Wing Commander IV

Critical reviews

Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom for the PC was well received by critics. Computer Gaming World had it as a runner-up for the "Space Simulation Game of the Year" award, adding that it was the best yet attempt at creating an 'interactive movie'. In GameSpot's 1996 annual awards, the game placed second in the category "Best Story". Daniel Jevons of Maximum opined that "Wing Commander IV makes huge leaps and bounds in the interactive movie stakes, seamlessly blending impressive interactive cinematic sequences with slick and exciting SVGA battle sequences." A reviewer for Next Generation criticized that the interactive portions are essentially unchanged from Wing Commander III: "... with $10 million [the game's budget], you'd think the programmers could have optimized the code. They could have added tons of features: replays, multiplayer support, more ships, or even more interactivity. ... the actual gameplay, which runs on exactly the same engine as WCIII (with only a few improvements), runs almost half as fast at even the lowest resolution – with all the details turned off." However, he assessed this as more of a lost opportunity than an actual problem, since "WCIII was a great game, and it's nice to get more of the same." Bob Strauss wrote in Entertainment Weekly that "I've come to the conclusion that the Wing Commander series has two reasons for existence: to prolong the career of Mark Hamill (who has leveraged his big-screen space-jockey credentials into this most prestigious of CD-ROM franchises) and to force technological laggards to trade in their old PC clunkers for the whiz-bang models of the moment. There's nothing in Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom to dissuade me from this opinion."