By Kieron Gillen on March 4th, 2010 at 3:15 pm.
I half worry that my 1999 self would be disappointed. We’re living in the last of the great sci-fi-sounding years, and he’d have been hoping I’d be playing some kind of ludicrously intricate immersive-sim derivative. But if he asked, I’d be forced to confess that I’m playing Starcraft and Freespace. He’d have been disappointed. But fuck him. He always was a snot. I’m back with two of the best games of the late 90s. And what interests me is that in two games that were relatively contemporary with one another can walk such radically opposing paths and still end up in the same place…
Starcraft was released at the end of March in 1998. It received rapturous reviews and was immediately embraced by the public. By half way through the next year, they’d shifted 3 million – and a million in Korea alone. Its enormous and continuing success has lead to it being patched ever since, becoming ever more balanced. It’s the E-Sports RTS of choice. Since then, Blizzard have gone on to become arguably the most successful developer in the world, ruling the world. Or, at least, the World of Warcraft.
Freespace 2 was released at the end of September in 1999. It received rapturous reviews and was immediately ignored by the public. The sales figures in the US were reported at less than 30K on release. Its last patch was before the end of the year and creators Volition went on to spend the next five years making middling, at best, games, before their recent creative Renaissance with Saints Row and Red Faction: Guerrilla.
These games couldn’t have more divergent paths. Yet today, I sit down and play two acceptably modern looking games which are fundamentally the same as those I was playing back at the close of the 20th century.
With Freespace 2, it’s came from the actual engine being released as open source. Since then, the Freespace 2 Source Code Project has been updating the game, both graphically and adding functionality. While to play the original game requires the original game, there’s total conversions which can stand alone, such as The Babylon Project. From upgraded polygon models to Pixel Shader 3.0 effects to detailed animation, it’s been stretched in every way. You can simply buy Freespace 2 from Good Old games, run the Source Code Project installer and play simply the finest space-combat game the world has ever seen.
With Starcraft 2, its come from the resources of an enormously profitable company. With Starcraft 2, however, they’re just as curatorial as the Freespace 2 folks. At least from what’s been shown in the Beta, this isn’t about making a new game. This is about making an old game acceptably playable to modern tastes, without fundamentally changing anything. In practice, enormous success has paralysed the chance for radical development in Starcraft 2 as much as utter failure paralysed Freespace. The latter has no money to do anything else. The former makes too much money to think of doing anything else.
In our Word War Three articles, some people have rightly commented that this sounds just like Starcraft. Why aren’t you concentrating on the differences? Because the differences are minor compared to what remains the same. 12 years ago, our most precocious of readers wouldn’t have even be alive when it came out. What we want to do is give a portrait of what it’s like to play… and the Beta shows the game as Starcraft 2, but modern.
Which is good, because Starcraft is totally unplayable to people who’ve played any even vaguely recent RTS. It wasn’t actually one of my games at the time, only having played a handful games. My real encounter was a couple of years back, when I was writing a comic set in the Starcraft universe for Tokyopop and was doing research. Lots of it was interesting – the everyone’s-a-hero structure, the proto-Firefly space-cowboy-setting. It was also totally unplayable. The graphics were a minor thing, but interface issues choked any interest I had in playing. When I group select some marines and click up the stairs, I expect the game to be able to find their way up the stairs. Hell, if I group select a group, I expect to be able to group select whatever I’ve selected instead of the twelve Starcraft limited you to. No wonder micro was so important. It was impossible to do anything else but micro to play it. Unless you had a pressing reason to overcome this – either nostalgia, desire to play the world’s most competitive RTS or whatever – it was fundamentally dead. A decade has rendered it a relic.
Starcraft is a brilliant game. Starcraft 2 is about making sure it remains a brilliant game, attempting those secondary issues don’t stop people being able to get to the absolutely compulsive core. And so the most important changes in Starcraft 2 aren’t unit abilities. They’re the basic user-interface, the player-matchmaking and all that. What’s important about it is making it a game people could actually play.
There’s more irony that the task for the Freespace Open Source project guys is arguably easier – and with obviously infinitely less resources, it has to be. They don’t actually need to update the actual mechanics of the game. Freespace 2 remains at the top of the genre after all these years, because its genre – the realistic space-combat “simulation” – died with its release, with Starlancer a dead-cat’s-bouce a few months later. No-one’s done it better, prefering to chase after Elite’s vapour trails. No-one’s made improvements to interfaces which we miss when we play. While everyone talks about the greatness of Starcraft’s campaign, it’s far easier to sink into the serious-sci-fi universe that Volition crafted. The moment when a Shivan Dreadnought emerges from the nebulae mists remain – thanks to the hard graphical work of the Open Source chaps – as stirring as ever. And the energy beams… well, I’m going to save this for a Freespace 2 post down the line. It’s a hell of a game.
In short, there’s no reason not to play Freespace 2 now. It’s as good as ever.
And, in short, if you can get in, there’s no reason not to play the Starcraft 2 beta now. It’s as good as ever.
And that two games could end up in oddly similar positions through such radically different routes was enough to make me stop, think, and write this. And realise that… well, the poles show exactly why I’m interested in the PC. And one of the many reasons why this site exists.
04/03/2010 at 15:23 MrBRAD! says:
I have never played Freespace. Should I be ashamed of myself?
04/03/2010 at 15:57 Mr_Day says:
“No-one’s made improvements to interfaces which we miss when we play.”
That is a statement that made me go away and think about these games. I thought about the now (fr space combat) ubiquitous energy/shield/laser system, and wondered what else there had been.
The only interface change that I wish were in other space combat games would be the I War contact list, and the use of the hat switch to navigate it – but the wish dies out pretty quickly when I play other games, simply because none of them really need it. I War missions were at their best a touch like adventure games, and keeping track of a lot of contacts was damn near essential – but for everything else, the most complicated it gets is trying to keep bombers away from mission critical craft, and Freespace 2 already had an interface for that.
04/03/2010 at 15:58 Mr_Day says:
Er, that shouldn’t have been a reply. Sorry about that.
04/03/2010 at 16:54 Zyrxil says:
Yes, yes you should. Freespace 2 was and is the pinnacle of the Space ‘Sim’ genre. Not only for the action, but its storytelling, writing, mission pacing, and voice acting.
04/03/2010 at 18:42 Blackberries says:
Listen to Zyrxil. It’s still an absolutely sublime experience. Thrilling, engaging and with very few duff beats. Go, play now!
04/03/2010 at 21:02 DMJ says:
@MrBRAD!: It’s not too late for you to redeem yourself from the shame you know you should be feeling.
Buy it from GoG. Install the source code project packages. Then spread the word, brother.
04/03/2010 at 15:24 Mr_Day says:
I am a huge space combat junkie – it was space combat games that got me into PC gaming in the first place. I often find myself replaying the Freespace, X Wing and Privateer games.
I noticed that both Freespace 2 and the original I War have got missions that have objectives similar to that of the No Russian mission in Modern Warfare 2. The Freespace one was particularly memorable, because I ended up replaying it to see what would happen if I had killed the civilians to try and stay in the NTF good books. Hint – you are court martialled afterwards. And with good reason.
04/03/2010 at 15:37 Wednesday says:
Babylon 5 mod?
Sold.
Time to make some aliens get the hell out of my galaxy.
04/03/2010 at 15:39 Rohit says:
Fuck, I need to play Freespace 1 and 2 again.
04/03/2010 at 18:43 Blackberries says:
Yeah this has got me hankering for some space-whizzing. It’s been well over a year since I last blasted some Shivans.
04/03/2010 at 15:39 litrock says:
I’m kind of new to PC gaming, so I’ve never played Freespace 2. Maybe I should give it a shot. People seem to talk about it a lot.
04/03/2010 at 15:44 mrmud says:
Its one of the best games ever made.
Easily the best in the genre and with the open source project it still looks remarkably good.
04/03/2010 at 16:15 Arathain says:
Mechanics are what makes a space-sim- the feel of turning, the punchiness of weapons and the relationships between the different ship classes. Freespace 2 nails the mechanics nicely.
What takes it from a great game to one of the all time greats is what it lays on top of those mechanics. The setting is great, the art design is great, heck even many of the voice-over work is great. The scripting is some of the best in gaming; not the written script, but the way missions can turn on sudden, shocking events. The atmosphere is simply unmatched. The highlights (the first mission, the secret ops missions and oh lord the nebula) are the sorts of levels you’re still talking about a decade or more later.
So yes, you should give it a go.
04/03/2010 at 18:47 Blackberries says:
litrock: FreeSpace 2 sits steadfastly atop my ‘favourite games’ list. Even while other titles tussle it out, vying hard for my affections, nothing ever topples it.
And fear not that it’s over a decade old: as Kieron and other commenters should have made clear, it’s still eminently playable today. It handles brilliantly, the atmosphere is pitch-perfect.. just a joy.
04/03/2010 at 21:24 Matt W says:
MINOR SPOILERS
@Arathain one bit in particular that more games should take note of is the way that the script treats you in a realistic manner. Best example is in “The Romans Blunder”, where you’re given an interdiction objective that’s clearly impossible given where you arrive in the mission. Your wingmates bitch to Command about this, and Command basically says “shut up and stop asking questions”.
And that’s the last you hear about it – despite the fact that if you’d caught your target the war would probably have been stopped – because it’s a need-to-know matter and you don’t need to know. That little mystery hangs over the entire campaign, and it really hammers home the conceit that you’re a fighter pilot, not king of the universe.
END SPOILERS
Also, there are some absolutely stunning fan campaigns available for FS2 that occasionally surpass the original campaign in many ways. Derelict in particular is a great place to start – forty-odd missions of fully-voiced goodness.
04/03/2010 at 15:42 mrmud says:
DIVE, DIVE, DIVE, HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOTS!
04/03/2010 at 16:03 Optimaximal says:
“We gotta wait fifteen minutes to change our shorts”
04/03/2010 at 18:48 Blackberries says:
Ah, those words still evoke a grin and something of a shiver. Thank you.
04/03/2010 at 22:55 Brian Rubin says:
One of the best gaming moments ever. Few gaming moments have hit me as hard as that one, and few likely ever will.
Freespace 2 is still my favorite game ever. Totally love it.
04/03/2010 at 15:43 john says:
I have a feeling that a AAA space sim released now, such as freespace 3 or a new x-wing would be an absolute smash hit if done well, but publishers seem to think that they “know” exactly what the public wants, by which they seem to mean the public wants exactly what they tell them too, and they’ve decided that noone will ever buy a space combat sim again. It’s sad really, because it’s hard to imagine how amazing a space sim could be made with today’s technology; you could have battles with hundreds of ships, sectional damage modelling, particle based explosions, vastly better ai
04/03/2010 at 17:51 Andy_Panthro says:
Of course a couple of years ago people said that adventure gaming was dead.
Then we had Telltale’s Sam and Max, Monkey Island et al. as well as other new adventure games.
Don’t give up hope!
After all, Elite 5 has to be finished sooner or later… doesn’t it?
05/03/2010 at 13:12 bill says:
I don’t know. I was talking about this with some other guys with respect to a new version of Interstate 76 being needed.
While I’d love one, I get the feeling that the whole sim interface has disappeared from gaming, and I’m not sure how modern gamers would react to it. Everything is much more immediate and “user friendly” these days.. can you imagine many modern gamers fiddling with a dozen targetting buttons, or different energy configurations?
But if you take those out then you essentially end up with something like Starfighter or Interstate82, which just doesn’t have the same feel.
There’s also the Joystick issue. Playing these games on gamepads totally kills the feel – there’s no feedback, and no feeling of mass and weight. But joysticks require hard surfaces, which means desks…. and we all know that games aren’t suited to the intimate surroundings of a desk these days…
04/03/2010 at 15:43 Ffitz says:
I GoG’ed Freespace last year but never really got in to it. Couldn’t shake the “it’s not X-Wing or Tie Fighter” feeling.
Perhaps I’ll give it another chance. After all, there’s a real games drought at the moment. What am I to play?
Ignores half-completed Portal re-run, half-completed Blood Bowl campaign, and the ticking clock counting down to the BF:BC2 unlock
04/03/2010 at 18:14 terry says:
Same story here – I tried the Freespace revamp a year ago and having not played it before was a big hurdle, because I wasn’t immediately charmed by how clunky and unintuitive it seemed. If there’s a tutorial or documentation that isn’t a hundred pages long now I’ll give it a shot.
Oh and Valve updated Portal today – perhaps another re-run is in order ;-)
04/03/2010 at 19:14 Colin says:
From a story perspective I prefer Freespace over Freespace 2 (the pacing is better), but FS2 is the high water mark in terms of space dogfight gameplay and having a sexy sexy engine. I haven’t tried this out but it is possible to play FS1 missions using the FS2/FSO engine using this mod.
06/03/2010 at 16:09 Adam Whitehead says:
I loved the X-WING and TIE FIGHTER games. Thought they were all great games and doubted anything would come along that was better. Thoroughly enjoyed FREESPACE 1 but wasn’t blown away by it.
FS2 was really something else, on a completely different level to FS1 (which is basically THE HOBBIT to FS2′s LORD OF THE RINGS) and trumped the rest of the genre. It also killed it stone dead by perfecting the genre. There was nowhere else for it to go. Bad marketing meant poor sales, but I also think the genre had kind of had its day, as every other space combat game from around the same time also died (including X-WING ALLIANCE, STARLANCER, the Bruce Campbell-voiced TACHYON: BEYOND THE FRINGE etc).
It’s hard to put my finger on what makes FS2 one of the greatest single games ever made. The atmosphere, music and intensity of combat had something to do with it, but I think mostly it was the ‘moments’. Like the mission into Shivan space, or chasing the rogue Admiral’s command ship, or trying to blow one of the jump points with a bomb against the clock. The final 10 missions or so are just jam-packed with cool set-pieces, jaw-dropping plot twists and unexpected reversals of fate. The game is pretty pitiless and ruthless with character lives as well. No-one and nothing is safe, and the final mission is one of the best missions of any game I’ve ever played, simply because it goes ballistically insane at the end with little forewarning.
Interestingly, whilst FS2 killed the space combat genre, it was released almost simultaneously with the gorgeous HOMEWORLD, which created the space-based RTS genre which has gone on to greater success more recently. FS3 and HOMEWORLD 3 being announced for the near future would be fantastic.
04/03/2010 at 15:44 Mr Pink says:
Great piece. This is indeed why the PC is great.
04/03/2010 at 16:03 Glove says:
Sentiments mirrored here – a thoroughly good read.
04/03/2010 at 16:24 Tweakd says:
+1 from me.
04/03/2010 at 15:47 Hides-His-Eyes says:
That Freespace screenshot when you have to take out the guns on that huge ship is as far as i ever got in that game. :s
04/03/2010 at 15:52 Nexxus Nine says:
Well at least we have Dwarf Fortress covering the ludicrously intricate part… using the UI of a game from 1980 or so. Imagine if your 1999 self knew about that!
I remember playing the Freespace 2 demo when the game came out. I really enjoyed it, but I never got around to buying the game. Reading this makes me want to give it another shot.
04/03/2010 at 15:53 LegendaryTeeth says:
I want Freespace 3 :’(
I would pay good money for Volition to go make it!
04/03/2010 at 15:55 sigma83 says:
‘What were you doing out here, Roemig?’ is a quote my brother and I use, frequently, to question each other’s questionable activities.
04/03/2010 at 16:02 Smokingkipper says:
Thank you KG, for introducing me to FS2, and to GoG; what a genually nice website :o) They have my money.
04/03/2010 at 16:03 Jad says:
…interface issues choked any interest I had in playing. When I group select some marines and click up the stairs, I expect the game to be able to find their way up the stairs. Hell, if I group select a group, I expect to be able to group select whatever I’ve selected instead of the twelve Starcraft limited you to.
Good lord yes. My first real play through of Starcraft 1 was two years ago, and I couldn’t get past the Zerg campaign. The interface was maddening. And you don’t even have to have played any recent RTSes to know that — Starcraft’s interface was outdated when it was released. I’m glad that Starcraft 2 is finally updating that stuff.
For Freespace 2: is it playable with mouse and keyboard, or do you need a joystick? If the latter, would an Xbox 360 controller be an acceptable compromise? I have no interest in buying a joystick.
04/03/2010 at 16:08 Optimaximal says:
It’s certainly playable – was how I rolled when addicted to it back in 2000.
It uses the number pad by default so there’s a good deal of estate for your hands unless you have baby fingers. No clustering around the cursor keys/WASD here, although there can be a little bit of keyboard spaghetti during busy moments as you dance around warzones, picking targets, ordering wingmen and monitoring escort/important targets. Thank god for auto-speed matching.
Not sure if the SCP has updated the controls to support dual analogues as the original release wasn’t too friendly on multiple axis if I remember correctly.
04/03/2010 at 16:20 mrmud says:
A joystick certainly helps. I dont know If I would want to try playing it without one.
My old joystick was trash so I bought a new Saitek x52 flightstick partly because I wanted to replay FS2.
04/03/2010 at 16:57 Vandelay says:
I tried replaying Freespace 2 a couple of years ago, but had give up quite quickly. It was just unplayable on a pad. Have to admit, I didn’t try using the keyboard, but I imagined that playing it with a joystick is the only way to truly experience the game.
I do have very fond memories of it though.
26/04/2010 at 06:22 Fumarole says:
I’m currently playing Freespace 2 using a dual analog pad. Both sticks work fine. I use one for pitch/yaw and the other for throttle/roll.
04/03/2010 at 16:06 Down Rodeo says:
I bought Freespace 2 from GoG after being reminded what it was by this very site! Funnily enough both Starcraft and Freespace were games I played back then, when I was… ooh, just under 10, maybe slightly younger. I was never very good at Starcraft actually. I used the cheats all the time. And Freespace I had borrowed from a friend so I eventually said “goodbye” but instantly purchased it when given the opportunity.
I had forgotten about the various limitations of Starcraft, like the number of units you could select… when I played it, all that time ago, it was so immersive for me. I’ve actually brought it to Uni with me to show a flatmate who is interested in RTS (very speedy RTS) but I can see it not really being that great, now. Perhaps I shouldn’t try it.
04/03/2010 at 16:10 Optimaximal says:
Looking at the Sathanas in the picture makes me realise that BioWare must surely have riffed off the Shivan design when running the Reapers from Mass Effect through the concept stage.
04/03/2010 at 16:12 JamesOf83 says:
Ahh, Freespace 2. Easily the best space shooter ever. I loved that at the start of the game you realise the huge, unstoppable ship from the first game was actually just the Shivan’s scout ship!
A real shame they never made a third to finish off the storyline. I still ponder why the Shivans blew up that sun.
@Mr_Day, glad there are people out there that remember I-War. I have great memories of that, the only space game I can think of that has Newtonian physics and not just a ‘slide’ key ala Starlancer. I loved that you could speed up, disengage the ship’s auto correction thrusters and strafe at high speed past enemy ships, keeping your weapons tracked on them. I also loved how the ship felt versatile. One mission you’re doing the standard shooty thing, then you’re remotely piloting a fighter and the next using the physics to get cargo containers through a hopper. I-War 2 was good fun but I thought the story was lacking and the pirating side of it felt tacked on.
Anyway, come on Voilition get going and surprise us with Freespace 3 :)
04/03/2010 at 17:42 Arathain says:
I War also had one of the best visual interfaces I can remember. The HUD displayed an astonishing amount of information in an intuitive and easy to read format. In particular, the wireframe trails each ship left across your screen allowed you to read the flow of a fight with ease.
04/03/2010 at 16:15 Alexej says:
I played Freespace 2 about 4 years ago, got a boxed copy from ebay for 25 euros.
This friggin’ game gave me some intense moments and the feeling of being an ant running around with a whole family of elephants on dope. Watching the Colossus being sliced in two by those damned Sathanas-class capital ships was a gaming moment I cannot forget.
But i never finished it. I got stuck at one of the latest missions. I will replay it from the beginning when i get a decent joystick.
And yes, i would pay good money too at day one if Volition ever releases FS3.
04/03/2010 at 16:15 Elusiv3Pastry says:
At last, Freespace 2 gets some much-deserved publicity. I played FS1 and 2 over and over again when they first came out and I still play them today when I’m in the mood for a sci fi combat sim. I still think to myself “goddamn this is a good game!” Better than even X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and I played those to death, too.
It’s quite sad that Volition never made it big thanks to FS2. The story and mechanics of the engine are flawless, and the graphics are still gorgeous. The music, sound, and voice acting are still inspiring. I wonder perhaps the reason why there are no more space sims is because companies think people don’t want to shell out money for a joystick (except for true flight sim junkies, but they think that crowd aren’t interested in sci fi), so they make space combat games to be controlled with a mouse, which sucks. Freelancer bored me to death because of it and it was met with tepid reviews. But then people are using Xbox controllers on their PCs now, so why should this still be a problem?
Perhaps the sci fi genre might rise again with the Mechwarrior reboot.
04/03/2010 at 16:32 Corporate Dog says:
Well, I SUPPOSE you could use an Xbox controller to play a space combat sim. But then, that makes you the guy at the Japanese restaurant who signals premature defeat by reaching for the fork instead of the chopsticks.
04/03/2010 at 16:54 Elusiv3Pastry says:
Hahah, nice! Yes, I agree that playing any kind of flight sim without a true joystick is a travesty, but some people don’t know any better :P
04/03/2010 at 16:55 Jimmy says:
Hmm. I have just ordered a wireless xbox 360 controller for platform gaming and retro gaming on the PC, and I suspect it should be just fine for simple flight/space sims. Looking in shops, I can only find ridiculous-looking sticks, for the 12-15 yrs bracket (who don’t care for them), and not many simple and plain ones. I think using an Xbox controller for a PC is kind of cool…
04/03/2010 at 17:13 Elusiv3Pastry says:
If you’re looking for a good joystick allow me to present the holy grail:
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Sidewinder-Precision-Pro-Joystick/dp/B00000JDFT
Microsoft’s Sidewinder Pro has to be the most perfect piece of hardware ever. Solid enough to kill someone with and still remain functional, comfortable ergonomic grip, and enough buttons in all the right places to ensure you don’t need to keep one hand on the keyboard.
04/03/2010 at 18:51 Blackberries says:
Fah! You needn’t have a joystick to play FreeSpace, nor a mouse. Give me a numberpad any day <3.
04/03/2010 at 22:28 Sucram says:
@Elusiv3Pastry I had a Microsoft joystick and loved it. Used to play though Freespace + various mods every year, but the joystick used gameport and I’ve never replaced it.
Freespace on a pad just doesn’t map very well.
04/03/2010 at 16:17 HoldTight says:
Freespace 2 is a game I find myself replaying every few years. It’s just fantastic, and the work done by the community to spruce it up and whatnot is just amazing. Everyone should play this! There’s kids today who won’t even know what space combat is ffs!
04/03/2010 at 16:26 ChampionHyena says:
I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense.
04/03/2010 at 18:02 FhnuZoag says:
If command needs your opinion they’ll promote you to admiral. Now shut up and focus.
04/03/2010 at 16:28 Corporate Dog says:
‘Spose it’s time to whip out the joystick, and enjoy some private time with Freespace 2 again.
Perhaps it will fill the void left by S.W.O.R.D’s cancellation. Perhaps.
04/03/2010 at 16:32 Dominic White says:
Bah. Starcraft? Freespace? New-fangled fineries for you young whippersnappers!
There’s a major TC/level-pack released for Doom every few weeks. The engine becomes more powerful, and the multiplayer netcode gets better and better. The community is still trucking along, too.
In fact, here’s something new and relevant AND Doom-related!
Arcadia Gardens from Bioshock 2, demade into a Doom 2 map by the original designer:
http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=68
And an associated article, on why Doom was great, and still continues to be unique/great to this day:
http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74
And on a ‘general fantastic gameplay note’, check out Legacy of Suffering. Doom 3 spliced with the Doom movie, then demade into an atmospheric but high-action campaign:
http://www.brdoom.com/mtm/los/
The classics never die.
04/03/2010 at 21:53 Neosubu says:
@ Dominic White
That youtube video on Legacy of Suffering sounds like Christian Bale in American Psycho haha.
05/03/2010 at 05:13 Thants says:
Marathon was better and is still better! And it’s also still being updated: Boom!
04/03/2010 at 16:38 somnolentsurfer says:
That ‘ruling the world’ gag is terrible. I thought you were better than that.
04/03/2010 at 16:42 Pew says:
I want a new Freespace and X-Wing/TIE-Fighter game. So. Much.
But the last time I checked, Laurence Holland of TIE Fighter fame no longer worked at Lucasarts (might be wrong though). Then again, LucasArts did tease us about a new Star Wars space fighting game a while back?
The main reason why I can’t see it happening properly any time soon, is because every dev who attempts to make a profit off of it will make it console friendly as well. I wouldn’t mind a new Level 5 Rogue Squadron, but that’s not the same. I need 101 hotkeys for energy transfer, missile loadouts and matching speed dammit!
I vaguely remember Darkstar One and another 2004-2007 space title being pretty decent attempts, if either totally unbalanced or boring halfway through the game.
04/03/2010 at 16:42 The Hammer says:
“And that two games could end up in oddly similar positions through such radically different routes was enough to make me stop, think, and write this. And realise that… well, the poles show exactly why I’m interested in the PC. And one of the many reasons why this site exists.”
Oh man. This stirred me.
Great to hear that SC2 is a lot more accessible to get into. When it comes out, Blizzard might get even -more- of my money. Grrr.
04/03/2010 at 16:45 Ravenger says:
I want a new I-War game. But then I’m incredibly biased, as I worked on the originals.
04/03/2010 at 18:03 Arathain says:
Since I’m sure you don’t get this very often, I’d like to say thank you to you and your former colleagues for the I War games. They were different, brave and clever, and had some really nice pieces of design. Also they were, you know, really good games.
04/03/2010 at 18:21 pkt-zer0 says:
I-War 2 is still my favourite space sim, and the reason I’m not going to ditch WinXP anytime soon. And yes, a sequel would be awesome.
04/03/2010 at 17:06 BigJonno says:
“I half worry that my 1999 self would be disappointed. We’re living in the last of the great sci-fi-sounding years, and he’d have been hoping I’d be playing some kind of ludicrously intricate immersive-sim derivative.”
That very same thought has been niggling at the back of my mind for the last two or three years. It really hit home while I was playing Uncharted 2; “This is really, really good, but is this it?” There have been some amazing games released in the last couple of years, but they seem so unambitious, so conceivable. How many recent, triple-A releases can you name that couldn’t be quickly explained to your decade-younger self with references to existing games, talk of improved 3D graphics and copious use of the word “cinematic?”
The last time I can remember being genuinely awed by a game in a “this is going to change my world” manner was when I first played Ultima Online. Before that it was my first go on a Playstation (my most advanced gaming machine prior to that was an Amiga 500+.) Maybe I’m just getting old and jaded, but I remember having my tiny little mind blown every time I picked up a new gaming magazine.
04/03/2010 at 17:18 simonkaye says:
Actually, here’s something interesting: my sister was caught in a gaming timewarp. She finished playing Baldur’s Gate 2 (a game we both loved) and didn’t see or hear anything about what was happening with RPGs (or gaming in general) for the intervening years. But her boyfriend now has a PS3 and she ended up playing Dragon Age on it.
She was completely blown away by Dragon Age, man. She didn’t have any of the context or sense of slow progression that has allowed us to be relatively critical of that game. She totally banged Alistair, which makes my own chummy relationship with him strangely strained these days. My sister actually blushes when she talks about that game.
So – are we nowhere? Truth is, very few of us are in a position to judge. Freespace may still be at the absolute Pinnacle (perhaps the GVD Pinnacle?) of the space sim, but I think that my sister’s reaction speaks volumes about how far things are coming along.
04/03/2010 at 17:56 Clovis says:
Not a popular title, but if my younger, Sim City 2000 playing self was told about Dwarf Fortress my head would have exploded. That’s my reaction to it now too though.
04/03/2010 at 18:56 BigJonno says:
@Simonkaye
That’s an interesting perspective and probably a pretty unique one, I can’t imagine many people who completed BG2 aren’t in the business of following CRPG developments. However I’m still pretty sure that if, on the completion of BG2, I was asked what I thought Bioware would be doing in a decade, it would be something a lot bigger, deeper and more intricate than DA
04/03/2010 at 17:10 simonkaye says:
Perhaps a comparison should be made between Starcraft and the original Conflict: (or ‘Descent:’, if you live in the land of the free) Freespace.
Freespace 2 has a more interesting plot, more colourful and better graphics, and beam weapons. But otherwise it isn’t that much of an improvement on Freespace 1. Crucially, the technical side of the game – how it performs and the ultimate gaming experience – is sublime in the original as well, and didn’t get much ‘fixing’. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what a contemporary Space Sim would do differently. Volition managed to get it right on the first try.
Strategy games, on the other hand, really have come a long way since the late 90s. They’re infinitely more sophisticated and accessible beasts now. Starcraft set some kind of a standard and captured a lot of imagination – but enormous Games Workshop intellectual property theft will do that for you.
I still play Freespace 2 – with or without its mod updates – to this day. Starcraft I haven’t really looked at twice since I first finished its main campaigns and add-ons.
04/03/2010 at 17:21 Tim James says:
FYI to everyone that the first game is all right, but FS2 is where they really push things into the next galaxy.
04/03/2010 at 19:00 Blackberries says:
The first game is still rock-solid and the second-best space sim ever made. The mechanics, the actual business of flying were changed very little for the sequel, and the first game is its match in atmosphere (telling of the story, voice acting, etc).
It’s a testament to Volition that they both managed to make such an incredible game the first time, but then go and make it even better next time around, jetting FS2 into the stratosphere of gaming perfection.
04/03/2010 at 17:31 Selendor says:
In related news, Freespace / Wing Commander inspired MMO Black Prophecy has announced a publisher today and revealed that it will be based on the free to play model. Closed Beta starts in April.
04/03/2010 at 17:32 Brant says:
Moments like that one are exactly why Freespace 2 will forever have a place in my heart. The game was full of them, and you were always thinking “Oh crap, what next?!”
04/03/2010 at 17:35 Brant says:
Bah, that was supposed to be in response to this comment.
04/03/2010 at 17:48 The E says:
It should be noted that, while the scp.indiegames.us site is valid, it is also not updated regularly. The Hard Light Productions forums (which scp.indiegames.us links to) are much more up to date.
04/03/2010 at 18:13 Flimgoblin says:
How does Freespace 2 compare to (say) X-3? though I guess X-3 is an elite-chaser with all that trading and station building…
Being an avid amiga gamer, then a MUDder on sparc5s at uni, I wasn’t a PC gamer till 2000 (apart from starcraft in the uni PC labs with some friends for couuntless hours a day for a good few months…) so missed Freespace, shall have to get it off of GoG and carve out some free time to play it (on to the pile ye go!).
04/03/2010 at 19:27 Arathain says:
I don’t think it really does at all, other than being in space and having lasers. FS2 is a linear series of scripted missions, in which you’re a fighter pilot. It’s all about intense, heavily pyrotechnic dogfights. Not the non-linear, choose your profession Elite style of thing at all. That’s more about making your own place in a huge galaxy with lots of choices.
04/03/2010 at 18:46 AlwaysAsked says:
Is Freespace 2 playable with Keyboard/Mouse? I remember Tie Fighter was serviceable via lifting up the mouse and re-dragging it a lot.
I know ideally it should be played with a flightstick, but my wallet’s not interested in owning one.
04/03/2010 at 19:03 Blackberries says:
It is my most beloved game of all time and I can’t remember the last time I played it with a joystick; it plays very well using just a keyboard, for me anyway. The numberpad controls the orientation of the ship, while the other keys do things like adjust speed, control weapons, give orders to squadmates, etc.
However I can’t tell you how much of that is down to me having played it this way since very early on and just having got used to it.
04/03/2010 at 19:31 Arathain says:
Gah. I remember trying to dogfight in TIE Fighter using a mouse. Horrible. Doable, but horrible, and very tiring (liftdragliftdragliftdrag…). It was handy for picking off turrets on capital ships though. Nothing beats mouse accuracy.
I think (I’m not 100% sure) that Freespace uses a system copied by Freelancer later, where the mouse controls a little cursor on the HUD, and the ship turns to follow the cursor. That would make it perfectly playable with a mouse. There really is nothing like yanking on a stick and punching the thumb trigger for afterburn of course.
04/03/2010 at 18:48 airtekh says:
Question for you space-sim veterans.
The only space sim I’ve played is Freelancer (which I thoroughly enjoyed).
How does FS2 compare to FL? And is it necessary to have a joystick to play it? (FL played fine with mouse + keyboard, which is one of the reasons I bought it).
04/03/2010 at 19:33 Arathain says:
I hated Freelancers combat, because this spoiled it for me. You’ll love it.
04/03/2010 at 18:50 Lambchops says:
i’ll add my voice do those declaring love for Freespace 2.
ti was one of those games which you played and wondered why it’s interface wasn’t in every space sim ever. It just worked fantastically well.
The only thing Freespace 2 was beaten on by another space sim was that Starlancer’s other pilots had more personality than the ones in Freespace 2 but apart from that Freespace 2 trumps everything.
If there was ever a sequel I owuld gladly dust off my joystick (which I only bought 4 years ago or so anyway for the express purpose of playing Starlancer and Freespace 2, both of which I’d bought off ebay).
Freespace 2 also has the honour of being the last PC game I bought which game in a massive, chunky cardboard box. Those were the days!
04/03/2010 at 19:04 Blackberries says:
One of the versions I owned (I managed to snap the disc in half, prompting a desperate scouring of ebay) also came with a little cardboard mock-up of a keyboard, annotated to show the controls and with a flap allowing you to stand it beside you as you played. Wonderful.
04/03/2010 at 19:08 dan. says:
Man, I keep getting Freespace and Freelancer confused.
Freelancer was quite the enjoyable romp, and the mouse control was pretty nifty too.
04/03/2010 at 19:28 w says:
Hey, hey, don’t forget X3: Reunion and X3: Terran Conflict. Also awesome space-sim games with a new dimension to them. I loved FS2 and I love X3.
BUT! Obviously no sound in gaming history will ever be as awesome as the phaser sound from Freespace 2. Oh the joy.
wshhhhhhh………. BZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapppp
04/03/2010 at 19:30 Walsh says:
I’d give a kidney for a modern space sim. Especially if it incorporated, everything awesome about I-War 1/2, Freespace 2 fighters, and had the feel of Battlestar Galactica’s fighter combat, swooping sliding newtonian awesomeness.
Also I’d give a kidney for a for a Silent Hunter style starship command game.
So who wants two kidneys…
05/03/2010 at 12:15 Blackberries says:
Battlestar Galacticarian combat dynamics in a space-sim would be ace.
04/03/2010 at 19:33 Walsh says:
Whatever happened to that russian space sim game that someone posted about awhile ago? IIRC they had posted a movie of it.
04/03/2010 at 19:43 Iain says:
@Flimgoblin:
If you compare X3 to Freespace 2, X3 is on the rather clinical side. X3 is riffing off from Elite far more than Freespace or X-Wing/TIE Fighter.
X3 is staggeringly beautiful (for a game set in the bleakness of space), but I found it a lot less accessible than the Freespace games, but then I stuck hundreds of hours into TIE Fighter and X-Wing back in the day. Also, the ship-to-ship combat in X3 isn’t nearly so well done. Freespace 2 has much tighter mission design and a really nicely paced story, too.
Freespace 2 was the game I bought a £90 Saitek Cyborg 3D Force Feedback joystick for. I never regretted it. The rumble effect when you kick on the afterburners still gives me a pleasurable shiver.
04/03/2010 at 19:48 Iain says:
Also: Freespace 2 has one of the best intro movies to a game, ever. It simultaneously makes me feel triumphant, hopeful and want to cry at the same time. A masterful piece of emotional string-pulling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khIWdolT9xY
04/03/2010 at 21:19 Matt W says:
Oh gods SO MUCH THIS. The FS2 intro literally* makes me shiver every time I watch it. It’s sublime.
* Correct usage
04/03/2010 at 19:54 EyeMessiah says:
Mayday, mayday. This is Kappa 3 of the 107th Ravens GTD Aquitane. Command, do you copy???
04/03/2010 at 19:58 Choca says:
Freespace 2 > pretty much anything.
04/03/2010 at 20:38 Lightbulb says:
No, you should download it plug in the joystick (go and buy one if you don’t own one) and enjoy one of the best games ever made.
04/03/2010 at 20:46 lafinass says:
Thanks for writing this up. I had somehow missed out on all this open source goodness being applied to one of my favorite games of all time.
04/03/2010 at 21:00 PHeMoX says:
You’re forgetting the X games, X2 and X3 both have been excellent at what they did. Freespace wasn’t the only game out there that knew how to do a space sim correctly. :)
As for Starcraft 2, I fear it will indeed add nothing substantially, but there’s no question about how that’s actually NOT such a good thing at all.
04/03/2010 at 21:39 Bahumat says:
This, a thousand times this. An epic clusterfuck of a mission, in the best possible space fighter pilot way.
04/03/2010 at 21:43 amanda says:
Always shocked at your typos. Shame on you!
04/03/2010 at 21:50 halfthought says:
Thats the reason why SC2 is so radically different from SC1. The changes in movement completely change the dynamic of the multiplayer. Its also why I rage about people who rage its the same thing, because on a multiplayer level, it is a complete sequel. Going from SC1 to SC2 is like going from Counter Strike to Modern Warfare 1 (and hopefully, hopefully not 2), from a strategic and gameplay dynamic standpoint.
And as much as I love SC1, and play it today, their are people who basically think SC2 should be SC1 with a 1024×1280 resolution version of SC1. 4:3 and all. These people are crazy. These forums are filled with them.
Gosugamer.net
TeamLiquid.net
But then again, if your getting payed in sums of 60-70k for playing a video game a year living abroad in Korea, I suppose their may be biases :p.
05/03/2010 at 02:42 Jayt says:
I think our definitions of radically differ
06/03/2010 at 01:35 Internet guy says:
Totally radical, dude!
04/03/2010 at 22:37 Carra says:
I replayed the Starcraft campaign a year ago and I have to stay, it still ruled. The graphics were still nice actually, being created near the height of 2D graphics. And noone is better at telling a story in an RTS than Blizzard. Sure the maximum 12 units is annoying as hell but you quickly get over it.
And once you do get over it you’ll see the most balanced and unique RTS that has been created. Just to give an example, I just finished Red Alert 3. And there’s obvious duplicate units at each sides. All sides get engineers. And the dog is a carbon copy of the bear. You won’t find such nonsense in SC!
Overall still well worth playing.
As for Freespace 2. Never got to play it but I got a copy bought from a gog.com deal. I’ll have to try out the opensource project :)
05/03/2010 at 18:38 sinister agent says:
I agree that going back to Starcraft and playing it is still fun, but I also find it easy to imagine that if I were to play it now for the first time, I would get pretty annoyed with it, and be less willing to forgive its clunky controls because I wouldn’t already know how great it became later on, and hadn’t yet come to be so fond of its silly, brilliant characters.
05/03/2010 at 00:04 Kerotan says:
I’m hurt by the slander, as a proud member of TeamLiquid, that all we want is a clone of SC1.
These people miss the point entirely, I don’t still play Starcraft because I like the idea of being only able select 12 units, or the appeal of its graphical fidelity, I only still play because every time I lose, it feels like I still have so much to learn.
So now in a similar manner to the guy above me, I’m going to tar brush a large group of people.
“All the rest of the internet wants is an RTS that is pretty, easy and uninspired, which leads to to cookie cutter victories competitively”
To many people are in love with the transient, the core value which should exist at the bottom of any RTS game that the developer intends to be played in multi player is, simple to learn, hard to master.
06/03/2010 at 05:17 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I hope you’re not trying to compare Starcraft to Go.
06/03/2010 at 16:42 Josh says:
Why not compare it to go? There is no reason that a game made with beads has to be better and more strategically complex than one created from softwear. But the advantage go has is subtlety; tactics don’t follow simple rps schemes (not you, the game) but are more conditional and harder to work out, at least for me. Starcraft doesn’t have that because of intentional simplicity and differentiated form of the interactions, but then chess works the same way! If micro-ing can be made as subtle or more subtle than chess, and the interface smoothed so the two of you can micro away in a clever way in multiple battlefields at once, with those offensives influencing each other indirectly, while interspersing all that with forward thinking production/tech decisions, then starcraft could conceivably be more complex to master than chess!
05/03/2010 at 00:10 Waltorious says:
I agree that space sims not designed for joysticks just don’t feel right, but I worry that the need for a joystick is mostly what keeps developers from making space sims these days, because they think consumers won’t buy sticks just to play their game. I’m afraid that if Freespace 3 is ever made, it will be dumbed-down control-wise for this reason, and will subsequently disappoint. Sigh.
As far as advice for people looking for an inexpensive but quality stick, I’d suggest looking at Saitek. They make some REALLY nice (and expensive) sticks but also some more budget ones that work perfectly well. I bought a Cyborg Evo a few years ago for the express purpose of playing Freespace 2 for pretty cheap ($30 – $40 I think) and I love it… it’s totally customizable, from the grip size to the angles of the buttons, can be set for right- or left-handed, and you can even map buttons to keyboard keys if the controls aren’t reconfigurable in-game. Everything I want without expensive extras like force-feedback.
On the other end, Saitek also make two-hand systems with enough programmable buttons that you don’t need a keyboard AT ALL. You need to pay a bunch for that, but the hardcore sim players often go for such things.
05/03/2010 at 00:15 sebmojo says:
To answer some of the questions about controls:
You =can=play FS2 with a mouse – I finished it that way. You might have to fiddle around with the sensitivity a bit though.
It doesn’t have the Freelancer style mouse control – you move your mouse and your ship moves. So dogfights can be wearing on your mouse pad.
God I love Freespace. Those wonderful, almost self-parodic monologues by Bosch.. the delirious, sublime music… . And the honking great lasers, mustn’t forget them.
“As Humanity emerged from it’s neolithic infancy, they believed their voyage across the sea of stars woke the dragon that slept beneath the waves, that the Shivans were birthed from the flux of subspace, and their destruction was the revenge of an angry cosmos”
05/03/2010 at 11:51 Blackberries says:
Definitely agree with the music love. I still get moments where the soaring battle music leaps into my head. Like right now.
Da-dadada-daa, da-dadada-daa, da-dadada-daa dum dum do-do-do-dodo-do…
05/03/2010 at 01:19 Phinor says:
Freespace 2 might be the first epic game I ever played (I started gaming late 80s). I haven’t played it in years because I’m waiting for a decent joystick at a fair price plus maybe another game or two to use the joystick with. Any suggestions for joystick or another game worth playing with joystick? I dislike arcade flight games very much, but I don’t really like hardcore simulations either. Which is probably why Freespace 2 worked so very well in the first place, it’s definitely between arcade and simulation.
05/03/2010 at 01:38 chr says:
Ah Freespace 2! I come here not to praise it but to bury it. If it had never been made how many more space sims would there be? How many interesting games died because Freespace 2 crashed and burned?
The game was buggy on release, in so far that you couldn’t even get into the game. The plot was a rehash of the first one and didn’t offer anything new. The game was boring. It’s an insult that it is held up as the ‘greatest space sim’.
05/03/2010 at 01:46 Zombat says:
Ah the Shivan Dreadnought…
When i first played that level I was in just the right position so that my ship was a hair’s length away from skimming across the Dread’s hull, definatly one of my most memorable “Ohshitohshit!!” moments in gaming.
Coincidently another one of those moments was a few missions later
“DIVE DIVE DIVE!! HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT!!”
05/03/2010 at 02:30 Fergus says:
The more Freespace 2 love in this world the better, nothing’s quite given me the tingles like it did.
05/03/2010 at 02:41 JuJuCam says:
I recently bought FS2 due to rumblings here and elsewhere that it was an underrated gem but I couldn’t play past the first mission because it lacked the one thing I basically require of any piloting sim – a cockpit view with an actual cockpit. I just can’t believe I’m flying inside a ship if I can’t see the damn ship. It’s like an FPS that doesn’t have a gun in view.
I know there’s probably a mod for it, but I’ll be damned if I can be bothered digging through the forums and wikis and whatever else to find it.
05/03/2010 at 13:15 aldo_14 says:
Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILmX1QR05V8
Been done for a while. I think it’s moved on significantly in the 3+ years since I did it.
05/03/2010 at 02:57 Boldoran says:
Freespace was the first 3D game I got to play with my secondhand Vodoo2 graphics card. I really liked the atmosphere. I also remember vividly the last mission in FS2 because I desperatly tried to activate my jumpdrive only to realize that it would’t work and that I was too far away from the wormhole to make it out of the system. So I resolved to kill as many of the Shivans as possible and enjoy the lightshow of the exploding sun.
Also I am probably going to be stoned for this but I have to admit I played it with a mouse. Had no problems with that and in fact would be angry if any potential heir to the spacesim throne required a joystick to play.
05/03/2010 at 03:27 Skg says:
For me, Freespace 2 is just one of those magical games. Since release, I’ve maybe only played it 2 or 3 times, but every time I was floored by just how amazing a game it was. The storytelling was brilliant (especially compare it to modern games like…well, the Supreme Commander 2 demo comes to mind, ye gods), the graphics were, and still are (even without the SCP) jaw droopingly beautiful – it’s testament to just what a dedicated and resourceful team can do, even on limited resources. It’s a fine example of the ability to make a beautiful, stunning game without all the mordern do-dads and ho-has.
Come to think of it, I really should play it more; it’s the game I’ve played through more times than any bar one – the superlative HOMM3 – another beautiful game, a playable game, a masterful game even 11 years on.
05/03/2010 at 03:59 Seth says:
Huh? The game was bug-free.
05/03/2010 at 04:00 luckystriker says:
Freespace 2 and Starcraft. My 2 favorite games of all time. I urge all of you to revisit FS2 with the open-source project graphic updates. It’s awesome.
05/03/2010 at 04:12 EBass says:
Freespace 2 is without doubt one of the best games of all time. If you put a gun to my head I’d probably say its my favorite game of all time. Its just………… flawless, in every way. One of the games that makes you glad to your heart to be a true died in the wool PC gamer, i.e one of the games we don’t really get nowerdays.
05/03/2010 at 11:44 Blackberries says:
Agreed. A gem, and probably my favourite game of all time too.
05/03/2010 at 05:10 Svenska says:
Can you play The Babylon Project on a Mac? I was looking around and it didn’t look like it, but I wanted to make sure.
I’m preparing to be sad.
05/03/2010 at 06:30 The E says:
Sure you can, but it takes a bit of manual digging. The TBP team, for whatever reason, did not provide a package of their data bundled in a Mac-friendly format, so you’re going to have to extract the files from the Windows installer (preferably from the DVD version), add the Mac-compatible SCP executables, the Zathras mod to fix some issues the TBP team didn’t fix, and enjoy the game. For further questions and installation guides, visit http://hard-light.net/forums/
05/03/2010 at 06:37 zarathud says:
Great retrospective. Let’s be clear that the lackluster commercial performance of FreeSpace 2 rests solely with rather than the gaming community.
FreeSpace 2 and StarCraft both had usable mission editors upon release. With simple IF/THEN and logic coding, FreeSpace missions could be programmed used to tell a story as well as provide some entertaining and fun space battles. I never had much success with the StarCraft editor, but others were able to quickly produce missions to keep us happy. Those missions were part of the reason why FreeSpace 2 was the only game that my friends would play at LAN Parties other than Starcraft back then. I wonder if my missions from the FS2 Space Sim of the Year edition are still around somewhere.
05/03/2010 at 06:39 zarathud says:
with Interplay, that is
05/03/2010 at 08:02 bill says:
Nice comparison.
I tried playing starcraft for the first time last year, after getting it cheap from some 2nd hand store. I agree that it was totally unplayable.
I never played it back in the day, and i’ve never been a big RTS player, but i’ve played a few… starting with warcraft 2 when i was young.
My young self probably could have played it, my current self got fed up after about the 4th mission and gave up. I wanted to see where the story went, but the game was fiddly, repetitive and hard work.
My problem with Freespace 2 is different… I don’t have a PC joystick. Nowhere in tokyo seems to sell PC joysticks. Very few people these days have them.
I bought it on GOG and tried playing it with a gamepad… but the feeling just isn’t the same… it makes it feel lightweight and like Jedi Starfighter or something.
I wish my joystick wasn’t in the UK…
05/03/2010 at 09:53 fuggles says:
Allegedly from the patch notes you can play FS2 Open in co-op. Not yet tried it though. Is there any chance an RPS member can chase down the writer and find out where the story was going? I always had a theory and I’d love to know how far off I was.
05/03/2010 at 11:47 Blackberries says:
It’s not the same thing, but I’m fairly certain that you can obtain the FreeSpace design documents somewhere on the internets – they’re filled with writing and concept art about the story, scripts for cutscenes never included ,etc. Possibly only for the first game – it’s been a while since I saw them.
To be fair the story of FreeSpace was never especially original. It was all in the telling (boy, was it told fantastically).
05/03/2010 at 13:18 aldo_14 says:
The Volition Freespace (1) website has a reference bible intended for authors (I guess fanfic more than serious ones), but it’s essentially an expansion of the first games story. The developers claimed not to have a story mapped out when they were asked, but they (understandably) buggered off and stopped talking to the Freespace community after the source code was released.
05/03/2010 at 23:43 Blackberries says:
Ah yes, it’s the reference bible I was thinking of, not design docs.
05/03/2010 at 12:00 Kouvero says:
This reminded me of the acclaimed best space combat simulator with Newtonian physics, I-War 2: Edge of Chaos.
05/03/2010 at 16:42 Nesetalis says:
oh boy oh boy freespace 2.. That game was one of the big inspirations for many ideas ive had over the years…
There was nothing so satisfying as watching the colossus and shivan dreadnaught duke it out.. huge beams scorching space…
my favorite moment was when i misunderstood a mission and thought I was supposed to take out the dreadnaught (not flee) and i kept wailing on this invincibile dreadnaught.. killing each and every turret.. even took out each beam weapon.. :P that was a blast.
i played with a joystick.. but in this day and age any game i make would have full joystick configuration and full mouse configuration.. Freelancer did the mouse best I think.. freespace did the joystick best.
having a cockpit is less necessary to me than some people, but I was always under the impression that you were doing everything from within a hud environment, not looking out some window… windows in spaceships = dumb… especially space ships meant for combat.
05/03/2010 at 18:34 sinister agent says:
I only even heard of Freespace by reading about it on gog. I bought it last year, and it was indeed tremendous fun, and a genre that I’ve sorely missed playing – the last game I can even think of that was actually about proper space combat dogfighting was Wing Commander Prophecy. Wing Commander was a bloody good series on the whole, but there’s been practically nothing else that I know about.
I-War was promising, but I never got to play it for long.
The undercover missions in particular were a terrific idea, and I’ve always loved games that don’t give you an immediate ‘game over’ if you screw up a mission, but instead, take the plot somewhere else, even if it’s only on a slight detour. Even the original Wing Commander did that, back in 1622, and it arguably meant that screwing up sometimes actually enhanced the game.
The only criticism I have of Freespace 2 is that you never have a name, are are always simply “alpha one” or whatever it was. I understand the trade-off between the player feeling like it’s really them in the cockpit and having to play as an unlikeable cretin, but it’s a shame that couldn’t be a bit less dissatisfying.
Definitely one of the best games on GOG.
05/03/2010 at 21:30 futureshock says:
You can play FreeSpace 1 in FSOpen2 ! You can play Wing Commander, Battlestar Galactica and B5. And you can do it on a MAC. a NT-Box or on Linux. You can play via keyboard (only), gamepad, joystick or trackpoint.
In addition: Flying coop with 7 or 11 friends on the same LAn or via Internet is IMO the best part.
05/03/2010 at 22:51 mpk says:
Bought Freespace 2 after reading this article, started downloading the Freespace open thingy too… and nine hours later it’s still downloading. Dude, wtf?
06/03/2010 at 07:04 Jakkar says:
<3
06/03/2010 at 15:56 Adam Whitehead says:
FREESPACE 2 was not buggy on release at all. It was pretty demanding hardware-wise, so your PC was probably not up to the job (mine barely was). The plot was substantially different.
The serious SF sim has basically had its day. FS2 didn’t do well, X-WING ALLIANCE didn’t do well and STARLANCER didn’t do well, despite all three being good games. The genre was basically over and people didn’t want to spend £50 on a decent joystick for maybe five games that demanded it. A shame, but at least it went out with a bang.
06/03/2010 at 16:24 Laneford says:
Damn you RPS. I now want to play FS2 despite having no time to do so.
Has anyone played this with a (blasphemy alert) 360 Pad? Would it be up to the job? Being able to play it without buying a joystick would be preferable.
06/03/2010 at 18:34 GameOverMan says:
Freespace 2 is epic, I’ve never stopped playing it, in one form or another, original game, SCP, new campaigns or standalone mods.
The game can be controlled with a mouse without having to drag it all the time, I use PPJoy to emulate a virtual joystick with the PPJoy Mouse tool, you can map buttons and adjust the sensitivity for the X, Y and Z axes.
06/03/2010 at 20:54 FS2Fan says:
This is why i use a combination of keyboard and mouse for dogfights. The mouse is simply used to give that fine touch accuracy to kill a fast moving shivan or laser down the bombs from the nahemas.
I’ll never stop playing FS2, maybe until someone can come up with a great game like that.
08/03/2010 at 04:04 john says:
Wow, the open freespace 2 installer is easily one of the worst installers I’ve used. Aside from breaking tons of UI conventions, it didn’t even install correctly because download servers were down. I tried again a few days later and they’re STILL down. And maybe I’m just stupid, but I had to use the (confusing) guide on their wiki just to know how to use the installer.
Yeah, I’m probably a tremendous idiot. But is it worth going through all that trouble? I played an unmodded freespace 1 a while ago and didn’t think it looked particularly ugly.
09/03/2010 at 15:48 Gerg says:
I bought freespace 2 off gog.com a couple months ago. Downloaded the open source project, and fired it up.
I haven’t gobbled up a game that fast in a long time. There’s really nothing else like it.
I’m still waiting for a space game of any kind to give the awesome sense of destruction when a capital goes critical and sends a shockwave out, destroying things around it.
Also, DIVE DIVE DIVE! HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT!
Best mission ever, I did not make it the first time…
27/04/2010 at 08:27 Det. Bullock says:
I didn’t have such problemes with the installer (are you using Turey’s one?), perhaps you tried it when they were doing maintenance on the server.
I had problems the first time too, the second time I registered in the Hard-light forum and asked about the problems I was encountering.
Anyway try it, it loooks faboulous.
10/05/2010 at 15:03 kree says:
There is nothing better and more epic in the space sim genre than FreeSpace. With FS2_Open, it easily busts even modern game in terms of eyecandy, yet doesnt require latest GF card. And the user made mods and campaigns are the endless resource of fun. For me, best game EVAR!
P.S. I play it with a mouse, and it works great. Just increase sensitivity, the default is a bit too low. There is nothing better than a mouse for precise aim during dogfights and shooting down anti-capitalship bombs.
01/06/2010 at 16:42 Martin says:
It is important to note that Freespace 2 was remarkable for the storyline and plot, as well as the graphics/sound/interface. After playing both FS1 and FS2, IMO this was the most notable difference–instead of having numerous missions which were, for the most part, straightforward, FS2 involves a player through in-game dialogue as well as important events, etc… Also, FS2:Open is incredibly remarkable, especially for an open-source project.
25/07/2010 at 08:40 kratchovil says:
I seem to be a little late, but if anyone reads this, I’ve got to recommend the “Just Another Day” Freespace mods (there are three of them). They transform the game into the greatest comedy I’ve ever seen as far as games are concerned, and the missions are fun as hell. That’s probably because JAD just provides to me what I really want: Tight mega-battles, humour and a good storyline.
06/08/2010 at 04:19 Ack says:
Played FS2 with a Logitech Trackman, which was essentially the speed of a joystick with the accuracy of a mouse. Nothing else came close.
Now I have Trackman + G13. Can’t wait to play it once again! :>
16/09/2010 at 08:07 Free Bingo Games says:
Awesome game liked it very much.
11/10/2011 at 11:30 romansiii says:
I have to say, this is the best PC game ever and it’s a dam shame that Freespace 3 was never made. That moment of joy as you destroyed the Ravana was gold.