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Bad Freelancer Review.

This is a free discussion forum on Freelancer. This is the place to discuss Freelancer issues NOT covered by the other boards!

Post Fri Jun 27, 2003 8:50 pm

What I am about to comment is only for those who used to be 'Wing Commander' fans. The WC series is a hit, with almost every game winning an award for being the best game of the year. That was the time when Orion company was still around. Mine, that was a long time ago. I have played privateer, privateer2, WC2, WC3, WC4 and WC armada. Every of these game rocks. Chris Robert was the producers of those games.
So naturally, I was pretty much excited about Freelancer, after years of never playing a space flight game like this (I never played starlancer). This will surely bring back memories of the WC series. But it turn out that Freelancer has not met up even the my slightest expectation of Chris Robert's game.
The graphic of the game is good, but almost all games produced recently has good graphic too. I am generally quite pleased with the graphic.
The problem lies in the gameplay. Seriously speaking, the gameplay is almost the same as that of privateer, a 10 year old game. Not much improvement.
During ths last few missions of SP storyline, things get abit unrealistic. Some of your friendly companion of the mission just seems to be invulnerable, they cannot die. This is not in line with the realism i have seen in WC series game.
QUOTE
"the designers still could have (easily, I'd imagine) leveraged the existing gameplay to do many, many more things beside shoot X ship at X place to kill X person for X faction. Why not have missions where players investigate SOS's and have to save people? Why not have detective missions where players scan cargo of other ships simply to locate a certain criminal? Why not have escort missions? Exploration missions? There was really nothing stopping any of this aside from failed creativity, and it makes me wonder how compelling they thought their randomly generated content was."
Well, I remembered WC3, WC4, privateer has escort mission, saving people mission, investigation mission. I wonder why Freelancer do not have them.
I personally find the gameplay of WC3 and WC4 is great. The storyline is great and the game employed real actors to flim in the storyline, that is very good. It is like having an added bonus of watching a movie, like watching a starwar movie. For those who have played WC3 and WC4 would know what I mean. Freelancer uses 3D animation for the storyline plot, with 3D textured character, buildings ships, etc. That's okay, but abit bland for me.
What keeps me going on in this game is its ability to mod and mulitiplayer server. If without these 2 aspects, i would have stop playing after 3days in SP. (I finished the SP story in 1 day)

Post Fri Jun 27, 2003 9:49 pm

most of your points, Socialjazz, i agree with, apart from the quality of acting in the WC series which was often wooden and occasionally execrable; cheesy romantic melodramas, ridiculous punch-ups and mawkish moralising. The stories always started out well and there was plenty of depth to them , the just as you started to suspend your disbelief, the hamminess level would go up and there's be some god-awful scene and you'd think "that was crap.." I lay before you in evidence:

Blair's love triangle in WC3 which was insulting and embarassing esp. has his one true love had just been executed by the Kilrathi.

Winston Chang's preposterous vendetta.

Blair being a ship's captain in WC4 ok there was some point to this but it was appallingly handled.

Sosa's candle lighting ceremony.. I nearly puked.

there are lots more, I've made my point, BUT..

Worst of all, Blair's confrontation with Tolwyn in the Senate at the end of WC4. This let the whole game down it was so bad, utterly unbelievable and Luke was just going through the motions here and waiting for his pay-cheque. I used to get him to lose so I could see him hang and Tolwyn invaded the Border Worlds.

To be fair, there was more good than bad, Maniac was always entertaining, esp. when Decker floored him. Priceless. And the SFX intros were always good esp. in Prophecy, i thought the Bug Planet-Killer coming through the wormhole was wonderful, esp with the Prophetess' words as backdrop.

I've made many of these points before, but what I will say is that while we all moan about the faults with this game and how boring it is unless you mod it or play MP (all of which are true) you have to understand that expectations for it were built up way too far both by the developers (DA) publishers (MS) and us hopeful fans. The early dev. previews and rumours about what was going to be in it sounded fantastic - turned out they were exactly that. I feel the aims of the game originally were maybe too ambitious, development dragged on as we know, and in the end decisions had to be made to go with what they had and hence the very unfinished "feel" of the game, or scrap it. Obv. CR wasn't very happy with that. MS do go for simpler games, they cater for that sort of market, even AoE is for kids really (I like it though and so do my kids.) Another publisher might well have done things differently, joysticks, radar, tactical commands etc etc. but no-one else was willing to take CR on after his spat with EA/Origin (whether he was right or wrong) so, as I must point out again, without MS cash behind it, there'd probably have been no FL at all. I think CR was fortunate to get decent backing in the circumstances and to have the level of control he did for so long before MS stepped in and said "enough." I've seen the same scenario repeated over and over in s'ware dev. over the years and ultimately he who pays the piper calls the tune.

These things happen in software development, it's a harsh commercial world, space sims haven't done well for some time now either, and MS bottom line is profit. CR walked away from Origin and EA because they wouldn't continue to fund dev. on WC Prophecy, hence why stacks was cut out esp. FMV and the MP element, and there was no true sequel (even though Prophecy was meant to be the start of a new trilogy arc) ok there was Secret Ops but that was a game engine based add-on, not a sequel. Also and I've said this before, Privateer 2 was no sequel to Privateer in any way except the name and some last minute changes to make the ships and trading a bit more WC-style. FL is more like Privateer, remember the publicity shots for Privateer 3 which went no further than that?

As it is mods like Rebalance add a real breath of life into a game which was getting moribund for me, I'd have jacked it by now if not for that, I can see myself playing it still until September 12th (HL2 day)

There'll be no MS financed sequel to this. Starlancer was begging for a sequel, didn't happen, not enough market. It's all up to the modders (I'm not worthy)



..you think you're done with the past; but the past isn't done with you..

Post Fri Jun 27, 2003 11:05 pm

Well, I'm totally new to the genre.
Before, I used to play RTS-games, wich got boring to me.
So I thought of buying something totally new to me...That was Freelancer.
I found the game to be refreshing (obviously after those dull RTS-games) and the RPG kind of exiting.
Also the other aspects, like the upgrading and the leveling system was new to me and therefore was very refreshing...
The best part for me, was (ofcourse) the flying and shooting and all of the tactics involved.
And finally the freedom (hey, like I said, I'm new to the genre) of the going anywhere and do what you like part of the game profided me with many hours of gaming.
Okay, so maybe the game isn't finished and I know that the assortiment of missions is (very) limited and that the economy isn't dynamic and etc, etc, etc...
But for me, it's the best game I've played.
Some time has gone by since my last post on this topic, and I'm just that litle more cinical to admid that it could be so much better...But it's still Freelancer forever for me, and according to the fact, that so much people post/reply to all the topics, I'm not alone out there

See you in MP (perhaps some day, due to crappy connection)

I keep repeating myself.
Myself, myself, myself

Edited by - Nickless on 28-06-2003 00:06:33

(ofcourse, no post without edits )

Edited by - Nickless on 28-06-2003 00:09:23

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