Was Freelancer good?

I liked it. But it teased me with the possibility that some day a game like Freelancer will have the scope and freedom of GTA x 100. Freelancer's planets/outposts only had 2 or 3 static locations to visit.
 
Fun and solid groundwork for something that was intended for greater things that never happened. There's a lack of variety in mission types, enemies, ships, and the biggest problem...a lack of a real economy that dynamically changes. It's really too bad, as it is well done otherwise, IMO. And yeah, there are other, better space-combat games out there...but Freelancer is still fun while it lasts.
 
lockii said:
I liked it. But it teased me with the possibility that some day a game like Freelancer will have the scope and freedom of GTA x 100. Freelancer's planets/outposts only had 2 or 3 static locations to visit.
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Which was a shame, because they made an incredible number of star systems/areas. It just took too long and got boring trying to reach them.. but if you could stomache it, you could keep exploring for damn ever. You only saw a small fraction of spacing doing the single player campaign, and it was really easy to get started in the story. It didn't quite making space exploration and working for hire as fun as Wing Commander Privateer.
 
The game will impress you with a highly streamlined interface that let's you fiind stations and plot courses through tradelanes, take jobs, upgrade and sell, and kill shit. But then you realize that that's all there is to the game.

Ths shouldn't automatically mean that it's junk, after all how many other popular titles are comprised of simpler mechanics. But everytime I pick this game up, I can only play for a few days and then I'm totally bored with it.

You get to a new area, your ship is now obselete and you have to run crap combat missions to upgrade. When you move to the next section, you do it all over again. How many times can you really have fun with that?

If the answer is "many," then pick it up.
 
ArcadeStickMonk said:
You get to a new area, your ship is now obselete and you have to run crap combat missions to upgrade. When you move to the next section, you do it all over again. How many times can you really have fun with that?
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Yeah, that part kinda bugged me. You can sorta max out in one area, move into the next area and you're completely outclassed. You have to completely upgrade and then you repeat when you move into the next territory. It was simply a game mechanic, there wasn't any logic to how the Japanese region (civilians/military/pirate alike) were just way way superior to the American region and way less powerful than the German region. In Privateer, it was more dangerous the further you got from the more established trade lanes or the closer you got to pirate or Kilrathi areas. They games were similarly huge for their time, but Privateer's system seemed a lot more natural. You could spend dozens of hours maxing out your ship, then start the story. In Freelancer, the story kind of pulls you along from region to region in sequence, and you'll get the appropriate amount of credits to appropriately max out your ship as you go along. So the first half of the game, the exploration/trade/upgrade phase became unnecessary and was less compelling.

Still, Starlancer and Freelancer are about the best space sims I've played in the last five years.
 
I absolutely loved it.

*waits for someone to mention that there were like 2 black people in the game again like when it came out*
 
Yes, it's simple and could be more ambitiuos about posibilities (what drive it to be a little boring if you play for long).

But combats are fun, the sense of wonder of the universe it´s amazing, it´s beatiful, and single player and multiplayer offer two different but great experiences.

Go for it
 
EVE Online is Freelancer x10000.

But yes, Freelancer was/is a good game, kept playing it long after the story was over, exploring every system there was, hidden ones included. Kept waiting for an expansion pack, that never came. :'(

So I tested out EVE, been playing it ever since heh.. about 1.5 years now.

wheee
 
Yes!


Nothing more satisfying than buying the largest freighter, filling it to the brim with drugs at one of the outlaw hideouts and then booting it to Manhattan as fast (using cruise to get from gate to gate ASAP and cutting around military bases helps) as you can praying you don't get scanned by the fuzz. Huge money, big risk, and when you're done you can go buy one of the elite Very Heavy Fighters.

I really liked the SP campaign too. There are some very ambitious mods out there, but at some point I couldn't get any of them to work anymore, maybe if I reinstalled it the mods would run again.
 
i thought the controls were awesome, though it should have had flightstick support aswell, as a leftie flightsticks are not for me so i welcomed the mouse control.

As others have said, Freespace was a good game, but it really just teases you at the possibility of how could it could be with a varied mission set, sub-plots, an economy you can actually affect. It's frustrating because once you've completed the game theres literally nothing to accomplish. It should have been Pirates! in space, but instead it was more like Pirates Of the Caribbean in space.

Id love a sequel where they cut it down to say 20 sectors, but each one had individual content, missions and storylines seperate from the main story.
 
Ghost said:
As others have said, Freelancer was a good game, but it really just teases you at the possibility of how could it could be with a varied mission set, sub-plots, an economy you can actually affect. It's frustrating because once you've completed the game theres literally nothing to accomplish. It should have been Pirates! in space, but instead it was more like Pirates Of the Caribbean in space.
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Fixed your post. Alpha 1 was turning in his grave while you mixed up the best space sim game in history with a pile of turd..
 
Lots of potential, not enough....stuff. Basically Diablo in space with less plot. Fun to bomb around in, perhaps play the SP campaign or goof multi with friends a bit... but it gets old, and there just isn't enough there.

Compared to Freespace 2, or Independance War 2, it is seriously lacking in depth.
 
calder said:
Nothing more satisfying than buying the largest freighter, filling it to the brim with drugs at one of the outlaw hideouts and then booting it to Manhattan as fast (using cruise to get from gate to gate ASAP and cutting around military bases helps) as you can praying you don't get scanned by the fuzz. Huge money, big risk, and when you're done you can go buy one of the elite Very Heavy Fighters.
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Yeah I remember that.

Oh you bastard, you're gonna make me load that shit up again.
 
Freeelancer = ok; story and gameplay vary from decent to irritating. It can't seem to decide whether to be a weak hollywood scifi piece or an uneven freeform shooter.

Freespace 2 = so good in gameplay, story and visuals it could ship today without looking old (possibly excepting what, a cutscene maybe?).

TIE Fighter = god of the genre that, more than any other game today, desperately needs a graphical remake and rerelease.


I miss the genre badly, but the bar was set so high I've never held much hope for new franchise attempts (you know, back when games like these were actually released on the PC).
 
Is Freelancer that mouse driven space sim from Microsoft?


It was the best interface I've ever played, not much of a game though.
 
Crazymoogle said:
Freeelancer = ok; story and gameplay vary from decent to irritating. It can't seem to decide whether to be a weak hollywood scifi piece or an uneven freeform shooter.

Freespace 2 = so good in gameplay, story and visuals it could ship today without looking old (possibly excepting what, a cutscene maybe?).

TIE Fighter = god of the genre that, more than any other game today, desperately needs a graphical remake and rerelease.


I miss the genre badly, but the bar was set so high I've never held much hope for new franchise attempts (you know, back when games like these were actually released on the PC).
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IAWTP completely.

As for Tie Fighter, there was a collector's edition with VESA local bus graphics and the expansion in it.. I currently STILL own the collector's edition but I can't use it at 640x480 because I don't have a vesa local bus card (obviously) is there any way to emulate VESA that anyone knows?
 
tahrikmili said:
IAWTP completely.

As for Tie Fighter, there was a collector's edition with VESA local bus graphics and the expansion in it.. I currently STILL own the collector's edition but I can't use it at 640x480 because I don't have a vesa local bus card (obviously) is there any way to emulate VESA that anyone knows?
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Well, the original collector's edition CD didn't require VLB so much as DOS video drivers; I played it successfully on both VLB/PCI systems.

Many years back Lucasarts actually released a hasty update to the game as part of one of their Lucasart's History packs (and finally on an XW:CE+TF:CE+XvT demo package); the update was win95/dos compatible and has basic textures for all ships (basically XvT graphics), but my failed attempts to get it to work past the login screen on XP tells me some sort of dos emulation might be required for it to work at all.

(EDIT: Yeah, I thought it was pretty weak of Lucasarts to rerelease the game with minor upgrades, try not to let anyone know, and require previous users to repurchase...)

Alliance and Balance of Power were interesting attempts to update the series back in the late 90's, but Totally Games was "totally" uninterested in pushing graphics potential (possibly excepting the death star interior run, it looked aged even at release), and the interface really started to feel backwards compared to what FS1/2 accomplished at that era.

Hmm...I think I'll try to get it working tonight. The missions where Vader is your wingman just kick all sorts of ass.
 
XvT actually has a directx patch somewhere that really gets the graphics up to accelerated DX7 quality, I think.. IIRC the game was originally software renderer only? Or glide only? Or something.. or I'm just going senile..

I'm 100% positive that the collector's edition TIE Fighter I have does not run in hi-res (640x480) because it bitches about lack of VESA and defaults to 320x240 VGA which is fugly :( I ran it on my 486 and Pentium with ISA/PCI cards, but it just won't work in anything beyond MS DOS 6.22 I guess.. I haven't tried DOSBOX yet, I'll try that eventually.. Would be a blast, playing it with my flightstick :D
 
tahrikmili said:
XvT actually has a directx patch somewhere that really gets the graphics up to accelerated DX7 quality, I think.. IIRC the game was originally software renderer only? Or glide only? Or something.. or I'm just going senile..
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No, the graphics have always been on the DX6/7 line as far as I know; although XvT/XWA are compatible with those fan upgrades to the ships, the interface has always been about the same. It's possible that the original might not have recognized hardware acceleration, but based on the old articles I can find it always had the launcher for going hardware or not.

"DX7 quality" is kind of a misnomer anyway, because it never really looked great. I mean, I was excited as anyone else back with XvT was first out, but that can happen after the 100+ missions of gouraud greatness that was TF.

I'm 100% positive that the collector's edition TIE Fighter I have does not run in hi-res (640x480) because it bitches about lack of VESA and defaults to 320x240 VGA which is fugly :( I ran it on my 486 and Pentium with ISA/PCI cards, but it just won't work in anything beyond MS DOS 6.22 I guess.. I haven't tried DOSBOX yet, I'll try that eventually.. Would be a blast, playing it with my flightstick :D
Click to expand...

That actually jogged my memory; I think you're right, at least about the really old version. I always had a VLB card but not enough horsepower to run 640x480 at a playable rate, so it never really mattered.

I need to reinstall the game yet, but I think the win95 edition has a higher res mode. Hopefully it will recognize the USB stick and throttle controls...
 
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