FreeSpace 2 remains the pinnacle of the space sim genre.
User Rating: 9.9 | Freespace 2 Gold PC
It's only very rarely that a game like FreeSpace 2 comes out--a game so where everything clicks so well that it's hard to imagine a better game. This 3-disc behemoth (more than 1.2 gigs all up) is the best space sim game ever, the zenith of a sadly dying breed. FreeSpace 2 is, simply put, a truly awesome game that is still the game to beat in the space sim genre six years later. It is also a sad illustration of how lack of publicity can doom not only an otherwise great game, but an entire genre of games. FreeSpace 2 is the sequel to the 1998 space sim Descent: FreeSpace: The Great War, and is set more than thirty years later, in the year 2367. You are a fighter pilot with the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance. The Terrans (humans) and Vasudans have solidified the tentative alliance they formed in the first game to fight the xenocidal Shivans, and are slowly picking up the pieces from the loss of both the loss of both races' homeworlds to the Shivans. In the game, you will fight the Neo-Terran Front, a Terran-supremacist separatist group, and the Shivans, who have returned to finish the GTVA off. The plot is deep and complex, and a pseudo-alliance between the NTF and the Shivans is slowly revealed as the game progresses, culminating in the Shivans abducting NTF leader Admiral Aken Bosch and taking him away as a GTVA strike force attempts to arrest Bosch and capture his ship. FreeSpace 2's gameplay is brilliant. The framerates are smooth, the physics are refined if completely unrealistic, and the balance spot-on. The Shivans, while technologically superior to the other forces and difficult to defeat, never have an unfair advantage, and the allied forces likewise never have it too easy for them, except in the ridiculously easy first mission (protect the heavily armed Vasudan freighters against outdated NTF rustbucket fighters). The game has more than 90 ships and a dazzling array of weapons, and every ship or weapons has its own strengths, weaknesses, and uses. You'll invariably develop a preference for a certain ship, be it the nimble GVF Serapis or the gun-heavy GTF Erinyes. The game's missions present a huge variety of scenarios, so you'll have to get the hang of almost all the tools at your disposal--using the same loadout every time is a recipe for death. The missions are all fun, except for a couple of "proving grounds" missions where you test a largely useless stealth fighter and a "TAG missile" that makes nearby capships shoot at the whatever it hits. Particularly memorable are the second set of SOC spy missions, a pair of missions that put you behind Shivan lines. The SOC missions are difficult, harrowing, and sometimes terrifying. If you're not man enough to play them, you can always decline the missions and continue with the main story. Multiplayer is now only available on LAN, as the Parallax Online network that supported the internet play is dead. The FreeSpace 2 Source Code project (www.3dap.com/hlp/fsscp) has created a new network for its FS2_Open freshening of FreeSpace 2, available free from their website. Be warned that the engine and redone content are a hefty download. The graphics were top-notch in 1999 and still look good. Your tiny fighter is dwarfed by monstrous capital ships that can be several miles long. Unlike capships in other sims, FS2's caps have a bite to match their bark, packing monstrous beam cannons that can instantly disintegrate your ship. If you don't take advantage of your fighter escort during a bombing run on a capship, you WILL die. The weapon effects are beautiful, especially the huge beams thrown around by the capital ships. The scenes of capital ships shredding each other with their main beams are so dramatic that you'll gape in awe of the ships' terrible power. The sounds are uniformly excellent, especially the sounds of the beam cannons, which sound every bit as destructive as they are. The voice acting is of high quality, using some actors you may recognize from movies and TV. Especially good are Admiral Bosch's monologues, which paint him as a believable, very human nemesis who really believes what he's doing is right. The music is also great, especially the tracks with choir vocals in them. The music sets the mood of each mission well and never grows stale. Alas, FreeSpace 2 is not easy to find nowadays. The game had virtually zero publicity, and didn't sell well because hardly anyone heard about it. FreeSpace 2 barely broke even, and probably doomed the space sim genre to obscurity. In recent years, it has developed a thriving fanbase and a project to revamp the game's source code to current-day standards. The "Collector's Edition" rerelease costs about 30 dollars, but original copies of the game are highly sought after and sell for upwards of $150, three times the game's original price. FreeSpace 2 remains the pinnacle of the space sim genre. Although it never received the publicity and success it deserved, it has belatedly become a classic. If you like the idea of flying a starfighter like in Star Wars, you must get this game. FreeSpace 2 just plain rocks. What's Hot: Brilliant graphics, gameplay, sounds everything What's Not: Multiplayer system is now dead, can be hard to find Also Try: Descent: FreeSpace, Wing Commander Prophecy, Freelancer
