I didn''t like the game. (Review of the full version)

Sun Feb 23, 2003 9:49 pm by jahable

1. The Controls: Space combat with a mouse just isn't fun. It feels more like a cheap arcade space shoot'em up game to me. Combat consists of holding your mouse cursor on the lead cursor of your enemy ship. That is the main concept in any space sim, but using a joystick gives it a different feeling compared to playing chase the icon with a mouse.

2. Slow and boring: All jobs that I took on at the bar consisted of taking 5 minutes to fly to the waypoint, kill all ship, and then returning to an another bar for another job. There were variations over the wording of the mission, but in the end, all missions were all 'kill them all' missions. Commodity trading was equally boring. Watching my ship fly through trade rings and jump holes for 15 minutes is not my idea of fun.

3. Umm Capital ships? The biggest capital ship in the game is roughly the same size as a GTC Deimos, a cruiser in Freespace 2. (for comparison of size) Now if the odd luck that some of you have played FS2, you will realize that the 'battleships' and 'dreadnaughts' in Freelancer is truly puny. If you were looking forward to gigantic ships, (or even bases) you will be dissapointed.
Capital ship combat is weird. To be blunt, there doesn't seem to be real Capital ship vs Capital ship combat. There definately won't be any such combat if you are free lancing, and all capital ship vs capital ship combat in the main story missions seem to be completely scripted. (ie. the capital ships were taking no damage when they were firing their ugly looking green blobs at each other. You had to destroy the capital ships by yourself)

4. Umm Turrets? The turret mounts on your ship acts exactly like the gun mounts. They fire at your mouse cursor, just like all your gun mounts. They do not have any self-tracking ability. There seems to be something completely missing here.

5. Scale of the world: The planets are about 5 kilometers in radius. Planets are 40 kilometers apart from each other. The planets do not circle the star, but they aren't falling into the star. This makes the entire universe seem like a toy world. Flying around these minature planets gives me a complex.

6. Characters: The characters are all very well animated. Voice acting is also good. But the praise ends there. NPCs seem to have the same voice. All dialogue between them is repititive.

7. Weapons: The entire weapons system is flawed. As the game progresses, I can buy more advanced weapons. But these new weapons behave exactly the same. All of the weapon stats rise, but so do the enemy armor and shield stats, so the overall effect is that nothing changes. From start to end of the game, I am firing the same looking lasers and the same looking (looking? The missiles are EXACTLY the same despite their names) missiles doing the same amount of damage to the enemy ship with respect to their shields and armor.

This game has absolutely no replay value past the single player story. How is the story? The plot started off well in the beginning, but ended up completely ridiculous and silly by the end. Frankly, I thought the 12 hours I spent on this game to finish the single player game was rather wasted.
I didn't like the game at all.

Sun Feb 23, 2003 9:52 pm by biocunsumer

for the turrets they are turrets cuase u can aim behind you with em and thats all i know about what u said

Then the sheep said...

Sun Feb 23, 2003 9:57 pm by Bhurak Starkiller

Sounds like you really gave the game a chance.

Realism has rarely been the appeal in any space sim, so if you're going to knock FL for that, might as well say Wing Commander, TIE Fighter, and FreeSpace suck as well.

Mouse is arcadey? Last time I checked, you used joysticks in the arcade, not mice.

I don't see how using the mouse is much different from using a joystick to match up reticle with the 'lead'. Much easier on the wrists and more accurate, as far as I'm concerned.

And the point of upgrading your weapons is to stay competent as you go up against bigger and badder baddies, not so you totally start dominating the universe. Why should you get inherently better technology at the ship dealer than anyone else?

Sun Feb 23, 2003 10:28 pm by WhiteTiger

Well...I have said this before..if Freelancer is better than Privateer I will be very happy. Privateer was in no way perfect. But it had that certain appeal for me and thousands of others..you may just not be one of those kind. Did you ever play Privateer? If not..then you will not know what I am talking about.

Besides...I personally do not pay much attention to those who review a game based on a illegal copy they played. Who knows what it lacks and the bugs and all?

Edited by - WhiteTiger on 23-02-2003 22:29:46

Sun Feb 23, 2003 10:30 pm by Bargib

And you think using a pirated verion of the game makes you the judge of a product of 100's of peoples hard work, which you basicly stole... com'on....

I wouldn't trust your oppinion as far as I could throw it... out...

But you haven't look at the depth of the universe, the unique sites, the weapon systems different opposites... go off and play BattleCruiser!

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

Sun Feb 23, 2003 10:31 pm by RubberEagle

Like Bhurak said, you seem to really entered the game with no prejudices (sarcasm)

Weapons: I've been playing the game for some time, and i've yet to discover 2 different weapons (different names), that look the same.
Turrets: they are Turrets, not AUTO-TURRETS
NPC's seem to have the same voice: granted, there are only about 10 different voices for male/female random characters. But adding a unique voice for the thousands of random characters would be a bit over budget, if you ask me...
Scale of the world: yep, they could have made the Universe bigger, but then it'd take hours to go from one end of a system to the other, and they would seem as boring as the I-War 2 systems.
Capital Ships: well, you're kinda right here, but again, think about the title FREELANCER, and what that means: you're an unaligned Pilot, just by your own. You wouldn't have any place in a fight between capships, and you wouldn't have a chance against a capship alone.
Yep, they could have been bigger, i grant you that one

Slow and boring:
again, FREELANCER. you aren't on a capship that delivers you to the combatzone directly.
That said, if it takes 2 minutes to get to the combat zone, then it is on the other end of the system. 5 minutes would mean that it's 2 systems away, and there are no inter-system random missions..
The Controls, well, i'm not gonna say anything to that.. that's personal preference...
just one question: Where did you get your copy of the game? If you did download it from some warez site, don't go complain, you didn't pay anything for it.

Sun Feb 23, 2003 10:54 pm by jahable

My issue with the mouse control is that it doesn't draw the player into the combat. Swinging that joystick around its axis has a completely different effect on the game experience over moving a mouse a few centimeters on a mouse pad. Of course, this is just my preference.

What I meant regarding the static combat system is that throughout the entire game, my weapons grew in damage at the same rate as the armor of my enemies, with the end result that all combat from start to end feels exactly the same. In a combat space sim, I would have thought that such objectives such as intercepting torpedoes that are heading toward a ship that the player is defending would have been took for granted by now. But there are no bombers in this game. Shooting down bombers or flying a bomber myself and making bombing runs would have added a completely different spice to this game. It could have opened up new job potentials such as taking down battleships for money and such objectives would have added the much needed variety in gameplay.

I don't understand what you meant by unique sites. All planets and bases with their respective bars/dealers seems to be all identical to me if I disregard the change in graphics.

As by the topic of what my copy of the game is, it is the exact copy of the CD that has gone gold.

Sun Feb 23, 2003 11:32 pm by Kahar

The only thing I'm somewhat disappointed with is the variety in the bar missions. I wish there were more types -- take cargo to some other station, or escort these frieghters. Maybe even exploration missions. If anyone played Jumpgate (Real good game in it's own right), you'll know the ideas for variety.

Perhaps FL2, or maybe even a patch or add-on

<@ElectricBrain> TACH IS DEAD! <@Tachyon> am not <@Tachyon> stfu <@ElectricBrain> no u stfu <@Tachyon> no you
<@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> no you <@ElectricBrain> no u <@Tachyon> NO YOU I WIN
-- Our very fine IRC ops --

Sun Feb 23, 2003 11:39 pm by Stinger

Wow jahable, you visited ALL 160+ bases already. I'm impressed. But I don't see much reference to running cargo in you're review. Boring huh, say that when you're running luxery consumer goods to Baden Baden and you have to literally run for your life 3 times on the way from bloodsucking Unionist.

Bases the same? have you visited Dresden yet and seen that HUGE base in the SW corner of the system? Ya, it's look just like the rest of them...not.

Man, there is just no way people could have visited everything in this short of time. Keeping your rep alinged so you could actually land everywhere would takes weeks. I'd love to see the screen shots showing all the jump holes and bases visited. I know what my numbers were in the end (or pretty darn close). I spoke with someone today who'd played all weekend and was going on and on about how he's seen everything already and was asking me if that's all there is. He then asked me a real interesting question after finding out I was a moderator here. He said, I've got 13 jump holes mapped...is that all there is? OMG! When I told him how many I had mapped in the past (unique jump ho's) he just said "whoa.".

To each their own....and so it goes....

Sun Feb 23, 2003 11:44 pm by ckelite

Stinger, just out of curiousity, how many jump holes had you mapped?

The only experience I have with the game is the demo *sniffle*, I've never even seen a jump hole

I'd tell you, but then we'd have to slam this thread into the "spoilers" forum. We don't want to do that...yet

Edited by - Stinger on 23-02-2003 23:58:27

Sun Feb 23, 2003 11:55 pm by Bhurak Starkiller

All the same, just the graphics are changed? What the hell kinda dope are you smoking? The very fact that they've bothered to make unique designs for so many bases is the very thing that most games of this type don't do, and end up being uninteresting because of it. Most of us Privateer junkies have been waiting eons for a new game that had locales with distinctive architecture, and FL goes way beyond the call of duty.

ckelite, I think I've spotted at least two unmapped jump holes in the demo, a couple unknown bases, and two derelict ships with goodies inside.

Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:05 am by Lev Arris

I have found 3 jumpholes in the demo so far. And something strange happened to me in the badlands: I was cruising around there in order to cartograph the nebula and suddenly my ship was enclosed in hull plasma effects (like when you enter the star's corona). I turned my ship around at once, fearing that i would be destroyed if i should continue my path (like with the coronas). Then i tried to get slowly closer to this phenomenon again, but i couldn't find it anymore. Has anyone else experienced something like this in the badlands?

-------------

"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed." - Lt. Cmdr. 'Angel' Devereaux

Edited by - Lev Arris on 24-02-2003 00:05:23

Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:08 am by Stinger

Hehe, yup! Strange anomoly huh?

Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:17 am by Lev Arris

Yeah... gave me the creeps. I will do some research on that later on.

-------------

"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed." - Lt. Cmdr. 'Angel' Devereaux

Mon Feb 24, 2003 12:18 am by agricola

arent there torpedo-bombers in the first mission?

Important Message

You are browsing the archived Lancers Reactor forums. You cannot register or login.
The content may be outdated and links may not be functional.

To get the latest in Freelancer news, mods, modding and downloads, go to
The-Starport