Freelancer

[mmu1]

Sounds like Wing Commander: Privateer..The only problem I've heard is that it is mouse only..no joystick.

Gariig

For me, that's one of the selling points... I used to be a huge Wing Commander fan, but it's been years since the last worthwhile space shooter, I don't even own a joystick anymore, and my wrists aren't what they used to be.

Anyone think we'll ever see another real Wing Commander game? In a way, I think I'm grateful the franchise died out... I think it ran out of steam after Wing Commander 3 and the demise of Kilrah. If they were to make anything, I think another Privateer - type game set during the times when the Kilrathi war was still going strong would be the way to go.

 

[narg]

this game is great, fantastic.... the voice acting can use some work but that's about it.

If you ever love privateer or any of the old wing commanger series you will love this. The best thing about it is the engineering of the controls to work perfectly with a mouse and keyboard... no joystick needed. it even has multiplayer.... gotta love it.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Freelancer RAWKZ!It IS mouse driven but its very stable and fun to fly. The graphics are quite pretty and the trading between ports is reminiscent of ELITE in my old C64 days. The only bad thing Ive seen is that the other characters in the game have VERY flat dialogue mostly consisting of "well I HAVE heard a rumor, want to hear it?"
In the end, however, the game truly comes to life for me and I find myself immersed for hours on end, jumping around the galaxy helping my friends figure out what is going on within the Liberty government (and surrounding Govts.) A very sweet and addictive game, overall!

 

[Welverin]

Gamespot's review is up now. 8.3 by the way.

 

[Olive]

lookinf forward to it myself... even if i can't really afford it.

the lack of joystick support is wierd, but the idea of solid mouse support makes me want to buy it. i don't have a joystick anymore, and i really don't want to buy one just for this game. and if no stick support means a better mouse driven space sim, then bring it on!

 

[mmu1]

Man... The freakin' Gamespot across the street got one copy, which went to someone who pre-ordered. As I'm home sick, going farther afield wasn't really an option.

 

[Cion]

Freelancer is great, I´ve already spent many hours on this game and I don´t regret one of them!

 

[Allanon]

Well I got the game and to be honest... I wasn't impressed.
I admit at first I was instantly adicted, the story is great and filled with intrigue and a great deepening plot.

But the first thing I noticed and actually despised was the fact that it's totally linear. The game just doesn't care if you're a cutthroat pirate or a goody two-shoes who does everything to the letter of the law. You never get a story changing choice put before you, the only choice is to accept a mission or not nothing more.


Second thing that begins the bug me is that all the side missions you can get at the space bases are destruction oriented. You will either be asked assassinate a person (and always you will be asked to despose of his 'cronies' first), destroy an 'hostile' force in a sector, destroy some cargo or destroy a base (which will vary from weapon platforms to large space bases guarded by a couple of the afformentionend weapons platforms).
There are no other missions beside the one's provided by the story line driven missions which do occasionally give you escort duty or other interesting things (like a race) to do.

Third is that you have a very limited amount of ships to choose from... Yes yes, they brag about the incredible amount of flyable ships, but in reality the game constantly limits the ships you can have by not giving you access to certain sectors or the ridicules pilot level system in which you cannot buy certain pieces of technology and ships because of too low levels. You attain levels by flying story missions or increasing you're monatery worth.

You can hardly tinker on you're ships, the three kinds of shields are incredibly useless, most of the time if not all the time you'll decide to use the most heavy shields which are those of the graviton type. Not because they're the best, but simply because they have to most hit points. They're are only three booster types and weapons are merely scalable copies of them selves. having only small differences between faction type.

All in all, I played the game only to reach the conclusion of the story which was surprisingly good. But besides that the game severely disappointed me. Having absolutely no replay value whatsoever. I myself really hope that one day they'll make a real attempt at filling the void left by Wing Commander.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I have been having a lot of fun with Freelancer and for all purposes it is a remake of Wing Commander: Privateer.

I was not sure how I was going to like the mouse control for flying the ships but it is not bad. Ships: While you are limited to three basic models you can find others looking different places, my second ship was a heavy fighter I picked up on a battleship.

Missions are combat related, which I see as a little weak, I wish they gave you stuff like O2 needed on this base or shipment of this and that to different worlds. But you can carry your own and try to make a profit on the side.

Ships and Weapons, most weapons are just upgrades and you have to upgrade to bigger and better ships to take advanage of them.

The AI is very good, combat is interesting and fun and the back story is very good. Replayable, mmmm I never thought Wing Commander: Privateer was replayable but yet I played it over and over again.

 

[mmu1]

I played through the single-player story and had a lot of fun, but after that I just stopped, because outside of the (linear) plot, the game is just the same mission over and over...

My biggest problem with the game, however, is the way the game always scales random enemies and missions to your level. This pretty much results in the following cycle:

1. You get to a high enough level to be able to get a new ship, but you can't afford it yet.
2. The game gets absurdly lethal in spots (random encounters with pirates, mainly), because your level is higher than the quality of your ship and weapons.
3. You finally make enough money to get the new ship, the difficulty level goes back to normal.
4. You fly a few more missions, go up a couple more levels, load your new ship to the gills with the best weapons and shields - and the game gets too easy.
5. You hit the level at which it's time to start thinking about a new ship, and it gets much too hard again.

Wanna die quickly? Stumble across some wrecked ships with high-level weapons, and salvage them. Not only do you not get a boost for finding something interesting, you actually get weaker, relatively speaking - because those guns are worth so much you just gained three pilot levels, which makes all enemies a lot tougher... and you're still stuck with your old POS ship, and have to pray you can make it somehwere you can buy one appropriate for your level without getting shredded by pirates.


I've also grown to despise the aiming model the game uses, with every gun in a moveable mount that allows you to direct fire basically anywhere in the 180 degree arc ahead of you, regardless of ship facing. Don't get me wrong - I like the new mouse flight model, but when I'm playing a game like this, I want to dogfight, not point and shoot. I want to see a difference between light and heavy ship types, I want to be able to actually avoid enemy fire by jinking, or doing an afterburner slide, because then it's about skill, not about what level your ship is and how many shield batteries (aka health potions) you've got aboard. When fighting more than one or two enemy ships means that someone is always in position to shoot at you, the game starts to feel more like Diablo than a space sim.