Pkhunter
30-03-2008, 12:36 PM
Summary
This being a website with several old fogies, I'm sure many of you will have played, and thoroughly enjoyed Elite, originally published by Acornsoft in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers and subsequently ported to many others.
Freelancer is obviously trying to bring the magic of Elite to the world of 3D. It succeeds in many ways, but sadly doesn't seem to contain quite the magic Elite had. However, compared to the other attempts at a free-roaming space sim, Freelancer is by far the closest you'll find to Elite, in comparison to games such as X2: The Threat, released in 2003 and sequel to X: Beyond the Frontier.
In Freelancer, the world is very different. A century-long war resulted in Earth being abandoned. Colony ships took survivors to a new Galaxy, and each nation of Earth claimed a Solar System. Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland.
You play a man named Edison Trent, a recent arrival on Liberty after the space station he was on (Freeport 7, in the Sigma-17 system) was destroyed by powerful attackers, thought to be the mysterious terrorist organization known as the Order. You try to find work, and become an agent of the LSF (Liberty Security Force.) However, this does not last long, as a series of events throw you into a deep, involving story.
Gameplay
The space flying is much like any flight-sim, yet for some reason, you can't use a joystick. A third-party patch is available which enables joystick control, but once you get used the keyboard control system, it doesn't matter.
You can buy 12 different ships over the course of the game, and each is totally customisable with weapons, armour, engine and many other upgrades. When you are on a planet, or docked in a space station, it is a simple point-and-click interface.
Now if only i could find the mission waypoint...
The game is set-up in such a way that you aren't always following the main story. You can get jobs for various companies to earn money for upgrades, not to mention the trading, which is a massive part of the game. With such a huge universe, a good trade route can take weeks to find. And the universe is huge. It's just like space, as it seems to go on forever. I have been playing for 2 years, and still have never explored every system entirely, and there are apparantly secret systems which can only be accesed through jump-gates in the gassy nebulas, which are almost impossible to find but apparantly contain riches you couldn't imagine.
A group of small fighters escort a convoy of tankers on a trade route.
The only nag I have about the gameplay is that the sub-missions all seem the same. "OH noes! a whole load of ships are attackng our mining colony! stop them and we pay you, kay?" or "I found a bandit station. Go blow it up, kay?" but the space combat is so much fun that it doesnt really matter.
The multiplayer is as much fun as the singeplayer. It's like a free version of EVE: Online. A Huge galaxy populated by real people and NPCs, with trading and alliances and even all-out wars. The scale is mind-boggling.
Graphics
The game is quite demanding on some older PCs, due to the scale of it all, so you might not be able to bask in the graphical glory that is presented to you on highest-settings, but it is always pretty enough. Lots of nice sprite & particle effects making gory deaths seem like a beautiful fireworks display. In general, I like it.
The character modelling and animations are top notch, but these are let down by the rather low texture resolution.
Sound
To be honest, it's nothing special. Not as many voice actors as I would have liked, considering the massive number of NPCs. Each system has a male and female voice actor, all with heavy accents portraying their system's origin, but it gets boring hearing the same voices over and over again, especially with so much random space-chatter you pick up over the communications array.
Overall
Very fun, and very big. If you don't have much spare time, then it's probably not the game for you. It's the sort of thing you can loose yourself in for hours.
Freelancer is:
• Big.
• Like, mind-bogglingly big.
• Elite in 3D.
• Gripping.
Freelancer is not:
• For people with little spare-time.
• For the impatient.
• Elite in 3D.
• Easy.
Rating: 8.9/10
Bottomline: It's immense, massive, huge, gigantic... and then some.
© PKHunter
This being a website with several old fogies, I'm sure many of you will have played, and thoroughly enjoyed Elite, originally published by Acornsoft in 1984 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers and subsequently ported to many others.
Freelancer is obviously trying to bring the magic of Elite to the world of 3D. It succeeds in many ways, but sadly doesn't seem to contain quite the magic Elite had. However, compared to the other attempts at a free-roaming space sim, Freelancer is by far the closest you'll find to Elite, in comparison to games such as X2: The Threat, released in 2003 and sequel to X: Beyond the Frontier.
In Freelancer, the world is very different. A century-long war resulted in Earth being abandoned. Colony ships took survivors to a new Galaxy, and each nation of Earth claimed a Solar System. Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland.
You play a man named Edison Trent, a recent arrival on Liberty after the space station he was on (Freeport 7, in the Sigma-17 system) was destroyed by powerful attackers, thought to be the mysterious terrorist organization known as the Order. You try to find work, and become an agent of the LSF (Liberty Security Force.) However, this does not last long, as a series of events throw you into a deep, involving story.
Gameplay
The space flying is much like any flight-sim, yet for some reason, you can't use a joystick. A third-party patch is available which enables joystick control, but once you get used the keyboard control system, it doesn't matter.
You can buy 12 different ships over the course of the game, and each is totally customisable with weapons, armour, engine and many other upgrades. When you are on a planet, or docked in a space station, it is a simple point-and-click interface.
Now if only i could find the mission waypoint...
The game is set-up in such a way that you aren't always following the main story. You can get jobs for various companies to earn money for upgrades, not to mention the trading, which is a massive part of the game. With such a huge universe, a good trade route can take weeks to find. And the universe is huge. It's just like space, as it seems to go on forever. I have been playing for 2 years, and still have never explored every system entirely, and there are apparantly secret systems which can only be accesed through jump-gates in the gassy nebulas, which are almost impossible to find but apparantly contain riches you couldn't imagine.
A group of small fighters escort a convoy of tankers on a trade route.
The only nag I have about the gameplay is that the sub-missions all seem the same. "OH noes! a whole load of ships are attackng our mining colony! stop them and we pay you, kay?" or "I found a bandit station. Go blow it up, kay?" but the space combat is so much fun that it doesnt really matter.
The multiplayer is as much fun as the singeplayer. It's like a free version of EVE: Online. A Huge galaxy populated by real people and NPCs, with trading and alliances and even all-out wars. The scale is mind-boggling.
Graphics
The game is quite demanding on some older PCs, due to the scale of it all, so you might not be able to bask in the graphical glory that is presented to you on highest-settings, but it is always pretty enough. Lots of nice sprite & particle effects making gory deaths seem like a beautiful fireworks display. In general, I like it.
The character modelling and animations are top notch, but these are let down by the rather low texture resolution.
Sound
To be honest, it's nothing special. Not as many voice actors as I would have liked, considering the massive number of NPCs. Each system has a male and female voice actor, all with heavy accents portraying their system's origin, but it gets boring hearing the same voices over and over again, especially with so much random space-chatter you pick up over the communications array.
Overall
Very fun, and very big. If you don't have much spare time, then it's probably not the game for you. It's the sort of thing you can loose yourself in for hours.
Freelancer is:
• Big.
• Like, mind-bogglingly big.
• Elite in 3D.
• Gripping.
Freelancer is not:
• For people with little spare-time.
• For the impatient.
• Elite in 3D.
• Easy.
Rating: 8.9/10
Bottomline: It's immense, massive, huge, gigantic... and then some.
© PKHunter