini Gold, a recreation project currently being worked on, home page http://privateer.sourceforge.net/. Personally I haven't tried it yet, but I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has… looks interesting.

I had a roommate who committed himself to beating Privateer 2. His trials and troubles pretty much cured me from trying the game myself, though I did get to watch the cinematics. It definately could have been a better game.

I did play Privateer, though. I liked it, I beat it, and I even played the expansion pack. It's not my fav, though, if only because the game seems to force you into the role of fighter pilot to survive the main plotline. I tried using the cargo-class ships, but I would end up getting chewed apart by heavy fighters even if I attemped to avoid combat. I actually think the game Freelancer is a pretty good subsitute (you have to use a mouse – but it actually works in Freelancer).

You know, remakes are all the rage these days. They should do one for X-Com, for Ultima, and definately one for Privateer (yes, I know there's a free conversion out there, but I mean a graphically updated version, not a working port).

I actually have the windows fix somewhere on one of my harddrives somewhere, only works on a 32-bit system though. With the fix you dont need dosbox, its great. But I agree the AI is awful the sounds are horrid and the inspace music I turn off as soon as I start the game, I hate that weird stupid music bits they are so awful I cry and turn on my Wing commander privateer Mp3s instead and close my eyes and feel sooo much better…

This review was pretty good… but I gotta be honest, I could've used a little bit more cowbell. I gotta fever, and the only prescription, is more cowbell.

It really honestly looks like they spent all their money on the cast of the cutscenes. Not the best thing to happen…

wonderful review, I love the space flying games, never played Privateer, sounds like it´s better then Freelancer on one point…the word freedom isn´t a lie….damn Freelancer was such a disappointment, good controls, sucky and sometime plothole inducing limitations.

Oi, don't hate on Freelancer. I love that game. And there are a lot of awesome mods out for it.
I wish they would make a new one of those.

Well now I most certainly want to track down a copy of Privateer as I missed out on that one. I did play Origin's Strike Commander however which was a superb flight sim that came out a little earlier and seems to share similar gameplay mechanics with Privateer. I also find it amusing that the anti-hero mercenary you play here bears a striking resemblance to the anti-hero mercenary you play in Strike Commander. Picture for reference…

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/strike-comman…

Who's to say what circumstances lead to such a poorly tested game being released in the form of “The Darkening”. Myself, harboring bitter resentment towards EA for absorbing and subsequently dismantling my favorite online gaming company, Kesmai, is…simply going to blame them. There's an article by Anthony Salter, a short-lived QA tester for Origin Systems who gives a somewhat insightful albeit one-sided look into the testing of Privateer 2. http://www.wcnews.com/news/2008/07#8748

why does the preview picture have to make spoony look like a blowup doll?

Great video! Can't wait for the next one. Glad to see you back doing reviews and putting them up so quickly.

Those FMV sequences were great, even the Brian Blessed one. Pity the game attached to them is so shoddy, great review again.
Oh, and assbrain is a real disease, sufferers live constantly in fear of it getting stepped on or stuck in the doors of an elevator. The More You Know.

Hey Spoony, did you played First Encounters? Idea was similiar to Privateer. Game was buggy as hell but still fun to play:)

I understand your love for Privateer, i am an Elite 2&3 addict myself.

Speaking of terrible sequel : do you plan to do a Xcom – Terror From the Deep review?

snip, double post cause of lag.

I think you’d like the space ranger and X series.
I am currently playing x3 terran conflict myself.

I always thought that a game where you play as Clive Owen would be the most awesome thing ever. I thought you could run around, shoving carrots up people's eye sockets and hanging with a Celtic Kira Knightley. Turns out, that this is what you get instead. Thanks for the consumer warning, Spoony!

wow man, i was surprised when you said that you prefer keyboard over mouse to aim in space-sims,
and i was even more surprised that you mentioned Freelancer as an example… a game that has the most dynamic and best done combat mechanics of all space sims, and i mean the non glued to the center of the screen crosshair, and non-static camera are just perfect for mouse control…

anyway, i respect your opinion,
and this review was awsome

Dune references instantly boost the ratings of your videos. Keep 'em coming.

Holy shit!

Ducky from NCIS piloting a freighter?!?

HOW could they make this fail?!?

But it's a terrible sequel. It's basically a total conversion/addon to the original X-COM (Underwater edition) with an insane difficulty level (LOBSTER MEN, 90% of the weapons are just reskin from the first game but with terrible stats and lower ammo capacities), a bugged to death and contrived research tree, stupidly long 2-parts levels (i like spending 1 hours searching for the last alien survivor on this cruise boat, knowing the alien is hidden in a closet, waiting for one of my guys to open the door so it can instakill him). The only good part is the Lovecraftian theme of the game.

X-com Apocalypse was decent sequel but Terror from the Deep is just terrible, only “playable” if you are a total masochist and like cheating like a madman. Of course, the “playbility” and “control” are good: it's the only part of the original Xcom they didn't touch!

No joke, I literally said “I WAS FROZEN TODAY!” right as you put in the sound clip after mentioning the cryogenic freezing. XD

I always loved this game and played it through 2 or 3 times when I was younger. I never had any crashing or control problems, but I do agree that the enemy voices were silly and the AI non-existent. To me, that just helped lead to its charm and ease of play–sort of a “casual” game instead of a full-blown privateer sim.

Hehe, all the games he listed at the beginning were true golden oldies, Syndicate, X-com etc.
Gonna have to track these titles down now, aww well give me something to do over the weekend :)
Great review spoony!

Wow Noah, You like a lot of the same crap I played back in the day.

I am really happy to hear someone else who likes X-Com. I cant get any of my friends to try it.
MOO2 is one of my and my best friend played to DEATH like everyday.

Adding to that, I am very VERY happy to know you do not like the Wing Commader Movie! God it sucked!

Wow.

Heheh! The Ultima games. One of the few games where you actually had to take the time find/buy rations and sleep. 'Cos if you didn't you either passed out from exhaustion or you just lost hitpoints from starvation. Those were games.

Nice review…awful game…

Man, I never played Privateer, but I played a lot of Freelancer. I liked the control scheme and all, but it lacked a lot of features that seem real obvious in hindsight, and even the stuff on the back of the box was inaccurate to what you really spent a lot of your time doing.

Of course the mod community is the real reason I still have it installed on my hard drive but even they haven't been able to add everything.

Still a good game, though.

And hey, what was that music that played at the end there? Seemed awful familiar.

Despite the criticism, Privateer 2 sits proudly in my Wing Commander collection. http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/6062/vagwcstuff.jpg

Privateer 1 and Righteous Fire are my favorite games of all time. There were truly fantastic. As for Privateer 2 I never completed it because I got bored of the senseless fighting, put it aside for later and later never came. But you know I've never had your problems with the constant crashing. It crashed a few times, but no more than any other game of the time. For me the sound during the cut scenes was really bad and could barely tell what they were saying. Maybe it was my sound card, who knows.

I've always been a space sim nut and have played pretty much all of them. I used to compete internationally on Star Wars X-Wing Alliance for years on the gaming zone. I still am an avid space sim nut to this day and I'm an avid X universe fan nowadays, you know, the universe that X Beyond the Frontier started? That's got some fantastic plot and I've even read the book. You should review the latest X game perhaps? X3 Terran Conflict. Great sandbox space sim, not as good as Privateer, but then what is?

Oddly enough, I managed to get the game to run fine under DOS, way back in the mid 90s when the game came out. It never crashed on me….ever…and the videos never had those scan lines that Spoony was talking about. But of course, it had a horrible bug that crippled the game for me….if you ever exited out of the game, you lost all saved progress. I never got far in the game, and back then, I had no internet, so any patches or whatever was inaccessible to me. I barely got anywhere, and saw all the FMVs years later. The first Privateer was amazing as Spoony said, and the moment I learned you could be a drug and slave smuggler, that was my primary income generator, plus running from Confed forces made for a harrowing experience. I wish I could find that game again.

Anyone else hungry after that brain sack squishing scene? I'm thinking nachos.

Hello Noah, I have been an avid PC gamer and game collector for over 20 years – I own more than 100 original titles from the 90's and I have a collection of over 200 PC games in total – my oldest original game is a (ship) Destroyer sim called ADS and my oldest shitty game is Stryx (btw, I'd love it if you could review that game). The Worst FMV PC game I own is by far Psychic Detective.

Here is a list of (some of) my all time favorite games from the 90's that I own (original titles bought whe the games were first released – not downloaded pirated/cracked versions) :

Planescape Torment – own the original 4CD version
Pacific Strike
Privateer and Wing Commander III
Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness
Broken Sword
Gabriel Knight : Sins of the Fathers
Curse of Monkey Island
Command & Conquer (I'm reffering to the first 1995 C&C)
Warcraft & Starcraft
Fallout Tactics

Your reviews make me nostalgic and I really love them for that. Keep up the good work Noah.

Much respect,

A fellow PC gamer…

Spoony, as a guy who was more Mac than PC during the FMV days, I didn't have a lot of options to play these games. However, based on your liking of the original Privateer, have you ever played Escape Velocity Nova? The original two games (just Escape Velocity, and its followup Escape Velocity Override) were Mac only, but when they came out with Nova, they went cross platform. The open-ended plots, the hardcore mode (forget to buy an escape pod or forget to launch it as your ship's going up in flames, its game over), and just a totally immersive universe seems that it should be right up your alley.

This game has the same storyline as pluto nash?

Oh, thank you Spoony! You just saved me from attempting to purchase that buttnugget of fail. Seriously, I had been checking Amazon and eBay for a while and I was just about to get P2 when I noticed this video. I didn't know it would be that bad.

BTW, there've been several attempts to remake Privateer…and, in my opinion, Privateer 2. It's a fan-based thing going on under the names of Privateer Gold and Vega Strike. Privateer Gold pleasantly replicates the Privateer/Righteous Fire experience while Vega Strike…well…replicates Privateer 2. I say that, because when I tried Vega Strike, I only played for a few minutes, got incredibly frustrated with the counter-intuitive controls, and uninstalled it.

Brian Blessed is always welcome. It's just a shame he always plays himself in these sorts of projects: he's capable of great subtlety and understated performances when he puts his mind to it. He's always watchable, though.

The scene where he stepped on his brain-tail thing made me laugh my ass off. There were so many weird scenes in this video.

all right spoony you need to play eve online you will like it but it is not a friendly game email me if you need help

Nice review, as always. Although i didn’t find P2 that bad. Not that you are not right in every point except the crashes. (The game never crashed on me, but then again, i had this neat boot menu. (EMS, NO EMS, EMS without CD-ROM etc. ) Ah, the good old times of memory juggling. ;) )
Your other points are valid though: The AI was stupid, the planets forgettable. Also, in a sandbox spacesim, i want to able to fly big ships. And why did they call it Privateer 2, when it’s officially not part of the WC-Universe?

Nevertheless, i had fun with the game. As i remember, there were some neat side quests. And the FMVs were indeed not bad. (Although i only saw them in the German dub).

Sadly, the genre seems to be pretty dead. :( The last good spacesim was Iwar 2. Maybe Aquanox 2, if you count it as spacesim.

I could've gone my whole life not seeing the effect of that brain getting squashed underfoot… AAAAUUUUUGH.

dude can you put all of the FMVs up it would make a bad ass movie

anyone here remembers “Dungeon Keeper”?

I believe the best Wing Commander was the third one (Heart of the Tiger) and the worst was Wing Commander Armada…

On a different note, if anyone wants to watch Wing Commander III : Heart of the Tiger “the movie”, just google
“Queeg's Wing Commander III Movie Project” (13 YT videos)
or go to
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/scif…

Enjoy!

Another Awesome one spoony

Hot damn, this inspired me to get a copy of Privateer (1, not 2) and try it out. Damn good game. Just goes to show all the good games my generation will most likely never play (me being born in the 90's) because they don't have t3h uber graphix and take a little preparation to run.

I like X3better then freelancer since I can actually use a joystick in that game. there is no point in playing freelancer if its not a spaceim since you use your mouse. Its the same with dark star one, although they released a fix that let you use a joystick but there was no way to change to use inverted joystick wich made it totally nonsense anyway. Hehe yeah I like my joystick, thats why privateer and X3 are such awesome games. X3 is not that complicated once you get into it, it takes a lot of time to play though and I like that aspect of the game. It almost seems as a universe that could work as a multiplayer…

Hey, what about Wing Commander Prophecy? That was a good game

I wonder if Noah does Ultima IX, will he touch on the other games in the series first? I was never a huge PC gamer in my youth, I was mostly a console guy, but I DID play the hell out of Ultima VII and I loved that game to pieces.

I was then, and still am now, amazed at the sheer amount of STUFF in that game. There’s so many little secrets tucked away in the far corners of the world, and lots of little things added to the game to give it personality. Break into someone’s home and go through their stuff, most every house will have something different in the drawers and containers. Some will have nothing, only a few will have anything useful, but what you’ll find will usually be appropriate for the home it’s in.

Plus it gave you a hell of a lot of freedom. Want to follow the story? Go nuts. What to become a criminal? Be my guest. Want to kill Lord British? Well, good luck, but it CAN be done (in a few ways even!). Want to steal furniture from the towns and set up a makeshift home in a nearby cave? The world is your oyster my friend! I never played Privateer, but it sounds like it and Ultima VII were designed with a similar sort of player freedom in mind. It was a truly great game.

And then they made Ultima VIII and IX.

Aw, yeah, Privateer was awesome. http://privateer.sourceforge.net/ is a modern attempt by fans to remake the game (it's not finished yet, but still playable, especially the “explore the galaxy” bit). Then there's the on-hiatus Privateer Remake (http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net/) that's still downloadable (http://games.softpedia.com/get/Freeware-Games/P…). Also, googlefu will net you the original (along with the add-on Privateer: Righteous Fire) but that's illegal and piracy and piracy is THE WORST THING EVER.

Wow, when I watched this on my laptop, the video quality decreased 100%.
Everything was pixely and dark…. nng…

But my internet is sucking so no choice. xD; It's the 10th time I've had to restart it.
Good thing I love your intro so much.

Nice Review and im goin to find privatie 1 sounds fun
also why does the music at the end seem familier sounds like a sonic-Casino Level song but i dout thats it
(I FUCKIN L0V SPELLIN)

Nice use of Microcosm music for the end credits ^_^

I actually remember playing a pirated copy of this game when I was like 5 or 6 like 15 years ago. I even still have the pirated copies in my CD case somewhere, although I don't believe there were only two CDs for this game. I don't remember much, but then again I only played this game for an hour because I was too young and it was too complicated. The only thing I distinctly remember is the guy at 11:52 who is apparently struggling in what I can only guess to be a metric butt ton of chewing gum. I can only imagine how he go to be there.

“Alright Tommy, this is your last chance, where is my money?”

“I'll…I'll have it for you by Sunday!”

“Too little too late Tommy…Alright boys, get out…the Dubble Bubble.”

“Noooooo! Not the Dubble Bubble! Anything but-AAAAAAUUUUUHHHHHGGGGG!!!!”

Other than that, I distinctly remember another early PC space exploration title that I played a little bit more of, but it's been years, and the only thing I remember is you attacking a star base hidden in an asteroid, and star fighting in a pink space cloud that reduced your visibility to shit. I don't remember the title though, and while I've been looking through my collection for the game, I've been unable to find it, any ideas, guys?

“koyaanisqatsi” brings back memories. Haven't seen that movie in years.

I must've played Privateer 1 about as much as you did but I never finished it… go figure. I'm really gonna have to reinstall it again now.

I had the CD-ROM with all the extra corny recorded dialogue too…

“DAMN, YER RIPPIN' ME APART!” *asplode*

Sooo… watching this review gave me two ideas, neither likely to be unique.
1. I just had to see if I could find my Privateer and Privateer 2 discs and then play privateer while cursing the failed sequel.

2. “Let’s play Privateer” (aka 10 hours of Spoony being a Space Bastard); I think it has potential…

genre is not dead, it just gone to the mmo direction,
check out EVE online, or upcoming Infinity: Quest for Earth

Who wouldn't play through this putrid sack of shit just to see Walken?!

Christopher Walkin does a lot of these games…

I don't know why but every time I watch this video I think the Privateer pilot in the orange coat sounds like Guybrush Threepwood.

Agree about the original Wing Commander Privateer. It was the game that gave my wife the video game addiction I have had since 1979.

Seriously, anything with Christopher Walken can be awesome. Even this monstrosity you played!

Dis smugglah…is un-FUCKING-believable

Oh boy. I wanted to do some research on this little thing, as I never played it myself. Especially how production went and why it was shipped in such a broken state. (Besides my favourite answer: It was EA’s damn fault).

But seriously, the first thing I found on my search was a German article from some game magazine from 1996, claiming that “this may be Origin’s best title yet”. Yes, they meant Privateer 2, not 1.

Either they were complete morons, up to the point of being careless in their job of actually testing games, or they were shamelessly sucking publisher dick there…

I’m so glad to see how you bring some attention to Origin games, both the good and the bad. They were alongside my favourite developers, with SSI closely rivaling them I guess, but nowadays few really remember them any more.

there was a privateer 1?

uhg all FMV games make me feel sick

I mean I know there are a few good ones yes

but its that look of the graphics and the way the movies are shown on the screen

those games are that awkward phase between 16 bit and 64 bit

I think I’ll stick with contra and golden eye

You know that crazy thing is I actually like FMV games! I mean there were good ones out there at the time when they were sorta popular…ok who am I kidding they all mostly sucked monkey balls!!! DAMMIT! I wish at least one of them was good..well there was that Double Switch game…

Clive Owen….are you wearing EYELINER?

Privateer looks just like freelancer.

Girl scouts, pizza delivry, it’s CRAZY! I love that line, cracks me up everytime.

I really loved this game – but i have to admit this review makes some good points – guess i better not revisit this game, I suspect it won’t live up to my memory!

You know, it’d be awesome if you reviewed Freelancer. :D

Is it just me or does Cronus remind me a little of the Guardian of the Source? Pasty, bug-butter crazy, and ready to shout “Hello Joe!” to William Hurt.

And then William Hurt destroys him with a glance.

‘Brian Blessed acting like a complete Jackass’? You meant to say ‘Brian Blessed acting like Brian Blessed’, right? Yeah. I thought so.

hawkmen…DIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

The acting looks good and the story and concept sound great. Your only problem is the gameplay. But thats a BIG problem because this is a game! Not a movie or a tv show. If Spoony decided to review the in game movie and story, he would be praising it! But he is reviewing and criticizing the gameplay here, nothing else. He clearly loves and enjoys the story. But if the game play sucks in a game, then the game sucks… Im sorry, but its the truth!

Great review Spoony! You are the man!

aren’t the kindred a race of vampires?

Muffins are delicious.

The game crashed when you quit?! How ridiculous is that?! I mean, what kind of half-assed piece of a shit game does that?! Today that would NEVER happen! Right, Diablo 3?

Wing Commander and Command & Conquer are the only classic franchises that managed to make live action videos integral and believable in their game context. Well… Dune 2000 had some pretty good ones too. At least they understood that they are best used to tell some of the story or set up your goals, not be used as ACTUAL game like all those terrible 3DO/CD-i/Sega CD FMV games. Only about 5% of those are actually function and/or good.

Oh come on, space flight with a mouse looks better – because you don’t need to always hold a mouse at certain angle, unlike joystick (in freelancer to example) you just pick mouse control option and leave it at certain angle, moved but not giving it additional pressure from your hand, thus making your hand spend less energy, and sustain much, MUCH more longer.
So yeah, if i’ll ever get spaceship – i’ll install mouse on it as control device, because to hell with joystick – i’d rater have 20 more hours of mouse control than exhaust my hand, holding joystick at certain angle.

yea i noticed that after i posted that lol. But even so he still only has about 3 or 4 LPS totall. He is mostly a reviewer mostly and doesnt really have the time to sit down and make an lp

Why did he say there were 10 kick ass games? Isn’t Ultima 9 like his least favorite game ever? And I thought he didn’t like 8 as well. And wasn’t Akalabeth not an Ultima game?