User Rating: 8.9 | Freelancer PC
By Rennie2k | Review Date:
It’s been a few years now since the Space Combat genre died. Well it didn't die as such, it just got replaced, as most genres do in the games industry. A few games come out now and again, but it’s a far cry from the X-Wing/Tie Fighter days of old when you could pick ‘em up ten a penny. But when it was announced that Chris Roberts, the brain behind the massively popular Wing Commander series was moving from Origin to Microsoft, things looked bright for the aging series. Unfortunately, one bad film (Wing Commander) and one disappointing game (Starlancer) later, and we were back where we started. The only hope came in the way of his second project with Microsoft, Freelancer, which was started at the same time. Not a lot was known of this title when it was announced, but as the years went on more came to light; an open-ended universe, bounty hunter missions and trading between planets and stations. It seemed that Chris was attempting to try and recreate the success that he had with his space trading hits Privateer and Privateer 2 : The Darkening. After waiting over 6 years, it was finally released to an eagerly awaiting public, but was it worth it? After the installs finished, and thankfully it only comes on 1 CD, the game opens up. After a couple of nice FMV’s from the manufacturer, the main intro starts up in its stunning pre-rendered glory, setting the scene for the story. The game is set 800 years after a bitter conflict, between humans and, would you have it, humans (can’t we ever just get on?), where losers flee earth in a bid to save their necks, and start afresh somewhere else. After settling on a few planets dotted around a system far from the reach of the others, the colonists made their home and started expanding. 800 years later, the refugees have formed factions, further expanded by claming more territories for their respective houses and generally prospered. But as human nature dictates, war and conflict is a certainty, and this is where we start off. The names Trent, Mr Trent. You start off on Planet Manhattan, in the New York system (nice and original), with about 500 credits, no ship and no idea what in earth you’re meant to be doing. The only thing you can do is pop by the local bar to try and find a job. Thankfully, a job is awaiting you, and luck would have it a ship to boot. After a few more cut scenes, and a quick visit to the Ship Parts shop, you’re off on your merry way, into the great unknown. The first thing that you need to get to grips with in Freelancer, is the mouse control. Unlike most Space Combat Sims in the past, Freelancer doesn’t go for the normal approach of using a Joystick to get you to and fro; it forces you to take control using the mouse. It can take a bit of time to get used to it if you haven’t tried it in the past, but after a while it makes a great deal of sense as to why they did it. A lot of the controls for the ship are built into your HUD, such as Cruise Mode (Trebles your speed, but takes your weapons off-line) and Dock (Used to land on planets/stations and enter trade lanes or jump gates). To be honest, the first time I picked it up I had a hell of a time shooting down some ships on my first mission. Too far up, oops, too far down. AARRGGHH!! But like anything in this day and age, practice makes perfect, and after a few more missions, I was shooting ‘em down like flies. The other main difference that stands out from the outset is the lack of a map. When you are in scanning range of another ship, its name appears in your HUD list, and a little arrow around the screen pops up to tell you which way to turn to get it in your forward view. This may seem a pain in some dog fights, but there’s normally so much going on on screen, you ain’t got time to look at the map. So, once you’ve mastered the controls, and got used to the HUD, what is there to do? Well, a heck of a lot to be honest. The first few missions that you have to take on are set. This is just to get you on your feet, and to get the main single player story off the ground. These missions are primarily all based in the initial few Systems that you start in, slowly allowing you to know your way about. Once you complete these jobs you advance a level, allowing you to acquire better ships and more powerful guns. Between the set missions, you can pretty much do anything you like; fly to a station, pop into the local bar and choose a mission, varying from assignations to capturing escape pods. You can fill your cargo hold up with lots of lovely goodies and transport them to some other station or planet to try and sell them for a profit. Or what about dropping in on one of the trade lanes and wait for cargo ships to pass, blow them to bits and tractor in the scattered goods? You can even go mining in an asteroid field if you fancy a change. Whatever you choose to do between missions, the main goal is exploration and acquiring credits. So the games great then? Well, yeah, I love it to bits. But like all games, it does have its down points. After playing other trading games like Privateer and Elite, while playing Freelancer you start to notice little things that should have been added. In Elite, although you had the bounty missions like you do in Freelancer, you don’t get any trade missions. Elite’s job board often offered an opportunity to go to one station, fill your cargo hold up with a certain type of goods, and then transport it back or to somewhere else. Most of the time, this would make a great deal of money for you; multiplying the normal price that the items would be sold at. Also making the route part of the mission, and increasing the number of enemy ships that you meet along the way is missed in Freelancer. Also, in Privateer, if you had a particularly hard mission to do, you could go and hire a Wingman to watch your back, or be hired as one yourself. This always made for a great deal of variation to the jobs, while in Freelancer, apart from the story line missions, its just you vs. the galaxy. One of the main selling points that Microsoft used was that you could join one of the factions; be a Bounty Hunter and rid the galaxy of evil. Buy a huge Transporter and join a merchant guild. Sounds great doesn’t it. Instead, what you have is a Friendship system. Every time you meet a new faction, be it a local military or a crime syndicate, they’re added to your Player Status list. It’s basically a long list of all the factions you’ve met, and how much they like you. If they’re in the red, they will shoot. If your natural (grey), you can dock with their stations, and if you’re on friendly terms (green) you can buy anything that that station or planet has to offer. As you move about the galaxy, you can find it gets increasingly difficult to fly to certain systems, due to the inhabitants. The only way about this is to befriend them. This can be done in two ways. You can either try to bribe them with a fat wad of cash if you lucky enough to find someone to bribe, or start attacking the enemies of said faction. The only problem is that if you want to befriend one faction, it can effect how other factions see you. So if you’re a budding crook, and want to ally yourself with most of the criminal element in the game, you will find all the military that don’t get on with them, will start taking pot shots as you fly through their space. The graphics in Freelancer are stunning. The flight engine runs incredibly smooth, even on a low spec system. The ships are all modelled very well, with some very nice textures, while the space backgrounds are amazing. If you can see a planet, you can fly to it. If you see a debris field, you can pass through it. Just make sure you can tell the difference between debris and mines. The Sounds are very clear and all conversations are all spoken, while the background music is very atmospheric and moody, matching the mystery and sheer size of the universe. Although the single player missions can be completed in a good weekend, the need to make money and explore between the set missions extends the game immensely. But it doesn’t stop there, oh no…. …Did someone say Multiplayer? Although it would have been nice to of been Massively Multiplayer, Freelancer’s multiplayer aspect allows for up to 128 players in one game at one time; depending on settings of the servers. The set missions are taken away, and there is no limit on what you can buy regarding your Player Level, just what you can afford and if your ship will take the upgrade. The main draw back is that you can’t take your beefed up ship to other servers. It has to stay where you started, which can be a shame because it means that if your server isn’t online, you need to start a new game. I found it useful to have at least 2 games on the go at the same time on different servers, keeping me from shouting at the screen and banging my head when my server didn’t show in the list. But hey, you can’t have everything. All in all, Freelancer is a bloody great game, very addictive and hard to put down. You can see where all that time and hard work went. It’s just a shame that there wasn’t that much variety in the off-story missions.

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