Freelancer

[Brillig]

Time played so far: 5 hours.

Long ago, there was a game company called Origin. Long ago, there was a game called Privateer.

It's back, in spades. First, the nitty-gritty:

Graphics: The space flight portion of the game is gorgeous - keep in mind that I'm running a fairly high-end system (P-IV 2.4GHz, GeForce 4600). Ships, weapons fire, explosions et. al. are all rendered crisply and with good frame-rates at 1280x1024. The color palette produces breath-taking backdrops and bright, but not cartoonish, visuals. Interior environments are a little less breathtaking, the game engine isn't quite up to the task of rendering interiors and people. It's adequate though, just nothing to write home about.

Sound: In-flight sound is very good, the music is atmospheric, non-intrusive for the most part. Planetside sounds are quite nice as well. Dialogue is voice-acted - this is a definite weak point. Not only do the voice actors sound sedated, but the dialogue for non-plot points is incredibly repetitive. There are a number of minor NPC's, and a fair number of voice actors for them, but the *dialogue* is all the same. After the 100th time you've heard the same line, you may feel like hitting the mute button...

Gameplay: Real world physics is out, fun is in. The designers obviously had no interest in producing a game that resembled the real world, and instead went for fun and playability all around. Now this doesn't mean that the game's physics are unintuitive, simply that all of the "traditional" errors of space simulations are here (ships turning without momentums, asteroid belts with ludicrous densities, etc...) The space combat is even more frenetic than in the classics, such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, becoming almost console-like in some respects. This is not a bad thing, but it's close to being one. It's possible that further on in the game, the pace of combat and the difficulty will combine to make the experience unpleasant.

The game is open-ended, with a main storyline threaded through it. To give you an example of what is possible, in my first five hours, I did 3 missions along the main story, ran a few independent cargo missions, explored the starting star system, picked up a good number of independent contracts to clear out pirates, traded up to a better starfighter, upgraded my weapons numerous times, travelled to a neighboring starsystem, bought the location of a lost navy patrol from a local informant, and did a little asteroid mining. I suspect many will say that the game is deep, but for the moment I'd rather describe it as broad. There are apparently a huge number of possible things to do, but none of them seem to be exceedingly complex, except for the main storyline.

The main storyline itself seems to be pretty well written - all I can tell you so far is that Something Ominous Is Going On. Although you have essentially unlimited opportunity to play the game without following the storyline, I'm constantly drawn back to the main missions in order to see what happens next. The designers have done an interesting thing in inserting small break points within the main storyline that force you to step away from it at times in order to make a little money. Although this is an artificial way of producing a time delay, it serves as a great way to encourage you to explore and do whatever you want.

The game has a significant RPG aspect, aside from the typical "buy and upgrade your ship" mode of space-sims. There is a complex faction system (thankfully visible to the user) that shows what the various groups in the universe think of you. Since new factions are only exposed when you meet them, I don't know how extensive the system is yet, but I've got about 20 entries already. There are two "Captain's Log" type systems, one of which tracks your current mission progress, while the other tracks the main storyline.

A possible problem with the game is one it borrows from console RPG's - random combats. It seems that harrassing attacks are relatively common in the game, and over the course of time, they could come to be annoying. However, it seems to be very location dependant, so perhaps I've just been hanging about in the bad part of space...

Multiplayer: Well, it has multiplayer, but I haven't tried it yet. The main storyline doesn't exist in MP, it's just the open universe. Anyone want to start a server?

Summary: I loved the Wing Commander games, I loved Privateer. It's not surprising that I love this game too. This is a game that conjures up the distant memory of space sim classics gone by, an open-ended space sim for the 21st century. Sure, whoever wrote the NPC dialogue should be beaten with a thesaurus, and the random combats can be a bit much, but this is definitely going to chew up substantial amounts of gaming time over the next month or three.

[Eilim]

Thanks for the review Brillig, I've been thinking about picking up this game for a while but was on the fence. I'm also a space sim fanatic at heart.. Elite, Wing Commander, Privateer, Terminus, Freespace 2, Independence War, Starlancer, and even *gasp* Allegiance spent a good amount of time on my hard drive.

Please keep us/me posted on how the games open-ended nature plays out as it is a big selling point for me.

[andy m]

i am really looking forward to this one (not out in the UK for a few weeks yet alas).

[Ryche]

The demo is available from the Freespace website. Lets you play for a few hours, should give a good feeling for the game. I've downloaded it and played the first mission. It looks promising. A friend of mine has bought the game and once I get it, we'll be trying out the multiplayer aspect.

[Airhog]

Okay here is another review on this game. after hearing such good things, I grabbed a copy of it.

It has some seriously sweet graphics. I have an amd 1600+xp and a geforce 3 ti 200. It almost runs at 1024x780x32 but stutters a little bit. 800x600 just looks ugly, so Im going to try and run it later in 16bit color.

The controls are new for me. Im not used to using a mouse to control my ship, as the last space game I played was starwars. and loved flying with a joystick. But after a few seconds I quickly adjusted to the controls, and found them pretty easy. its even easier when most of the vital commands are shown on the screen so you can click them when your not flying in free flight mode.

The voices are annoying. its just doesnt feel like conversation you would be having in the future. I hardly listen now, and just hit escape to move past the unimportant ones.

Game play is fast and furious so far, but Ive only done the first missions. Now I get some time to just explore and I plan on just crusing around. Be careful though, its easy to get outmatched in the early game when your alone. I waited until I was free to explore before upgrading and flew back to the starting point of the game.

Back to the review though If you enjoy space games, your sure to enjoy this one. Hopefully if a few more FOFCers get this game, we can play some multiplayer

[daedalus]

By the way, if y'all wanted to try out the MP aspect, you might drop the MP forum on Gone Gold. One of the folks over there set up a server and quite a few of them seems to be having a blast with it. I'm pretty much mentioning this because Gone Gold people tends to be pretty cool (ie, so you won't have to run into cheaters or jerks and have your gaming experience ruined). Enjoy!

[Airhog]

Some final comments here to show some of the problems with the game.

I played MP, and looks decent. I dont know how the open ended universe will actually work. Right now the game suffers from one major problem. Repitition. All of the non plot missions are one of 3 or 4 things


A. blow up some ships
B. blow up some ships and bring back the escape pod
C. blow up some ships and destroy a document, artifact, etc...

Thats what this game suffers from. Also there are not that many missions in the plot line 12 total, although I have read that you can go evil, just not from the beginning.

Some other things that should have been implemented.

Variable prices: Right now you can easily determine the best routes to make massive amounts of money, there are several routes that you can do, and with a big freightor, you can make 250k a trip.

Factions: The factions are pretty nice, but the only purpose they seem to serve is a souce of the type of missions and hostility towards your ship.

Simplistic combat: this is a smaller problem. It would be nice if they added targeting to select engines, weapons, sheilds etc. Also nice would be a match speed feature.

The universe: Its totally immersive ships run patrols, bases are attacked by rebels, etc.It makes it very realistic The downside to this is getting jumped by 8 ships immediately upon warping into a sector, and getting jumped quite often just moving from point A to Point B. I doubt this will be a big problem later in the game though. Another pet peeve of mine, is the universe is flat. even though it is in space, everything is on the same plane as far as I can tell. I guess this was done to keep the game simpler, but XYZ would have been so much more realistic.

This is still a fun game, however given microsofts past performace with game patches, I dont expect to see alot added to this game, but you never know. Hopefully people will be able to decode how to mod this game and give us more mission types like escort, base defense, etc.

[tucker342]

damn you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why did you have to review the game? Now I'm going to have to get it!!!

[Bee]

I'm considering the game, my only reservation is it seems from the demo like a game that could quickly become repetitive. Anyone have a feel for that yet? Is there enough variety to hold your interest?

[Airhog]

Bee: If you think it will be repitive, your probably right. the side missions are all the same like I posted above. The missions involving the plot do have some variety, but theres only 12 missions in the game. Now after the game is finished you can fly around and get some better ships, etc.

On the other hand this game is very moddable. People have already figured out how to create new systems and bases. SO its just a matter of time before people have created campaigns and such, and have given this game more depth and life.

[sabotai]

It'd be interesting to see how flexible user-created missions can be. I mean, modding is good and all, but if there's no flexibility, then all users can create are same type of missions.

[Airhog]

they may be able to create new mission types, but that is some time down the road. I read that nearly all the data about ships, planets, missions, etc are all stored in text files

[Bee]

That sounds promising.

[tucker342]

I just got the game on Sunday, I've been playing it ever since. It's awesome!

[VPI97]

I love this game....I finished the main plot, but am still taking on new missions.