Freelancer

[Makaar]

I just bought this game yesterday. Maybe it's the excitement or something, but I liked it Alot. It's fun to play in SP, MP is crap, however. I don't have time to write a huge review about it, but I thought it was at least _okay_ for a space sim
what do YOU think about it?

 

[Deathy]

I didn't like it much.
It wasn't a bad game, but it was very far from a good one.

My main concerns were:

* Repetive combat
* Arcade style "bash the box and get the goodies" mining.
* A linear and console RPG style storyline
* Lack of real use for frieghters
* Worse than Elite, which is about 16 years old now.

It really played like an incredibly dumbed down space trader sim.
And it was average at best if looked at as a straight space sim.

Freelancer was a fun dissapointment. Not a good game, but fun enough in its own way.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I thought it was lots of fun overall. Mostly after the campaign was over. :wink:

The levelling system is crappy, though. You should just be able to buy what you can afford. I didn't care for story-based reputation adjustments, either; I'd try to get in people's good graces only to have it all wiped out. I actually got a tad pissed when I started working for some not-so-popular guys and most of the galaxy was off-limits to me, since I didn't feel like taking copkiller missions to gain a level.

Really the campaign should have been optional. I never tried saying no just because I wanted to see how the story unfolded, though I got kind of mad with that mission at Willard Research Station after it started to seem like I was just risking my life to get into Jun'ko's pants, before they really started giving me much reason to actually keep accepting all the high-risk, low pay campaign missions. It didn't really fit into my image of my character, so things kind of broke down there.

It had some nice exploration aspects. I liked tracing patrol paths to find hidden bases and jump holes as well as looking for derelict ships to loot.

 

[udarnik]

For a game like this the combat was inexcusably bad. Keyboard or joystick control really is essential for any program that attempts to simulate flight. And, at least at the beginning of the game, combat is very repetitive. If your main game mechanism is bad, the rest of the game better be engrossing, but Freelancer doesn't seem to have anything else going on other than flying around with your mouse button depressed. At least, not in the first couple hours of play, anyway.

If you liked, say, Privateer (the only game I've played that was similar to Freelancer), then PLEASE download the demo before buying this game. Perhaps the greatest enemy of good games are bad games that make oodles of money. I may be mistaken, but this game seems like the space sim equivalent of Dungeon Siege.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

For a game like this the combat was inexcusably bad. Keyboard or joystick control really is essential for any program that attempts to simulate flight.

Actually, I liked the controls because it's supposedly a space trading sim. Unfortunately, it's a space trading sim with too much #*@&#^#*@ combat.

And, at least at the beginning of the game, combat is very repetitive. If your main game mechanism is bad, the rest of the game better be engrossing, but Freelancer doesn't seem to have anything else going on other than flying around with your mouse button depressed. At least, not in the first couple hours of play, anyway.

Yeah, that's the problem with it. You can trade all you want, but there's really no goal passed the GET THE BEST SHIP goal. Freelancer should have offered you the ability to buy or make bases, like Hardwar and X:BtF did as well as set up little ventures like those two games did. If I could have set up a mining operation in a nebula, and bought guards or set up a relationship with bounty hunters to watch my station, and things like that.. Well, it'd have been fantastic.

But you can't.

If you liked, say, Privateer (the only game I've played that was similar to Freelancer), then PLEASE download the demo before buying this game. Perhaps the greatest enemy of good games are bad games that make oodles of money. I may be mistaken, but this game seems like the space sim equivalent of Dungeon Siege.

It's better than Dungeon Siege because it's at least interactive. It just gets pointless after a while because there's very little to do once you're rich.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I wish you could destroy locations and factions, too. Like if you destroy all their bases, take enough missions that supposedly cripple them, and then wipe out a few hundred of their people, they finally give up. I discovered the Xenos main base and stuck around a while shooting everything in sight, but beyond that there wasn't much to do. Would have been nice to launch a few torpedoes at the place and then see a lot less Xenos throwing themselves at every police and bounty hunter armada in sight.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I wish you could destroy locations and factions, too. Like if you destroy all their bases, take enough missions that supposedly cripple them, and then wipe out a few hundred of their people, they finally give up. I discovered the Xenos main base and stuck around a while shooting everything in sight, but beyond that there wasn't much to do. Would have been nice to launch a few torpedoes at the place and then see a lot less Xenos throwing themselves at every police and bounty hunter armada in sight.

I would have liked this as well. It's kind of funny that in the single player, you can take out bases left and right, as well as battleships, but you can't scratch them in multplayer.

I'm fine with not being able to destroy them in multiplayer, but you should be able to cripple them so that it cuts down the frequency of how many there are in a region. Like you said, fire a few torps, wreck their base, and leave them to repair it while you use that area unmolested by them.

I also like the idea of being able to build those weapons platforms in order to control routes and other areas of interest.

 

[EEVIAC]

This is pretty much my sentiment from the thread I started in another forum, but despite all the time they had to get this game tight and right, it looks like its up to fans and modders to make the game what it should have been. The lack of a free campaign is almost inexcusable seeing how long it took people to hack it out of the game.

Once again I'm irritated by the fact that I've paid my $90 Australian for a game where half of that value for money is supplied by people who get no money. Actions like Bioware dishing out a few computers is hardly fair recompense.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I thought it was pretty cool for about a week. It does a great job of hiding it's evil flaws for several days, but after a while, you start noticing the man behind the curtain.. And he's a bad person.

 

[Linedog]

Just bought the game, so I haven't played yet; but along the lines of base destruction etc., I've noticed that there is a mod that does this. In fact, for such a new game there alresdy are a fair number of mods out, as well as a mod loader. Initial fan base seems large. I'm gonna play the game but I really was hoping for something more like Praivateer. Does anyone out there know of a space trader sim that will work under Windows XP?

 

[Spazmo]

I'm sure there's a way to get Elite running on an XP box.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I think it's just plain incredulous that your ship (or any other fighter) can take out an entire Battleship, Cruiser or even Dreadnaught. So really, what's the point of those capital ships if a little fighter can take them out?

Another thing that bothers me is how weak the Liberty ships are in comparison to the Rheinland or Kusari ones. You'd think that a single Rheinland ship would be able enter Liberty space and destroy the hell out of everything, especially since it's possible for YOU to do it.

Besides all the problems already mentioned, another problem is the fact that capital ships look pretty god damn small in comparison to the capital ships in Starlancer (which was a better game, IMO), Freespace 2 and Tachyon. They really don't convey a sense of magnitude, and are pathetically easy fo your little fighter to take out.

We're supposed to believe that 20,000 inhabitants live on a single space station, but from the looks of it from the exterior, it seems to be able to only fit around 5-6 fighters. The interior on the other hand reveals how 'small' a ship is in comparison to the space station or cruiser. Now that's just fucked up - King Kong style.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tachyon was really good about providing space stations with size. Then again, I think the size of the stations in Tachyon served more of a purpose, i.e. terrain in space, than Freelancer had the need for having. In first person, like Tachyon had, flying through support structures and pylons is fairly easy t do, but it's more difficult in third person.

I still say Freelancer's main problem was they designed the controls for being nice and accommodating for general purpose space trade simulation but every other part of the game as if it was a space combat game.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

Well all the criticisms of Freelancer posted here and elsewhere are right on, and yet I enjoyed it. After finishing the campaign I screwed around for a while, but it gets stale. Some of the big set piece battels are a blast and tho the story is cliche it kept me wanting to see the resolution.
I paid for it, played the whole single player campaign and had fun. It is *nowhere* near the game it could've been with some really rather minor changes, but it was fun for what it was: a purty outer space shoot-em-up. I think if you consider the game as such, you can have fun with it.