The last installment of Descent: Freespace had you going and destroying a huge battle cruiser with an ancient weapon while you were in subspace. This victory ended "The Great War" against the Shivans and led to an era of peace through the Human/Vasudan alliance. Well, trouble is brewing again, with the Neo-Terran Front (NTF) claiming that alliance with the Vasudans is wrong, and they want to free the rest of humanity from an untimely demise. The GTVI doesn't see it this way, and wants to put an end to all of this uprising nonsense. That's where you fit in. Of course, there will be a brush with some old enemies, and a bit on espionage thrown into the mix. All in all, a story you've probably realized is a whole lot like Wing Commander IV/Prophecy.
Some of the effects in Freespace 2 are just frickin' sweet. Flying through a nebula, while almost impossible, is really, really cool. Dogfighting in it, on the other hand, is probably not as enjoyable, but it's a welcome break from flying through most of the rest of space. The explosions are done rather nicely, as are most of the warhead launches. The torpedoes all have this nice shockwave effect off of their explosions, and the huge swath-cutting beams are a nice touch too...just don't get near them, or they'll ruin your day.
Is there some sort of clause in Interplay's contract where they have to make the game crash? Does it ensure the programmers will have some work to do for the weeks following the project as they write a patch? I don't get it. Freespace 2 crashed a small handful of times on me in the middle of missions. (Especially long missions I was just about to complete.) In addition, once, after I had completed Disc 2, the game would no longer start up, and required reinstalling before play could continue. Of course, this wiped all the save games. Another time the game slowed to such a crawl, the game would only respond every other second. Don't alt-tab out of Freespace 2, either, otherwise, your screen will flicker, and it will make flying nigh impossible. In addition, the people in the vid window animations? What's up with them and their spastic appearances?! They go around looking like either they're way too excited about an all clear signal, or they look like they've recently dislocated their shoulder. The voice briefings get old really quickly as well, although the voices are done nicely, it's just way more talking than I need to hear.
One of the really nifty things in Freespace 2 is the force feedback. Get hit by a missile, and you aren't going to be flying in the same vector anymore. You'll feel the buffeting of the flak cannons, and the impact of the guns on your hull. Unfortunately, if you're competing with someone who doesn't have a force feedback controller, well, he's going to beat you down, just because he doesn't have to deal with that. But if you're into that extra level of realism, then hook up the force feedback, it'll definitely add some "umph" to the game.
This game is pretty damn cool. If you don't like it, well, you just don't like space combat, because this is pretty much as good as it gets with the existing technology. The gameplay is fluid, and the graphics are sweet. A definite must have for fans of the genre.
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