I've not played a first-person 'fly the ship' space game in years - since Tie Fighter perhaps - but I fancy a bit of space dogfighty/explory stuff (with a minimum of RTS/fleet gubbins and trading only if it really must be there and NOT Elite!) and so
What should I try?
Freespace 2?
Darkstar One??
Something else entirely?
Creator of Steam Greenlight LITE
Freespace 2, and follow this guide:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index...eeSpace_2_Open
The answer is ALWAYS Freespace 2.
What's that you say? You already played Freespace 2? Then play Freespace 1 again, then play Freespace 2 afterward :p
If you don't mind going back to some of the earliest games, the Wing Commanders are on GoG and are always fun. Just... even more dated than TIE/X-Wing.
That being said, a few more recent alternatives:
Tachyon: The Fringe. Good luck finding it, but it is a fairly solid game with Bruce Campbell.
Evochron series: Basically the X-games with a MUCH bigger focus on fighters and no base building. Fun, but nothing amazing.
And there have been a few KSes that look promising, so this time next year there might be some shinies
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So if I've played neither Freespace - should I start with 1 or will 2 be enough :)
Creator of Steam Greenlight LITE
Get 2 and use the installer - one of the options is Freespace 1 ported into the FS2 engine with all the updates that came with, but with briefings etc all in tact.
The combat is terrible though, it's just sliding around to exploit AI aiming flaws. It's more frustrating and annoying than fun.Originally Posted by gundato
Darkstar One has no exploration - seen one system, seen the whole lot of them.
Freelancer has an outstanding universe which subscribes to "space is pretty" not "space is real", plus the combat is fun. Static universe though. You can fly in 1st person if you like (default is 3rd).
It depends. If you exploit the flaws, it sucks. If you dogfight, it can be somewhat fun. But yeah, it is definitely a "meh" game in most regards. I just know that some people really click with it, and I like the atmosphere flying.
Correction: Get 1 and 2 from GoG then use the installer to play FS1 in FSO :p
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Starlancer. It's a great game with some perfect space fight mechanics. Good luck finding it and getting it to run stably though.
I'd love to second what people are saying about Freespace 2 but unfortunately I haven't gotten around to playing it as I'm not sure how well a 360 controller would work.
Did anyone play Wing Commander Saga... Impressions?
Yeah I'd like to know as well if anyone's successfully used an XBox controller with it.
You'll probably want to turn your mouse sensitivity way up in Windows if you're going to play FS2 with k/m. I played it again briefly while flirting with space sims earlier this year, and the in-game sensitivity slider (or whatever) didn't come close to making a mouse usable.
Did Starlancer use Freelancer's mouse control scheme? And wow, it's in stock/fulfilled by Amazon for a reasonable price.
I just randomly stumbled on some Evochron screenshots a few minutes ago, and thought it looked rather nice... detailed 3d cockpit, nicely detailed capital ships and the ability to go down to the planet surface. Shame if the gameplay doesn't live up to expectations.
No idea. Back when I played it I had an old Sidewinder joystick that made the whole thing a dream to control. Several years back I installed my old copy on XP and played it with a 360 pad. The pad worked fine although you need to supplement it with the keyboard to have enough buttons, but it was nowhere near as good as playing with a 'stick. Game crashed like crazy on XP though, and seeing as the mission can be very long, very tough and have no checkpoints it reached the point of being unplayable for me. Maybe things will be better on Win7 or there's a fix out there by now.
Evochron Mercenary's combat AI was changed in the recent 2.0 expansion so this isn't as much the case anymore. They now have near-perfect to perfect accuracy against targets moving at a constant speed and direction the way players using MDTS do, and they fly and evade much more effectively.
In general the AI are not as unevenly crippled compared to players as they used to be and the difficulty in some hostile areas have been rebalanced around that. (combat has become a LOT more difficult in general, but areas near the starting system had their combat difficulty lowered to smooth the curve)
Actually a lot of things were changed with the recent 2.0 expansion:
http://www.starwraith.com/evochronme.../expansion.htm
Last edited by Professor Paul1290; 23-12-2012 at 06:53 PM.
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/freespace_2
Conveniently 50% off.
I also hear many good things about both of the Independence War* games but not nearly as much as I do about Wing Commander**. I haven't played any of them yet, but I've heard the most good about Privateer.
* ( http://www.gog.com/gamecard/independence_war_deluxe | http://www.gog.com/gamecard/independence_war_2 )
** ( http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_commander_1_2 | http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_com...t_of_the_tiger | http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_com...ice_of_freedom | http://www.gog.com/gamecard/wing_commander_privateer )
Also worth mentioning, in addition to the combat AI improvements and fixes, the 2.0 expansion for Evochron Mercenary added terrain walkers that allow you to leave the ship and walk around on planet surfaces as well as larger planets, improved terrain, new contracts that use terrain walkers, and more goodies on planet surfaces to find.
Nope. In fact, Starlancer had no ship-based mouse support whatsoever - it was keyboard and/or joystick (now also gamepad) with no other choice. Some might argue that this detracted from the experience, but I recall absolutely loving the feel of wrenching around an old volunteer rust-bucket for the first few missions :)
Oh, and I also wholeheartedly recommend Tachyon: The Fringe, if you can somehow find i-OH GOD ITS ON STEAM FOR 66% OFF!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32760/
Last edited by frenz0rz; 23-12-2012 at 08:14 PM.
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Oooh. I might have to give Evochron another shot then. Do we have an AI that can dogfight in atmo yet, or is entering an atmosphere still a death sentence if there is an enemy anywhere?"
Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
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I'm suprised no one has mentioned X-Wing Alliance so far. I had some issues getting it to run on Windows 7 (notably in Hardware mode) but from what I gather other people have it working just fine so (here's a guide) I'd suggest to give it a shot if you like Star Wars and space combat. Make sure to pick up the Darksaber's craft pack for graphical and extra ship goodness.
I did. It's fantastic and well made but extremly frustrating at times (checkpointing). I gave up after a mission put me up against a Kilrathi ACE w. two wingmen after having already made three patrol jumps before (including combat) AND having to watch several unskippable cutscenes throughout out mission.
That said I enjoyed it tremendously up until that moment and if you enjoy a challenge and/or are a more skilled pilot than me (which isn't hard) you'll probably play it till the end.
Last edited by Wolfenswan; 23-12-2012 at 08:43 PM.
Play Arma2:CO with us. (It isn't nearly as difficult as you might think.)
It's okay to not like things.
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