Posted September 10, 2008
Freespace 2. Leaving behind the legacy of the claustraphobic Descent series which inspired it, this game leaves you really in the agoraphobia wastes of space, with floating jetsam, flotsam, and pulsing ion clouds. It also rears it head back with a good few years of control fine tuning and brilliant game mechanics already under its rather sizeable belt.
The campaign mode is epicly long and more than enough to keep someone happy for a ages at a time (not to mention numerous fan-made campaigns; shorter but oh-so-good), the missions are difficult in places, but it's a rewarding difficulty; sure, you'll fail the bombing runs about five times near the end of the game, but that one time you get it right, you'll see a three kilometer flagship go up in billions of amazingly rendered particles of debris and smoke (And for a pre-2000 game, the graphics looks astonishingly tasty). And the scaling is awesome too; the three kilometer long flagships really ARE that huge. I could recount tales of weaving through a flagship's flak fire, beam turrent blasts and sizeable missile armaments, all in the pursuit of a single fighter craft, in a desperate dogfight, but it's really something that one has to experience for themselves.
As I mentioned in the title, this games yearns for a joystick's control; for the most part, everything that can be done by the keyboard (weapon swapping, shield dispersment, and counter measure launching) is all easy to do and easily becomes second nature very quickly. With a mouse, the game is playable, but to truely play the game, a joystick with as many buttons as you can manage will make the experience that much more enjoyable. It's one thing to push the after button on the keyboard and shift the mouse upwards; it's another entirely to hit the trusters on you stick and slam it backwars in a desperate attempt to dodge the screaming missiles behind you.
The range of ships for most of the missions might irk some (usually only 2 or 3 are available) but this is explained by the story; usually you won't be able to access the highest level weaponry, simply because it isn't there, and there's no way it could get there. As payment for this, there is an amazing amount of weapons and ships available throughout the game, and paying attention to the breifing and selecting the right weapons will make all the difference. Taking that extra load of fire-and-forget mass warheads might make it easier to deal with the fighters, but taking along a "spotter" for your captial class ship will make the mission overall a lot easier...and more fun (there is NOTHING quite like telling a cannon three times the size of your ship to blast an enemy warship to tiny bits of space fluff, in my opinion).
To close, this is an amazing game; before playing this, I never was all that into flight-simulators, or even flight combat games. After playing this, I feel in love with it. This is a game you need to own, especially at this price. If you haven't already done so, scroll back up there and hit buy. Do it. This is a classic game that does almost everything right, and deserves to be played.
The campaign mode is epicly long and more than enough to keep someone happy for a ages at a time (not to mention numerous fan-made campaigns; shorter but oh-so-good), the missions are difficult in places, but it's a rewarding difficulty; sure, you'll fail the bombing runs about five times near the end of the game, but that one time you get it right, you'll see a three kilometer flagship go up in billions of amazingly rendered particles of debris and smoke (And for a pre-2000 game, the graphics looks astonishingly tasty). And the scaling is awesome too; the three kilometer long flagships really ARE that huge. I could recount tales of weaving through a flagship's flak fire, beam turrent blasts and sizeable missile armaments, all in the pursuit of a single fighter craft, in a desperate dogfight, but it's really something that one has to experience for themselves.
As I mentioned in the title, this games yearns for a joystick's control; for the most part, everything that can be done by the keyboard (weapon swapping, shield dispersment, and counter measure launching) is all easy to do and easily becomes second nature very quickly. With a mouse, the game is playable, but to truely play the game, a joystick with as many buttons as you can manage will make the experience that much more enjoyable. It's one thing to push the after button on the keyboard and shift the mouse upwards; it's another entirely to hit the trusters on you stick and slam it backwars in a desperate attempt to dodge the screaming missiles behind you.
The range of ships for most of the missions might irk some (usually only 2 or 3 are available) but this is explained by the story; usually you won't be able to access the highest level weaponry, simply because it isn't there, and there's no way it could get there. As payment for this, there is an amazing amount of weapons and ships available throughout the game, and paying attention to the breifing and selecting the right weapons will make all the difference. Taking that extra load of fire-and-forget mass warheads might make it easier to deal with the fighters, but taking along a "spotter" for your captial class ship will make the mission overall a lot easier...and more fun (there is NOTHING quite like telling a cannon three times the size of your ship to blast an enemy warship to tiny bits of space fluff, in my opinion).
To close, this is an amazing game; before playing this, I never was all that into flight-simulators, or even flight combat games. After playing this, I feel in love with it. This is a game you need to own, especially at this price. If you haven't already done so, scroll back up there and hit buy. Do it. This is a classic game that does almost everything right, and deserves to be played.
