LONG Review (Based on Demo)!

Fri Mar 07, 2003 1:58 am by guptasa1

(PART I)
Hey all!

Well, thought I'd review the demo. I've seen a lot of comments on here, both good and bad, and thought maybe people would be interested in my take.

*WARNING* VERY slight spoilers, though I'm not giving anything significant away. Nothing that I think would mean it needs to be in the Spoiler section, but I wanted to put the obligatory disclaimer up just in case.

First of all, I should say unlike a lot of you, I haven't been waiting for FreeLancer long. In fact, I remember hearing about it several years ago, but then I forgot about it and just recently remembered it when I heard the demo mentioned less than a week ago.

I'm a fan of a lot of game genres, and I've played my fair share of space sims. My resume includes Wing Commander I and II (in the Windows re-release with the expansions), which was sparked by first playing the then new and my all-time favorite space sim...Wing Commander III. This was one of the first video games that made a huge impression on me, and I loved it. At any rate, I've also played Wing Commander IV, Prophecy, and Privateer 2 (have one, but never finished it, and I can't remember if I finished 2 since the plot was getting a bit too weird for my taste). I remember (though not fond of the plot) really enjoying the open-ended nature of P2, and I did hope there would be a new one. I also played most of the original Descent FreeSpace (never finished that one though - gotta play through it completely sometime). I'm also a big fan of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance.

Anyway, I wasn't sure what to expect when FreeLancer came out, so I grabbed the demo. Upon installing it, I was immediately impressed by the graphics in the background of the menu when it first loaded up. You know when you fire up a game and just can feel how polished it is (a fairly rare feeling anymore by the way)? That's what I could feel.

By polish, I mean stability, cleanness of interface, running speed, etc. Most games today aren't optimized...they're buggy, have unfinished features, or have a horrible interface that's complex and not user friendly. None of these are the case with FreeLancer. The interface is clean, easy to use, and has all sorts of little touches that impress (remap a command...then go into the game and put the cursor over the clickable and it'll show up with the new key). I haven't had the game crash on me ONCE, and it's one of the few games I can Alt-Tab from without worry, switching from Windows to the game and back to Windows when need be (if I get instant messaged for example). Not a major factor, but it shows it has solid code. In fact, it's one of the only games that doesn't slow down considerably when other things are running (web browsers for example). You can just tell they got out most of the bugs and really made sure the game was solid, and I haven't gotten that feeling from a game in a while. I haven't gotten the same sense of running speed for a while - maybe having relations to Microsoft allows them to optimize their stuff better - I don't know, but at any case, it runs really fast and well it seems.

First thing I did was go to the controls to configure my joystick. What!? No apparent joystick support? Bummer. At that point I exited, did a search on Google, and found Lancer's Reactor to see if I was missing something. The forums confirmed my fear, but I saw some positive posts about it, so I fired her back up and decided to try it.

Took a little while to get used to, but after you do the control scheme is simple, elegant, and powerful. Folks, this is NOT a space SIM...but it's not really an arcade game either. It's somewhat in between, and it's quite original (at least from everything I've played). What really impresses me is how functional it is! While it would have been interesting if they took a sim approach instead, I can't say they made the wrong choice here - with the immense size of this game, I think a simpler control scheme will really pay off in the long run, and I actually am beginning to really enjoy the 3rd person view. Stuff like turret view is going to come in handy too.

Next comes Graphics. I'll admit I have a pretty beefy machine, but still...most of today's games tax even the best machine, and to get a smooth framerate, it's almost essential to turn down something. I'm blown away with how smooth this game plays with all details on max. The action is smooth and fast, and the graphics are absolutely beautiful. Ship and station models, planets, explosions, nebulas, anomalies, debris fields, and jump effects are all rendered very well. They're beautiful and IMMENSE. Flying near a huge planet is a rush, and the fact that everything's so populated and there's so much activity going around you just makes it feel so real. On-planet scenes and cinematic sequences are also beautiful and very effective - some of the best graphics I've seen.

On to sound. Sound effects, music, and voices are all pretty good. I can't think of anything that stands out as blowing me away, but the sound effects are effective, the voices are well-done if repetitive, and the music doesn't get in the way of what's going on but still sets the mood. What does impress me is the amount of radio chatter and the ability to hear it as you pass nearby ships - I really quite enjoy that. Aside from the single-player mission voices (which seem excellent), the voices and things people say are quite repetitive and reused, but I hear there is more variety in the full version (probably cuts down file size in the demo), and also, honestly with the huge size of the game universe, it probably was one of the best concessions to make to save on development costs and CD space. Having each voice by someone different would've been insanely expensive and difficult to do. I will say some choices the developers made were a little bit curious. Why do the characters always have to tell you basically the same speel? I would have made those with not much to say simply the text boxes with no voice stuff at all and saved the cutscene and voices for more important dialog, but that's just a nitpick.

Edited by - guptasa1 on 07-03-2003 02:00:27

Edited by - guptasa1 on 07-03-2003 14:34:10

Fri Mar 07, 2003 1:59 am by guptasa1

(PART II)
Now to the Universe. Folks, I can't even fathom how big the full game is. I spent HOURS exploring New York system contained in the demo, and even when I thought I had found everything, when I looked in the spoilers forum at the list of things in the demo, realized there were a few I hadn't. I really can't think of a bigger game. Period. In my mind, the huge size is half of the value of the game, so if you're NOT into exploration, this might not be the title for you. I'm looking forward to exploring all the nooks and crannies of the full game (if I ever even make it everywhere...gonna take a long, long time). The sheer number of places you can land is incredible. And so far the story and universe setting seems easy enough to follow for someone new to it, but also quite in depth.

Trading is simple yet fun. It's not hard to see what prices are or where is best to trade a wide variety of things, so those of you liking micromanagement may be disappointed. However, for me, this system is perfect. Again, elegant, simple, and fun.

The same goes for both buying Ships and acquiring/outfitting them. Simple, with a great interface, and the amount of choices you have at your disposable and possible configurations is nearly endless. Ships very from light, nimble fighters with light weaponry to heavy, unresponsive freighters with heavy weapons, and all are completely configurable.

Now on to Flying and Combat. It's fun, quick, and very nicely done. You have a lot of options for getting somewhere, which I like. Use a jump gate for very fast travel, or simply engage the cruise engines to explore openly. I also like you've got an afterburner for combat, and the different views are nice. Also exceptional is the ship's computer (Goto and such) that basically act as an autopilot. It's also great that you can join a wing of friendlies and fight alongside them too. When it comes to combat, aiming and firing is easy, whether guns or missiles, and the action is fast and furious. Though it's more arcade-like than sim-like, I found it refreshing and enjoyable. Being able to tractor cargo and weapons is very sweet and easy to do. Repairs are also easy, and though a bit arcade-like, believable enough. Though it is a bit strange that enemies don't seem capable of the same type of repairs (but I assume it's needed for balance).

The Artificial Intelligence is quite smart. The demo isn't that hard, but I hear it gets much harder, and I'm impressed by how good collission detection and avoidance work in denser places. Enemies and friendlies fly fairly believable, and I'm pretty happy with the AI overall.

The Reputation system is, in a word, awesome. I love how you can anger previous allies and make new friends of enemies if given enough time, and I love the fact that this affects where you can land and where it is safe to fly. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at this, but it needs to be experienced. The one thing I wish you could do is talk to friendlies (or neutrals) and possibly get some more usable information from them. For example, it would be nice to be able to ask for directions to their base or an escort or something along those lines. Would make it all the more believable, and sometimes it's not easy to find things - this would help. Obviously they wouldn't have to agree if they were busy.

The Single Player Game is going to be awesome I can tell. The first mission's a lot of fun, and the story's going to make for a fascinating plot I believe. But this is a game of open-endedness, and I can't really comment too much on the story aspect of it since there's only a taste of it in the demo. The idea of having to "freelance" for a while in order to advance to the next chapter is a very cool one though.

On to the Random Missions. This to me is the biggest flaw in the game, and even it is minor. Simply put, though you can take random missions from different factions, they're all basically the same, and unfortunately (though they get harder), I hear it's the same in the full game (maybe with the addition of destroy bases - I don't know). They mainly consist of going somewhere and blowing up everyone there. Sometimes you have to tractor cargo from the destroyed ships, and I hear sometimes you get to destroy bases. I wish the developers had spent just a few more months on this portion. I don't think it would have been that difficult to add missions such as escorts, cargo runs, protect-the-base missions, reconaissance, maybe even something like "find me this item somewhere and I'll give you big bucks", etc., and it would have really added to the replayability of the game. That said, I've seen a lot of people upset about this, and I understand that completely. At the same time, I don't think it ruins the game at all. I just think it prevents it from being a perfect ten and is the only glaring thing missing in my mind.

The demo doesn't have multiplayer, and right now I don't foresee me using that aspect a lot, so I can't comment on that, but it's cool that it's there. The persistent server thing sounds interesting too.

A few other nitpicks exist. I wish bases were destroyable (though I see where this would cause problems so I understand why it isn't there). On one hand, I like the idea that all ships have constant speed, but on the other hand I wish there were faster and slower ships. I wish you could land on planets yourself, etc. But all of these are VERY minor and subjective.

In summary, this is not a simulation, and this is not an arcade game. It's a game with polish, a great-looking single-player campaign, a TON of exploration potential for lots and lots of happy hours, and lots of ways (ships, weapons, methods from trading to pirating) to play the game with. I wish the random missions were more interesting (perhaps a patch just adding that or else an expansion with that plus another campaign?), but overall I haven't found a game this intriguing for some time. In fact, I haven't bought a game for some time, but I'm buying this one. Overall, I give this one a 9.8 out of 10 (from the demo).

Hope some people found this interesting!
Shaun

Fri Mar 07, 2003 2:23 am by guptasa1

Oh yeah - I forgot a very small part (not that it's not long enough - lol).

The in-flight mapping system is great too - it marks things (most...only a few things it doesn't) as you find them automatically, which makes things MUCH easier to find again. Once you've discovered something once, if you ever want to go back you can, which is a great boon.

Journal and such is great too to catch up on the story and fill in gaps in the cinematics.

Fri Mar 07, 2003 6:34 pm by guptasa1

Perhaps I made this too long - lol. No comments?

Fri Mar 07, 2003 7:08 pm by Ender0910

I read it all

A nice positive review. I agree with just about everything you said

Fri Mar 07, 2003 10:38 pm by JTCurry5

Did you get all this from the demo? I havent read this yet... just looked at the topic

*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*

Fri Mar 07, 2003 10:46 pm by guptasa1

Glad you enjoyed it and someone actually read it.

And in response to the other, yeah - all from some extensive time in the demo.

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