Tom's Pick: Force Commander
 What
a noble company is here o'erthrown. What has become of Lucasarts?
Just because Phantom Menace was a pile of digital garbage shouldn't
mean LucasArts has to start churning out digital garbage (to their
credit, they only published Force Commander, which was actually
created by Ronin). Force Commander has an awful engine, awful
camera controls, awful gameplay mechanics, and an awful interface.
And what's with all these tanks? I don't recall seeing a single
tank in the Star Wars movies. And I sure as hell don't recall this
jiggy John Williams remix, which ranks about three notches above
Will Smith's Wild Wild West remix on the scale of Music that Makes
Me Want to Pour Concrete into My Ears. At this rate, I would have
been happy if LucasArts had released X-Wing: Alliance, said 'that's
all folks!', and shut the doors. Instead, we're left with stuff
like Force Commander and fond memories of the greatness that was
once LucasArts.
Mark's Pick: Starlancer
 Why
was this game a disappointment? It wasn’t that it was horrible,
but that it was so horribly average. This was the new franchise
being kick-started from the Wing Commander boys, Chris and Erin
Roberts, a couple of Austin gunslingers with some impressive notches
on their game development belts. Starlancer was the launch of a
new series, the new “Wing Commander” really. This was
supposed to be that game that would show us just how foolish Origin
was to let this talent get away. Instead of new glory, though, we
got a game that could have been any one of the five or six previous
space sims released before it. I hate to say it, but the space sim
genre is old and tired. We needed Starlancer to generate some electricity
for a genre that’s in danger of flatlining. Instead we got
a game that was about as exciting as rerun of Lawrence Welk.
The Most Disappointing Game
of 2000
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