Time to defend my former fav. mag.
yeah i was disapointed with PC Gamer's review as well, and it kind of anoyed me that they brought up the joystick issue again, i would have thought that they would be above it, i guess that shows that even the hallowed editors at PC Gamer can be subject to stupid reasoning as well as us
PC Gamer back in the day, their favorite games were X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. 2+2, they just miss those days. A valid complaint but DA went around it nicely.
The PC Gamer review was biased. 13 hours to beat the singleplayer!? only if you knew what you were doing. "Sameness", That's like saying that the US is boring because everything looks the same. Has the man looked out the window and seen the breathtaking visual or try to balance one faction against another or learn about the individual factions. I can't believe people are so distracted by the voice acting for NPC. Yeah it's bad but so what it's better than nothing and there alot of NPC's. I won't even touch the joystick issue. Obviousely the reviewer wanted to play Freespace instead of Freelancer.
I don't think it's biased. To be biased, you have to have something else to lean towards. See: XBox vs Gamecube. They simply had issues with Freelancer, and see my above comment for the joystick. Plus, when they review a game, they have to review the single player story. And FL's is damned short, you can't really count the fact the universe stays to do whatever for much. However, multiplayer should've factored in. Going from how in 94 they were DROOLING for a game like this to come out someday, I would expect they would've givin it higher. But times and staff change I guess.
mostly agreed with them, other than one minor mistake in the review ( they said you couldn't target specific sub-systems on a ship, lol ) , especially about the random missions. I think a score of 85% would have been a tad more fair, but I think 90% is going a bit overboard. Don't get me wrong, I love FL and play it for an inhuman number of hours a day, but I think there was room for improvement that DA missed
I 100% agree with you EXCEPT: the subsystems. Targetting a turret is not targetting a subsystem. In Freespace you could target engine power to cut their thrust, guns, shield systems, hell, in most space sims you can target just about ANYTHING to disable their ship. Freelancer lacked this. The Ship Scan View was basically useless.
If they only played the SP campaign then they missed like the other 70% of the game. I completed SP in about 15 hours or so with some stops to make sure I had money. Now Ive got only 10 systems 'completely' explored and IM already double that time, 30 hours. I dont see how anyone could get the full jist of this game without playing it for at least 60 hours. Seeing the wrecks, reading the vast amount of text info that they put into the game, and the other extras.
As a game reviewer you don't
have 60 hours to put into ANY game. They had to review what was glaring, and the single player is what most people will get into. While great, it's very short and it's lacking compared to epics like Freespace.
Freelancer was great, but not classic. Does not deserve the 90% range. Mid 80's at best. Unfortunatly, with a game of this scale, to remove all the problems people have with it, would've tacked on mabye even
years to development time. I'm glad it got released and I'm glad it's tons of fun. Remember folks, 80-90% range is hardly a bad review. In fact, it's a glowing one. To get above 90% (as they said years ago in the Duke3D vs Quake deal, where pepole got enraged Quake "only" got 90%), means your game is absolutly incredible and a must buy. Hell, even 50-60% is AVERAGE! Not great but not bad! FL is terrific but a little bit flawed. I'd say they were almost right on the spot.
Sorry for the huge post
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No funny sig. Deal.
Fri Apr 04, 2003 7:59 am 