Man, thats tough. Independence War-Edge of Chaos was probably the most gritty real feeling space game. Excellent story and graphics, but hard. Star Wars X-Wing Alliance was great but the graphics lacked. Tachyon was probably the most fun and it was cool to play either side. Freelancer 1 & 2 had some of the most awesome battles with the wonderful option of calling in a supply ship when you run low on missles. I like FL, but I like these other games better.

Alliance Fire & Rescue

Tachyon for Storyline

X-Wing VS Tie-Fighter for the Massiveness

StarLancer for the best Dogfighting sim in space.

Mmmmm... Rogue Squadron doesnt count but it was fun for about 5 minutes....

Starflight but I'm old school.

Can't really decide on a favorite... But here's space-sims I LOVE besides FL:

Wing Commander III
Wing Commander IV
Wing Commander Prophecy
Freespace: The Great War
Freespace: Silent Threat (extra campaign I got w/ Freespace)
Freespace 2
Starlancer
X-Wing Alliance
X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter
X-Wing
Tie Fighter

and on the consoles:

Rogue Squadron (N64)
Roque Squadron 2 (GCN)

and I still wanna try Colony Wars and Colony Wars: Vengeance on the PS1.

Wing Commander 1. It's not as completely engrossing as it used to be, but when it used to be, the quality of experience was much greater than anything you could've played recently. So MANY great design decisions from that game have been forgotten, and I'm not even talking about the branching mission structure (although it'd be nice to see that come back, too).

Didn't someone already posted a similar thread on the forum?
Anyways...
Best fun: Freelancer
Best Graphics: Freespace 2
Best physics: Edge of Chaos
Best story: X-Wing Alliance (it's starwars!)
Best chick in the digital galaxy: Juni (I would like to put my 1 in her 0 )

ELITE

Lord Haart
[email protected]
Ranked Elite Since 1985

I'd have to add Privateer to that list, that was the first space kinda game I played (other than X Wing)... I was a bit too young during the original release of Elite, although I borrowed a friends copy of Frontier Elite (with the word copy protected manual), but it kinda sucked on my 386 (a bit like trying to run Doom 3 Alpha on a crappy system).

I'd have to say that my all time favorite space-sim game would be Wing Commander IV. I remember playing into the wee hours of the morning always telling myself "One more cutscene" and then having my mom breath down my neck because the cutscene was 20 minutes long. I mean, it's just such an epic of a game. Man, I wish I could run it on my computer right now...oh well, I'll just have to slap my old computer together again to do that. But, Privateer comes in at a close second. Followed by Wing Commander 2. Cheers.

MMMMMMMm! For depth of play, and lastabilty I would pick "X-Tension" by Egosoft. But for all out action, and better graphics I would pick Starlancer and Freelancer. But I would probably give Starlancer the edge between them both simply because of the Joystick control, and the better Multiplayer options. But overall my final choice would be the "X" Games by egosoft because there the closest games to the famous "ELITE". They have so much more lastabilty in there games. But both sets of games are good! It really depends if your an all out action shoot-em up freak, or a more strategy type of person who requires a bit more from a game. With me being the later type!

Accually I was a bit surprized to see that nobody above has mentioned the Egosoft "X" games as one of there choices. I'm the first! And looking at most peoples choices above it seems most people here prefare the Shoot-em up types of Space Games. I'm a bit surprised at that!

Edited by - Gary Bolton on 30-03-2003 18:48:09

Hehehe... I was just over at my wife's parents' house and guess what I saw sticking out of a box? Star Raider. Remember the Atari Game Machine? I forgot about that one

I did like X-Wing Alliance because there was a patch that let you fly while a friend (via a LAN connection) could man the turrets. It locked up a lot, though.

I never got the chance to play Privateer. I think that was a game I was searching for for a while. When I was in college, there was a guy playing a game that looked like it required you to fly to different places, hire on as a pilot, then shoot folks up (and it displayed their moving pic in the upper left corner of the screen). Is that Privateer?

I really wish I could get in on the creation of the next flight sim game. If I ever win the lottery, that's what I'm going to do with my money.

I loved FreeSpace 1 & 2. More recently, I was quite impressed with Tachyon: The Fringe.

Definitely the IWar series.

All 3 of them featured a 'realistic' flight model based on real physics. Their graphics were amazing and the story lines were totally engrossing. I have to agree with F131 up there when he said that they were hard. In the first IWar when your ship would take damage, it would actually knock your engines off line and you had to wait for the repair teams to get them back up! Imagine yourself in the middle of battle with a couple of Corsairs or something and having your guns go off line and then your engines. You would then be left floating aimlessly in space until the nanobots got your ship running, until then though you'd be left helpless - just spinning out of control. Damn, I remember the frustration! I actually broke a joystick playing that game!!

Heagemonia,... the storyline was a bit poor,... But the graphics in the game are absolutely stunning!!!