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Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year

Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Raises the bar for sci-fi flight sims...
Review: If you're looking for a short review: "Amazing, if you've played Freespace 1 and enjoyed it, buy Freespace 2 now!"

But if you're like me and critical about buying computer games, here's more info for ya. Freespace 1 was an amazing game, and while Freespace 2 betters it in every aspect, it isn't a large technological leap forward.

The Good: Ambience. Sound, speech, and music are important to immersing the player in the game. When you get to the first mission in the nebula, you will understand EXACTLY what I'm talking about. While there isn't as much of a storyline as say, Wing Commander 3, the information contained in the pre-briefings and briefings is enough. The chatter of wingmen keep the missions interesting and the dynamic music ensures that you're getting the right background music at the right time. If you are a fan of explosions and action as I am, you are going to love the new capital ship battles. In the previous game, capital ships stood idly by, not necessarily interacting with the mission much. FS2 changes that drastically. Cap ships aren't going to sit there and let you get a target lock anymore. They are equipped with death-dealing weapons such as flak turrents and anti-ship beams. After you die once from them, you will be conditioned to fear the next time you hear them charging up. Much like the end-battle sequence in Return of the Jedi, multiple capital ships will jump into the fray, and the result is pure, beautiful chaos.

The Bad: If you're expecting character interaction akin to the Wing Commander series, you're going to be terribly disappointed. But surprisingly, without an actual main character like Christopher Blair from WC3, the plot moves along fairly well. Instead of watching a character talk and choosing what to say. You actually feel like you're the pilot, moving along the campaign.

Final Thoughts: Like I said before, if you played the first Freespace and liked it, don't have ANY doubts about buying the second, it just gets better. If you're a Wing Commander has-been, download the demo if you have any doubts, all it will take to make you a believer is one mission.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Raises the bar for sci-fi flight sims...
Review: If you're looking for a short review: "Amazing, if you've played Freespace 1 and enjoyed it, buy Freespace 2 now!"

But if you're like me and critical about buying computer games, here's more info for ya. Freespace 1 was an amazing game, and while Freespace 2 betters it in every aspect, it isn't a large technological leap forward.

The Good: Ambience. Sound, speech, and music are important to immersing the player in the game. When you get to the first mission in the nebula, you will understand EXACTLY what I'm talking about. While there isn't as much of a storyline as say, Wing Commander 3, the information contained in the pre-briefings and briefings is enough. The chatter of wingmen keep the missions interesting and the dynamic music ensures that you're getting the right background music at the right time. If you are a fan of explosions and action as I am, you are going to love the new capital ship battles. In the previous game, capital ships stood idly by, not necessarily interacting with the mission much. FS2 changes that drastically. Cap ships aren't going to sit there and let you get a target lock anymore. They are equipped with death-dealing weapons such as flak turrents and anti-ship beams. After you die once from them, you will be conditioned to fear the next time you hear them charging up. Much like the end-battle sequence in Return of the Jedi, multiple capital ships will jump into the fray, and the result is pure, beautiful chaos.

The Bad: If you're expecting character interaction akin to the Wing Commander series, you're going to be terribly disappointed. But surprisingly, without an actual main character like Christopher Blair from WC3, the plot moves along fairly well. Instead of watching a character talk and choosing what to say. You actually feel like you're the pilot, moving along the campaign.

Final Thoughts: Like I said before, if you played the first Freespace and liked it, don't have ANY doubts about buying the second, it just gets better. If you're a Wing Commander has-been, download the demo if you have any doubts, all it will take to make you a believer is one mission.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow.
Review: It's funny, I picked up a copy of BattleCruiser 3000ad back in the day, and the most entertaining part of it was a trailer for descent:freespace, depicting crips, beautiful graphics together with epic space battles. So I bought that game and played it in conjunction with X-Wing Alliance. I thought the two were pretty comparable in terms of replayability, so when Freespace 2 was announced I was pretty psyched.

But the game blew me away. The mission designs are well varied, the opportunity to be a hero is tremendous, the satisfaction you get launching 8 hornet missiles at a bomber and watching the thing explode into fragments, all while tearing along at high speed, afterburners blasting, across the hull of a capital ship over 2 kilometers in length... it's intense. Even if you don't like the genre, the game is too damn close to a movie. I swear, my older sister, who's 22, and hardly a video game buff, stares at the screen while I'm playing and just shakes her head.

The plot is just as fascinating. I know sometimes reviews of games mention the plot and people say "yadda yadda who cares". But in this case the plot makes the battles that much more desperate and epic.

The gameplay is great, too. For a novice, the controls are relatively easy to learn, and weapons essentially similar in usage, but the depth available is tremendous, with experienced players knowing exactly what weapons present the best balance of firepower vs energy, and which ships do slightly better in a knife-fight vs which ones can take a flak cannon volley and live, etc. The list goes on.

Immersive. I guess that's how I'd describe this game. If you have 20 minutes free, you can tool around and play a single mission. Or the game can keep you going mission after mission, well into the night, until you're on your fifth cup of coffee and second pack of smokes.

Definitely a must-have for anybody remotely interested in these types of games. Or games in general.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great fun!
Review: Piloting a star fighter is fun and this game does an excellent job of throwing you into the action with a minimum of training exercises. The game also defaults to the "easy" (but not "very easy") skill level so that us non-veterans can actually play and get through the levels without being pounded mercilessly. As a result, after a short learning curve, and discovering when to hang back a little from the action and when to charge in, you can enjoy this game without the $200 force-feedback joystick serious space/flight-sim players probably purchase.

On the other hand, it's such a hoot, you might find yourself wanting to invest in some hardware.

The graphics are still wonderful, with huge battleships throwing massive particle beams at each other through lightning-charged nebulae and the pacing and mission difficulty curve is quite fair except for one spy mission which is rather harsh. For the easily frustrated, you can skip (at least some) missions if you fail them five times.

The only qualm I have with the game is its adherence to aerial dogfighting physics. And it's a minor qualm. But when someone is pouding on your tail with missiles and lasers, it'd be really nice to do a 180 and give it back to 'em. Can't do it in an airplane, but there's no reason you couldn't in a spaceship.

Oh, yeah, and I can't say I'm impressed with the storyline. Yeah, it's better than the first one and, no, it's not really all that important, but I haven't found myself particularly involved in it. And your character is basically a pawn in a much larger game, and the real stars of the story are remote to you, at least at first.

Another =commendable= touch is the way the characters in the game change their reactions to you as you progress. It does give one an impression of building a prestigous career. This draws you in more as time goes on.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This is one of the best games ever.
Review: Review System: P3-450, 96M RAM, RIVA TNT2

Sweet mother of god. Just thinking about this game gives me goosebumps, bringing me back to long sleepless nights spent in the eerie confines of a nebula, told that SOMETHING is out there, but silently knowing you won't see it until it's too late... Then something appears out of the shadows.

Freespace 2 is without a doubt the best space combat sim I have EVER played, blowing away its contemporaries X-Wing Alliance, Independence War, Starlancer and Tachyon: The Fringe. Graphics wise, unmatched. It's like playing a $100 million movie. Huge explosions, screen filling shockwaves, and incredibly detailed and bump mapped ships. Sound: Excellent. Atmospheric music, good voice acting, and perfect sounds for weapons, engines and more. Value: Great. A long campaign and good multiplayer options will keep you playing for a long time.

But, you say, Starlancer had great graphics! Tachyon had great sound! X-Wing had great value!

Where Freespace 2 really excels is atmosphere. I remember the first time I went up against a capital ship. All other space sims had taught me to believe cap ships were big, sluggish tugs, useless in a fight and just waiting for me to light 'em up with a few well placed torpedoes. Heck, even the first Freespace didn't do much to shake this belief.

So, towards the ship I went in my bomber, thinking this would be a cakewalk. I saw the normal ineffective and poorly aimed lasers flash towards my squadron. Smirking, I armed my torpedoes and fired a volley. As they streaked towards the bridge of the enemy corvette, I saw strange looking flashes surround the torpedoes, then they exploded 500 feet away from the target. Hmm, I thought. Better get closer in.

My ship began rocking as flak from the corvette filled the space around me. This isn't right at all! I thought! This shouldn't be happening! I fired two more torpedoes, and they exploded a second later, flipping my ship around from the force of the blast. Then, I heard a noise. A kind of powering-up noise. I faced the corvette, and I saw a ball of energy growing on its nose. What the....? And then my ship was cleaved in half by a huge pulsating beam of death. I replayed that mission with a new respect for my advisary.

If things like that don't shake you up, I guarantee you the nebula missions will--especially one when you go on a scouting mission with the GVD Psamtik near the middle of the game. I'll leave it up to you to discover why.

In short, buy this game.....buy it now.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A near perfect game
Review: The first Freespace is one of the best space-flight sims ever created, Freespace 2 is better. The awards are well deserved. The graphics are beyond top-notch and the gameplay is spectacular. BUY THIS GAME!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Space combat sim ever (In My opinion)
Review: The game completely absorbs you in the action and the drama of the second war between the GTVA and the Shivans. The dramatic scenes and the close combat attacks make this one of the most thrilling games I have played. The game offers many challenges from; Trying to pilot through a nebula with virtually no sensors, to fighting against capital ships 100 times your size with beam cannons that will tear your ship to shreads. A combination of great graphics and detailed cut scenes, the game offers a challenge for every fan of space combat simulation.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sadly.. still is the best
Review: The only competence is Starlancer and Freelancer.. but still they don't enough good.

Stunning graphics (even for a pc for 2004). Luckily you can use max resolution, max details.. (the game need only a pentium-2 but now everybody have a p3,p4 or athlon!).

Also it run without problems in XP.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This game is Awesome
Review: This game can't get much better. Solid storyline that ties in well with the previous FreeSpace1, good graphics and sound, large battles. Multiplayer support is excellent, added to the normal Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch is the most robust Coopertive mode ever to hit games. The full featured mission editor, while complicated, is VERY powerful. There's many good missons and even some campaigns completed by fans. Its rather too bad that this game is unavailable from Amazon at this point. Interest is still high, but apparently sales support from the publisher isn't.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This game is Awesome
Review: This game can't get much better. Solid storyline that ties in well with the previous FreeSpace1, good graphics and sound, large battles. Multiplayer support is excellent, added to the normal Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch is the most robust Coopertive mode ever to hit games. The full featured mission editor, while complicated, is VERY powerful. There's many good missons and even some campaigns completed by fans. Its rather too bad that this game is unavailable from Amazon at this point. Interest is still high, but apparently sales support from the publisher isn't.


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