Story :
Freelancer is a space sim developed by Digital Anvil and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is a chronological sequel to Digital Anvil's Starlancer, released in 2000.
The events in Freelancer take place 800 years after Starlancer . The solar system was engulfed in a civil war, fought between the Alliance and the Coalition. Facing defeat, the Alliance placed its people in stasis and sent them to the Sirius system, where they settled and transformed the surrounding space (the Sirius sector) into a region of political intrigue and opportunity.The rule of the sector is mostly split among four houses, each named after the sleeper ship that brought them to the system. Each house exhibits the culture of its terrestrial ancestor: Liberty of 1920s United States, Bretonia of Victorian era United Kingdom, Kusari of Shogunate era Japan, and Rheinland of Second Industrial Revolution Germany. The fifth sleeper ship, Hispania, suffered a malfunction en route and was abandoned in deep space. The descendants of its crew became pirates.
The single-player mode puts the player in the role of Edison Trent, survivor of Freeport 7 , destroyed by mysterious forces . Players will soon find that it’s part of something bigger . Story is told brilliantly through real time cutscenes that feature great soundtrack and voice acting . Expect lot of twists and turns throughout the campaign . Only negative part of the game is the ending , that makes sense but feels to be rushed . Which is to be expected since Microsoft didn’t let Chris Roberts (Game director) finish the game as he wanted to .
Design :
Players take up the roles of pilots who fly single-seat spacecraft, trading with merchants on space stations and planets, and engaging in combat against other vessels . The player character's primary goal in the game is to accumulate money, so as to buy more advanced weaponry and equipment to upgrade his ship. Player can land on different space stations , bigger ships and planets in the galaxy . Different Star Systems are connected with one another through jump points , these jump points makes your space ship travel faster or puts you from one Star System into another . Whole world of Freelancer feels dynamic and alive , players will notice different people flying throughout the galaxy for their own tasks . Economy in the game is completely dynamic , prices of different equipments vary at different locations , that allow player to purchase items from one side of the galaxy cheaper and sell it somewhere else where the item is rare , and price is higher . Different ships have different customizable options , players can mount guns , increase their cargo space , install new shields and thrusters . There are lot of secondary missions in the game that allow your character to level up , each time your character levels up , new equipments and primary quests are triggered . Players can accept primary mission or reject it for time being , in case they want to do more secondary quests and earn money to upgrade their ship .
Freelancer features a multiplayer mode, allowing up to 128 players to play together in a game. Till this day the game have servers that host multiplayer matches , thanks to support for private servers . Multiplayer games are hosted on game servers; personal computers that meet the requirements for the game can act as a server. Gameplay is similar to the single-player mode, but is absent of story-driven quests. Because the server keeps individual records of the players' progress, they can resume their game when they next log on to it. A persistent virtual galaxy is thus maintained for them.
Gameplay :
The game is played primarily with the mouse and a few keyboard commands. This system is also used to control the ship , a breakaway from the traditional use of joysticks for space flight simulators. Observing their spacecraft from the rear, players fly their ships by moving the mouse in the direction they want the vessels to go. Freelancer's spacecraft follow simplistic flight dynamics; however, a dash of realism is implemented by allowing the vessels to cut power to their engines and turn to face any direction while drifting along their original path . Players can use LMB to lock on targets and RMB to shoot it , + sign appears where players are meant to shoot . It doesn’t always appear on ship you want to destroy because different weapons have different fire rates and game assists you when shooting your enemy . Bullets of the weapon hit enemy when their ship reaches the location of + sign (Usually appears in front of enemy ships) . Different ships are good for different situation , same goes for weapons and shields . Players can customize their ship how they want and can play how they want . The game is fun and challenging at the same time , something that is missing in recent games .
Presentation :
Graphically , Freelancer still looks good . It’s 1-2 steps behind Half Life 2 , that look great till this day . Sound effects , Music Score and User Interface are done well . Some ship models look odd but that doesn’t stop this game from being amazing . The game tells the story through sequence of real time cutscenes , character animations in those cutscenes are done very well and voice acting is top notch , Freelancer was definitely ahead of it’s time when it was launched 2003 . If you have PC and excited for Star Citizen , there is no reason to miss this masterpiece .
Verdict :
+ Great Story and Characters
+ Great Music Score and Voice Acting
+ Presentation
+ Gameplay
+ Private Servers
+ Customization
- Few Bad Ship Models
- Ending feels little rushed (But makes sense)
10/10