Freelancer, A Universe of Redundancy: Summer PC Game Frenzy # 1
Written: Jun 16 '03 (Updated Jun 18 '03)
Product Rating:
Pros: Free-form space simulator. Lots to explore.
Cons: Redundant game play, suboptimal gaming experience...
The Bottom Line: Unworthy space simulator that tries to recapture the essence of the great Wing Commander: Privateer. In every respect it fails. Most other space-sims are better than this.
avepythagoras's Full Review: Freelancer for Windows
Summer means one thing for avepythagoras: computer games and lots of them. This is the first of many reviews I will be writing concerning the video games I wasted endless hours on this summer. The last big nerdy computer binge before the reality of graduate school sets in. Summer is my break from reality, literally.
Anecdote and Nostalgia
I remember back in the day when Wing Commander: Privateer came out for the PC. Privateer was a monumental game in that it was the first free-form game I had ever played. You could go anywhere or do just about anything within the confines of the massive space world. It is a game that has been duplicated successfully and unsuccessfully throughout the past ten or so years. Very cutting edge...for its time. I spent a lot of time in front of my computer, piloting my hunk of junk freighter about the cosmos, bringing bundles of smuggled joy to all the low-lifes and shady denizen of the Wing Commander Universe. There is a special place in my heart for free form space odysseys like Privateer. Maybe I've always wanted to be a roguish and glorified Han Solo, piloting my own personal Millennium Falcon through the 'digital' stars of my own choosing. Or maybe I just love the thought of personal control, of having my own ship, my own agenda, and the infinite vastness of space at my disposal. So generally, I jump when I see a game like Freelancer on my local computer store's gaming shelf. But in retrospect, I probably should have curtailed my consumer purchasing urge, put the game back on the shelf, and walked silently out the door...or at least purchased something else...you know how strong those random urges are.
...And Yes, Size Does Matter
Freelancer is your basic Privateer style space-sim, chock full of planets, space-ports and starships. An entire Universe awaits exploration. The galaxy is a busy place, trade lanes littered with hordes of freighters and police ships, private pleasure cruisers and fighter escorts. The economy is larger than anything I've seen before, as the more populated planets offer industrial goods like computers and hardware, while small miner operations provide basic metals and energy rich minerals. You can spend hours hustling between planets, delivering fresh goods to needy peoples. In short, there is plenty to do at first, and you can spend ample time doing whatever you want. And while there is a story line you eventually end up following, I found I had more fun just flying around.
The Freelancer universe is quite beautiful. Yet the actual size is deceptive. I was under the assumption that space was supposed to be massive, utter blackness sporadically dusted with the occasional star and planetary system. Sure there are a number of nebulas, pulsars, black holes, and other phenomena, but does every planetary system have to be sitting literally, right in the middle of a nebula or ice field or gas cloud? Space is big: it’s supposed to be mostly black, dark and cold. Space is not supposed to be as colorful as a Pixar movie. It’s not a coral reef, its outer space!
So suffice it to say, the Freelancer Universe is too small, you just don't get that 'out there' feeling you want in a space-flight sim. And thus, it detracts from the experience. It just doesn't feel like outer space. I want to feel cold and lonely, with nothing in sight but a pale yellow dot and a distant subspace scanner image of some pale blue class M planet thousands of clicks away. Flying through space in Freelancer is claustrophobic, the Planets loom large upon the, for lack of a better word, horizon. Trade lanes are crowded with hundreds of ships, the subspace radios crackle with life as freighter J-32 talks with the local militia fighter zeta-1. And, like so much in this modern world of ours, I crave free and empty space. Yes, when making a space-sim: size does matter. I want a larger than life, helpless in cosmos, out in the distant nothingness, sort of experience. And I know this poses logistical problems, but there are ways of doing this without requiring a mythical god-machine with hundreds of gigs of RAM and unlimited hard drive space. When I buy a game I want an experience, and that means, at least on some level, I want to feel like I'm in outer space.
You Mean, I've Gotta Pilot This Thing With A Mouse?
Back on the concept of a video game selling an experience. When I purchase a flight-sim, of any sort, I want to literally pilot my machine. That is, I want to use a decked out joystick, one of those massive 10 button things with a throttle to boot. It makes it more real, it adds to the experience. But, for whatever reason, Freelancer doesn't even offer the would-be Han Solo a choice. You can't play this game with a joy-stick; you've got to use the mouse. Nothing like piloting my Piranha light fighter through the depths of space with a mouse, it sure makes me feel like I'm right there in the cockpit with my big hairy second mate who can only talk in growls and gurgles.
While this game can be played in the more traditional cockpit view, because of the controls, e.g. the mouse, it’s much better to flip to 3rd person and watch your ship from behind. It actually gives you more room to see what’s going on. The game play is fast. Essentially, you hold the fire button down and fly about blasting whatever turns red in you reticule. You have a varied assortment of blasters, lasers and fusion cannons. Some guns are intended to crack through an enemy's shields, while others are for blasting through hulls and armor. Really the only strategic element in this game is weapon choice. The rest is mindless blasting. You can also have a similar spread of missiles, some are stronger than others; and, like the blasters, some are better at killing shields while others are for blasting a ship into a fireball of ionized particles. You can also outfit your ship with special missiles intended to stop your prey from warping out of the battle. I really didn't find much use for this weapon as most enemies were more than happy to stick around while I made quick work of them. Of course there are other ship peripherals: nanobots that repair your hulls, space mines and torpedoes, shield boosters, and electronic countermeasures.
What Do You Mean I Can't Create An Interstellar Shipping Business.
There are basically three types of ships: light fighters, heavy fighters and freighters. But I found that there's really no point in purchasing a light fighter, or anything else for that matter, once you have a heavy fighter. Everything seems to have the same basic cruising speed, so, unlike many other games where you trade speed for heavy artillery, in Freelancer you can actually have your cake and eat it to. And you can only own one ship at a time. I hated this, I wanted to purchase reams of fighters and freighters and have a choice in the matter. No, in Freelancer you can't own a shipping business. You can have one and only one spaceship and you must trade it in when you purchase another one. I like diversity and Freedom of choice. Sadly, Freelance just didn't provide the experience. It didn't go that extra parsec. It was just mundane, usual, and lost its novelty quickly.
The Dirty Low-Down
The graphics are nice at times, but get really sketchy when you're flying through gas-clouds and ice fields. The planets are spherical bubbles of basic color and are far from breath-taking. The ships are nicely rendered, yet rather odd looking. Some of the ship designs are outright ugly. And many times I thought to myself: 'You've gotta be kidding me, I've gotta fly that?' So the graphics, all and all, are rather mundane, like the rest of the game.
The game play is fast and overly redundant. The mouse kills the flight experience and turns it more into a 3D shooter than anything else. The story line is rather uninvolved. You are the survivor of a mysterious destruction of a space-port. As the game progresses, you are chased by the various space governments when a man gives you a supposedly powerful alien artifact. The plot has a lot of similarities to Privateer and falters as a miserable imitation.--The game is nearly 10 years old, you'd think game designers would've moved on by now.
Freelancer is a suboptimal game that gets boring fast. The novelty wears thin, many of the missions are the same: 1.) fly through space, 2.) blast bad guys, 3.) get paid. It only really provides about day or two's worth of gaming, and then you get bored and want to move onto something else. It’s sad; I had high hopes for this game. But the game lacks that special something; it felt contrived and rather shallow. When I play games I want an experience, I want to feel engrossed. And as such, Freelancer failed.
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