pc review: freelancer

[Horab Fibslager]

space trade and battle. it's agenre of game that's gone largely unnoticed despiute having a longevity of over ten years. of course ten years ago the graphics sucked and space was bland. btu no more. freelancer is a digital anvil/microsfot published game. you'll spend most of your time in your space ship, shipping commodity goods for the best rpices between systems or selling your balsters to the highest bidder. unliek most flight/space games, this one uses an innovative mouse flight system, one i feel would be pretty damn good for a real space ship, tho it doesn't quote feel the same as a j-stick. the singel player is stroy driven adn takes you acress abotu 5 dozen systems(i think it has about 50-60 systems altogether), and is told by in game sequences, planet side animations(which would be not unliek a 3rd person halflife movie so to say), and excelent voice acting, including a surprise appearance by a famous sci fi actor(which is quite well done, despit emany terrible celebrity game voice acting in recent years). although there are 4 classes of ships and 5-8 ships in class, though out the game i wanted there to be more ships to give me a reason to keep runnign around looking for stuff, if not for mroe powerful ships, then ones with different looks. mp seem sliek it could be fun, btu can also seem quite lifeless as 32 other palyers are scattered across teh game world(tho quite perilous if your run into player-pirates)

the environments are breathtaking, often nebulae and dust clouds are visible from far away but seem to be apart of the background until you turn your ship and realize they're 3d or fly right into them.

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have to cut this oen short. look for more later.

[Lister]

I remember a game way back in my amiga period called Frontier (Elite II)...
Even though it was in german, I used to play it a lot...

Your description sorta matched this old gem...

Are you really tied to the story, or are you free to go where you wish?
I always like a lot of freedom in these sort of games.

How big is the universe?

And 20-30 kinds of ships are definitly not enough for this sort of game...
Especially when multiplayer is involved there should be ample availability of different ships...
(at the same strength overall, but with subtler differences maybe...  But definitly a wide range of base models and lots of "tuning" possibilities must exist...  )

Is it possible to import ships from the net into the game, like downloading different skins for your unreal d00ds?

[Horab Fibslager]

I remember a game way back in my amiga period called Frontier (Elite II)...
Even though it was in german, I used to play it a lot...

Your description sorta matched this old gem...

Are you really tied to the story, or are you free to go where you wish?
I always like a lot of freedom in these sort of games.

How big is the universe?

And 20-30 kinds of ships are definitly not enough for this sort of game...
Especially when multiplayer is involved there should be ample availability of different ships...
(at the same strength overall, but with subtler differences maybe...  But definitly a wide range of base models and lots of "tuning" possibilities must exist...  )

Is it possible to import ships from the net into the game, like downloading different skins for your unreal d00ds?

not sure if you can simply bypass the story in sp. wouldn't surprise me either way(the story is setup at first so that you're just trying to get soem lso tmoney bacK). there's a small mod available that amkes it so you start the game with a million credits instead of what happens in the story(which is losign a million credits due to nasty invasion by... )

the main thign i left out of the top article there is at every station or planet or battle ship you vist, is a bar. you can tlak to the patrons at the bar, and if the station is theirs (or their organization's) they'll say something like. "blah blah blah. this is our base. blah blah blah..." it makes me get all teery eyed everytime i undock and sink their stations and battle ships, as i howl maniacally at the screen "YOUR BASE IS MIN ENOW FOOL!!!!" well at least blow off the turrets, since unfortunately, stionary adn non story bases are invincible(cept for their turrets).


as for ship models, not too sure, i imagine you'd have to play on a server runnign the mod contained the ship you want to use. at the top level, there are onyl two comparable ships, one built more for speed and manouverability, the other for armor rating.

overall, i give this game a 7 out of 10 apples. great concept and execution, beaitufl to look at, but lacks replayability past 60hours even with multiplayer support(even with multiplayer roleplaying)