Agrees with 666..

yeah, when I started playing, I thought I was watching GI Joe or He-Man.. I think I saw handy Smurf too (you know why they called him "handy" right?"..

HAHA thats a good one 666heretic...Anyways, i never played I-War 2, had I-war 1, but never could find the second one...i checked out at least 3 stores but NOOO, they didnt sell it... was the company that made that game a UK based company? i think its infogrames...

*If you have a cat and a dog in the same house, will that be a problem? Of course not, you might just have solved world hunger*

The cockpit view is definately better than the 3rd person view. It at least makes the game worth playing. I do miss the Joystick though! I get in the middle of a dogfight and suddenly lose track of where my "Pointer" is and have to stop firing and wiggle the mouse a little to see where it's at. They should make the reticle Purple or self-centering, or something, so you can't lose track of it in combat!

I've not played I-War 2 yet, so I can't compare them, but if you want my opinion of what would really rock, of what would really be a dream of a game, it would be mixing something like FreeSpace and FreeLancer.

"Dream Sequence Begins".........

Give me the good ole down home "Simness" and combat style of FreeSpace, but without being "Locked Into" the Military campaign. Give me many worlds and galaxies to explore at my discretion. Give me missions I can pick up from a distress call, but let me decide whether to help or not! Give me more variety in missions, like escort missions, infiltration and spying, testing experimental equiptment. Don't take away the bounty hunting, house cleaning and assasination ones, just add to them. Give me a strong storyline, but let me choose when to follow it and when to just wander off and "Do my own thing" for a while.

Make it so that when I land on a planet, I can actually walk around and talk to the "Equiptment Trader", "Ship Dealer", etc. Let me go into the bar and have a drink and walk around to talk to the other patrons in glorious 3D! Give me a side arm, so that if I've really P**d off some faction and they try to kill me on my way back to my ship I can defend myself!

Make ship speed dependent on it's class, engines, powerplant, etc. and let me buy better components if I can afford them. (All ships were not created equal and should not have the same base speed)!

Don't make me have to "Unlock" different systems by completing missions! And at least throw in a few places where I can pick up missions that would correspond to the different "Playing Styles" I might chose from. Ex: The guys standing around in the "Commodities" area could offer random trading missions. If you got in good with the "Rouges" or "Junker's" etc. you could pick up random "illegal" missions in their bases. That, along with "Military" type missions, would at least cover the basic three ways you could coose to play the game. It'd be OK if theywere just random missions and main plot missions were all in one vein, but throw out some choices! That way, if you want to buy a freighter and try your hand at that for a while, you always have the option of parking it and getting back into your fighter when the mood strikes you!

What else, oh yeah. Let me own more than one ship! And let me rent, buy a hanger somewhere in each system to keep them in. Sort of a "Home Base", but one in each system.

Keep the easter-eggs! Uncharted systems, lost bases, abandonded ships, all good stuff! Maybe even ships you could "lock on to" with a tractor beam and tow back to a base for repairs, then fly yourself!

Open-ended? Definately keep that! I want to keep playing when the main story is done, but we need to stretch that main campaign out just a little more. Say an extra 5 "Main" missions or so.

For this game, I'd even pay for dedicated servers! Let me buy add-on's that give new game content, as long as it advances the main plot a little and adds some new "toys"! "Lancerquest" anybody?!

Well that should about wrap it up. Ahhh.. The game I've been dreaming of! What? What do you mean wake up? I've been dreaming!?! What?!

"Reality intrudes, reminding me that the game I just described doesn't exist"..

Oh well, maybe in FreeLancer 2.

PS- To any MS or DA devs reading this post; feel free to grab any ideas you like!




Edited by - Cleric on 01-03-2003 02:04:09

well maybe dread you didnt catch onto my sarcasim.


which btw its been rated an 11 outta 10 on my sarcasim scale.....


i see nothing cartoonish about it. if u mean the shapes of the ships then wtf. ships shouldnt be areodynamical because its space, which i just heard that there is no air in there, and for the fact that its how many years into teh future?

if ur talking about the system. theres nothing cartoonish about it unless you want EVERY planet looking like earth.



the game isnt cartoonish at all for being made up and all.

-I trade for a living, rouges piss me off, come get me, catch me if you can, i will leave you in the dust, or you'll die trying, take your pick.- #Part of the traders protection pact# @Heretic Inc. We trade because we own.@

I-War2 is good, but the missions are to hard and confussing when u come around middle in the game. Freelancer is better and more open ended I think. From my experience with the demo.

All in all comparing the two. Freelancer is my choise. Its just more fun and u being able to sell ur cargo for money and taking missions randomly or formating with a patrol is more interesting. While in I-War2 u have to swap things for weapons and stuff, which makes it boring after a while. Looking for 2 solarpanels to swap for a heatsink for me, was a "crusade" which in the end got frustrating.

Both games are good, but Freelancer is the better one!

I Rule!!!!!

IWar2 is $10 in a jewel case at Comp USA...probably elsewhere too if you can find it. I picked it up 'cause I'm still trying to work on an article about space sims. I think I'm having some problems with it, though.

First, I only played to the point where you dock on your Grandma's base, but I don't think I can actually see it in the game. And for some reason, when I'm in the vicinity of that base, the starfield completely disappears. Actual game objects I've seen are some ships, a couple planets, and the streaking lines when you go fast.

Also, when I'm on the base, there aren't any graphics for the locations on it! Is that the way it's supposed to be, because frankly I think that sucks! And if what others of you say is true, not being able to dock anywhere else is also incredibly lame. The intro was extremely impressive, and really gave me the sensation of a busy and bustling space environment. I don't seem to get any of that in the game itself, though.



Hehe, titbits.

Edited by - Bhurak Starkiller on 01-03-2003 05:11:20

You can dock to almost anything, but theres no point unless its part of a mission. I-War 2 is really more like a regular space sim with a cool open ended sort of universe as its setting, as opposed to Freelancer, which is more of an adventure game. There is a very good system for pirating built into the game though. There are some mods you can download so you can buy stuff from stations, hire wingmen, etc., but the adventure part of the game still isn't as good as Freelancer, just because it doesn't give you an oppurtunity to explore the system. I like the combat in I-War2 better though.


Edited by - RadioactiveYeti on 01-03-2003 06:11:03

I'm not a fan of space simulator and had played IDwar2. It's a good game if you like space simulator. The graphic is definetly top notch. Dark, dirty and atmospheric. But I'm not the kind of guy that will invest over $50 for a gaming peripheral, especially since I can use the money to buy games of my preferb genre(FPS). And using the keyboard to target in IDwar2 is just tedious. IDwar was my 3rd attempt on simulator since WC3 in mid 90s and another miltary flight sim(also mid-90s).

Freelancer struck me as a surprise. I'd never touch a single article about the game because it's genre is labeled as a Space Simulator. But I was one of the first to downloaded the demo from fileplanet, because GSI rarely held an exclusive demo unless there's something to brag about.

The first time I started up FL, it doesn't really take long to find something to dislike; the clean unrealistic graphic, the often generic NPCs, loads of cutsences, arcadely actions. I uninstalled FL demo after a few minutes of play, and went back to UT2k3 and America's Army.

The first thread on GSF about the demo is pretty negative. Posters expressed their disappointments about the game, lack of joystick support and depth. Thankfully, one poster mentioned "Morrowind in Space". I wondered if I had judge the game too harshly, and I obviously didn't gave it any chance to grew into me. I love open-ended games, and have been playing them since the Uncharted Waters series. So again, I entered the cursed fileplanet queue.

So I loaded up FL again last Sunday. This time, I tried to finished the first campaign mission from Juni. Thought the combat wasn't as bad as I initially thought, and headed to explore the other bases in the system. I found myself to enjoy reading about the different systems and factions in the game. The factions behaviour are easy to understand and as logical as paper, scissor, rock.. The names used for the planets and systems, and the cities looks strangely nostalgic. And they have a brief, but interesting history behind them.
Slowly, I started to appreciate the simplicity of the game. The game arcadely actions although lack depth, is a refreshing change from tactical shooters. It's simple, effective, yet the excitement rarely ceased. The mouse control allow good manuvuers, and it offer the same level of precision as a FPS. Dogfight is a bleeze.
I was disappointed in the static economy myself, but would a dynamic economy really bring about more gameplay and less fraustrations? To manipulate dynamic economy is simple, players will be able to make a profitable trade route redundent, and raise or lower selling and cost price. There's simplily too much loopholes that can be found in dynamic economy, and they are not as realistic as they seem.

CGW Jeff Green had said, the higher your expectations are, the more disappointed you are going to get with the retail. There're bound to be features left out, and major changes made to the game is inevitable. For a game that had been in development for 4-5 years, it's graphic and gameplay is surprisingly good. Remember DaiKatana? At least the guys at Digital Anvil didn't say we are going to be their biachies. O_o

Overall, Freelancer will have something most Spaces sims don't; Mass appeal, as it's easy to pickup, playable without a joystick and a low system requiement. It doesn't have the gameplay depth IDwar2 has, but that's not neccessary a bad thing.

Well said, ChaseDR!



Halcyon : I’ve got one more bit of intelligence to pass along to everyone. We believe Bhurak Starkiller may be in the system.
Angel : Bhurak Starkiller, sir?
Halcyon : He’s Kilrah’s hottest pilot in the Salthi light fighter.

Hehe, titbits.

Its Milo! Famous person alert...

i still dont see how its cartoonish.

-I trade for a living, rouges piss me off, come get me, catch me if you can, i will leave you in the dust, or you'll die trying, take your pick.- #Part of the traders protection pact# @Heretic Inc. We trade because we own.@

I downloaded the I-WAR2 a few months back and loved the intro but became frustrated with the controls and uninstalled the demo. Maybe I-War2 is to hard to play for the normal gamer or even a hardcore gamer. Freelancer is easy to play and that does make it fun. And after all fun is what I am looking for.

Maybe I will download the I-war2 demo and give it another try because I already finished the Freelancer demo. (I did not know I finishd the demo, I though the game was just crashing to the exit screen, you think Microsoft would be smart enough to put "The End: thank you for playing the freelancer demo" instead of just dumping you to the exit screen in the middle of playing.

After I play the I-War2 demo I will post back here.

IWar2 does have a very high learning curve. But it is a great game once you learn how to fly it.

____________________________
If cats always land on thier feet. What would happen if you strap 2 cats back to back and drop them?
Probably destroy space and time.

I've beaten Iwar2 but I've never seen the demo so I dunno whats in it.

BUT

the beginning of Iwar2 is, in my mind, LAME. the first several missions are really just a scripted series of training sessions, which is also why its labeled "ACT 0" of the games 3 Acts. Acts1 and 3 have linear scripted missions, which one can ignore for awhile and go explore or pirating. Act2 is nonlinear and its got like 20+ missions in it that can be done in different orders or ignored till one wants to do them.

anyway my point is, if the beginning of the game is whats in the demo, then I find it hard to believe one is gonna be impressed with the gameplay.

however the game certainly is worth it. the controls are diffirent, not difficult. once one makes the mental adjustment and realizes your ship cannot turn on a dime, it opens up to a whole new style of fighting. I love being able to strafe in 3 dimensions, spin my ship around while inertia carries me forward etc. all sorts of fun stuff.

I've owned Iwar2 for years but only actually got around to playing it these past 2 months (just beat it like 2 weeks ago really). It took so long for me mainly cuz I couldnt get past the beginning of the game; I sucked at combat, it was hard for me to see the point of much that was going on. I can say however, that it is certainly worth it to stick to it and keep playing. at least it was for me. If someone is "unsure" about purchasing Iwar2 my answer would be that its several years old, and therefore cheap so skip a six pack, or buy one less mcdonalds meal and get yourself Iwar2.

and actually, I dont think Freelancer is any more or less cartoonish than a lot of games. I'm not entirely sure in what way the original mention of the word was meant in the thread.

just remember, FL aint Iwar2 and Iwar2 aint FL. two totally different beasts. Throw in the X series too, all these games have many similar design ideas, and completely different execution.

g