Last time, I admitted that my latest gaming choice was a damning, shameful secret.
Ok, so what game am I playing right now, at this very moment? Er, well, will be playing, once I post this. See, I didn’t mean to buy it. I went to the store looking for a circuit breaker/power strip thing, and (as gamers are wont to do) happened to wander by the games. The game I was looking for (the Battlefield 1942 expansion) was sold out. But then I saw this game, this damning, shameful game, on sale. Pretty heavily on sale, which was odd, as it was getting all sorts of rave reviews. And so, yes, I bought it.
It’s Freelancer.
You know, the game I ranted about a few months back. The one that’s not a space sim because it doesn’t support joystick control, damn their eyes. I’m something like a third to halfway through the main storyline. And, frankly, it’s not bad. Now, it’s not great; there are certainly things to dislike about it. But, overall, it’s decent. Decent enough to keep me playing without resenting the time spent.
Right, what’s good about it. Well, the graphics are nice, sometimes up to very pretty. It runs without a hitch or stumble on my non-cutting edge computer, and that’s a damned good thing. They’ve minimized the controls to fit the standard first-person shooter scheme. You do have different weapons, but I haven’t found a need to switch between them. You can assign weapon groups, but, again, I’ve found no need to use that feature.
But that has a lot to do with my playing style. I’m a fan of WWII sims, where you’re using guns to shoot down your enemy. I don’t like most modern jet sims, which rely on missiles to do the dirty work. In space sims, it’s usually the same, so guns are key, and although missiles exist, they’re oddly less effective than they should be. Freespace had only two anti-fighter missiles that I liked, and only one (the swarming, homing missile) that I found very effective.
I haven’t fired a missile in Freelancer. This is because guns and missiles take up the same weapons slots. So to equip a missile launcher, I’d need to unequip a gun. Plus, missile reloads cost money, and many of the missiles, based on their descriptions, seem to be unguided. Since level progression is based on your character’s overall value, and since I’d rather spend the cash on better guns, I haven’t splurged on missiles. Now, you can grab loot from destroyed ships, but it varies. The only missiles I’ve pulled in so far have been of the basic unguided type. The enemy ships will fly directly at you in the initial pass, but I still don’t see a good reason to loose a half dozen missiles in order to score a hit or two. There is, it must be said, a very large variety of missiles, guns, torpedoes, mines, turrets, countermeasures, shields...but all have restrictions, based on the spaceships. Some ships can’t mount turrets; all ships have weapon and shield class limitations.
Which leads me to the big problem of the game (yes, I know, I was supposed to talk about the good things): It’s essentially a “Big Gun” game. You’re just trying to score the best ship/best guns/best shields/best thruster/etc. The main plot is painfully unoriginal. The cutscene dialog is...well, I’ve seen much worse, to be honest. The dialog when you’re talking to someone about a non-plot mission or digging for rumors is always the same, so I just Esc out of the intro part.
The game has you do a plot mission or two, then sends you off on your own to take on other missions, explore, trade, whatever, until you earn/buy/salvage enough stuff to reach the next monetary value level. Then it hits you with a couple more plot missions, then sets you loose again. It sounds boring as hell, but it isn’t. There’s a lot to explore, and the dogfights are hectic and fun. The only difference in flight models is how quickly the ships turn. They all have the same top speed, and your guns are all semi-turreted. The actual turrets you can buy can fire behind you; regular guns have a much more limited arc. But it does mean that you can fire on a target even when it’s not directly in front of you. The “move mouse/move ship” flight model works fairly well, and you just have to hold the aimpoint reticle over the “fire here to hit” crosshairs and blast away. The enemies are smart enough to dodge and weave, using obstacles like ice chunks to their advantage.
The game area consists of five sectors (I think it’s five, maybe four), each with a number (half a dozen? ten?) of systems. The systems can have a single base, or multiple bases, and planets that can be landed on and which will have more orbiting bases. Very sensibly, you can always call up a list of prices offered for goods (and where they can be bought or sold), and can even immediately consult your starmap to check out a location on that list. It’s a nice touch.
The universe is active, with many factions learning to love or hate you, and lots of ships flying around at all times. Flying around, getting to the dock before you, defending themselves, calling out their trade routes, and, yes, attacking your sorry butt. Most of the ships are neutral towards you, and pay no attention to you, but if you...sorry, when you get groups aligned against you, they really go all out to kill you. Say you stumble into a flight of pirates attacking a convoy, and being engaged by a squad of police ships. Once you turn up, the bad guys decide to drop everything and kill you first. This is, of course, annoying, and not particularly realistic. Personally, I’d think it would be much safer to just switch off your IFF beacon, but, as in most games, you’re evidently towing a huge, brightly-lit banner that says “Hi, I’m The Hero!” It probably blinks, too, which would explain the sudden, murderous reaction you tend to elicit.
My main quibble is the menu bar you get when you’re at a base/planet. You have icons for launch pad, bar (where you get info and jobs), commodity trader, equipment dealer, and sometimes a ship dealer. Now, the problem comes when you select one. So you select commodity trader, and usually get a scene of you walking to the commodity trader...which I skip. Then you get a submenu with one item, which is to talk to the guy and open the trade window. Same with the equipment and ship dealer (launch pad gives you a “launch” submenu, which is fine, and the bar lets you talk to individuals in the bar). There’s no need for that submenu, and you’re wasting time waiting for the submenu to appear, then waiting for the commodity/equipment/ship window to appear. It’s not a make-or-break flaw, but it does get annoying, because you’re going to check out these things on every base.
It also sports the “successive sector monster/bad guy exponential power” rule. Basically, the enemies you fight in sector B are tougher than in sector A; the bandits in sector C could wipe out a large part of the military of sector A. Sure, it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, but in a universe where these sectors are in the midst of a semi-cold war situation, it comes off as silly. The Rhinelanders could wipe the cosmic floor with the Bretonians. (Yes, indeed: Space Germans and Space Brits butting heads, as always.)
But, overall, it’s fun. It’s not a classic game, but it’s enjoyable, and it suits my late night “less thinking, more explosions” style of gaming. I still wouldn’t pay the full $50 for it, though.