Freespace 2

Few games could hold up to this one when it came out, and even today this game provides me more entertainment than many 2013 games. Through the power of open source projects I'm playing this game at 2560x1600 res with beautiful graphics and 3d sound...I'm playing the freespace 1 campaign on freespace 2! For Free! I'm so glad this genre is being revived in 2014...but until that happens, you gotta play this game!

I first played this game when I was 13... That was 17 years ago now, and I swear, I've played the vanilla campaign through at least once every year since, if not more. The story is intriguing, in-depth and incredibly engaging! Add to that the fact that this game's community is STILL incredibly active (http://hard-light.net/) and even used the released source code to revamp the graphics to modern-day standards? You've got an ever evolving classic. The community has released hundreds of extra campaigns, total conversions, and updates that you wouldn't believe. This is a must-have game for anyone and everyone. Buy it, you'll never, ever regret it!

Freespace 2 has to be the high point of a genre that seems to be largely dead these days. I remember buying it as a budget title many years ago and being blown away by it. Even when it was a bargain bin game the graphics utterly impressed and drew you in. The story goes from strength to strength as the game progresses with solid voice acting from gruff admirals to young paniced fighter pilots. The rest of the audio does a fine job too, with lasers fizzing, missiles whooshing, explosions eh, exploding with nice clarity and wait until you here the signature sound of a beam cannon larger then your fighter charging up. The music is, in my opinion probably the weakest aspect though and never really stands out. If you get this I would highly recommend get the freespace open mod which can be found in the games forums. This will let you set higher resolutions, anti aliasing, antistropic filtering and so on. On top of that it will also allow you to play the large number of custom campaigns and mods that have been made since the game engine was made open source including one that updates textures and graphical effects (like explosions, lasers etc) which makes the game pleasing to the eye even by todays standards. When I orginally played this game it was with a joystick and I would safely say that it is still the best way to play it, I'd also say that for $6.99 it's a must buy if you own one. Since I repurchased on GoG (Having lost the CD sometime ago) I've been playing with the mouse and keyboard. It's not quite the same experience but still very playable. Don't be intimidated by all the bindings available, most of them you probably won't use. A little trial and error in the training missions until you are comfortable with your control setup and you should be fine. Really I'd recommend to anyone with a love of Sci-fi or anyone who misses the genre to purchase this gem, and I hope beyond hope that eventually GoG will get Starlancer eventually too!

Twelve years ago I picked this game off a shelf in Office Depot because, hey, it looked kinda cool and a bunch of us at college had been having a blast with running Descent LAN parties. Twelve years. Wow. In game years that's more like two hundred, and I've gone through hundreds of games since then - picked them up, played them for awhile and either lost interest or beat them and forgot them. Freespace, though, is different. I keep coming back to it, time after time, year after year; I've long since forgotten how many times I've won the game, but I still keep a copy because I keep coming back. Good games come and go, great games stick around for awhile, but it takes a masterpiece to survive more than a decade and still be just as fun as it ever was. There are a lot of reasons for that. The gameplay is balanced, intuitive, and polished, easily configurable for keyboard, keyboard & mouse, or joystick (and you can use a utility like Xpadder to extend it even more to use an XBOX360 controller). It ramps the difficulty up almost without you realizing it, offering more ships and more weapons the deeper into the story you get. The graphics hold their own even in the original unmodded game, but if you want to make it really pretty (and I mean, REALLY pretty) then get the Freespace SCP installed (http://scp.indiegames.us/). But graphics and gameplay are only a part of it - great graphics are the norm today, and plenty of games have decent gameplay - it doesn't mean they'll still be around after a decade plus change. What pulls it together and makes a great game into a masterpiece is the story of FS2, and how perfectly the game allows you to experience that story through great graphics and killer gameplay. It engages you, pulls you in and takes you along for the ride. Every mission drives the story, every dogfight feels like it's important. It lets you start to feel like you're the big man on deck, and then delivers a punch that makes you sit back in awe as huge ships, hundreds of times your size, suddenly appear and remind you how big this war really is. The next minute you're put in a situation that shows how one soldier, one pilot, can turn the tide. Get this game. GOG has it for less than lunch at McDonalds, and the Freespace SCP is completely free. Then compare it to one of the recent games that ran you 49.99, and you'll see why this still sets the standard after all these years.

I grew up an avid, AVID fan of the Wing Commander series for just about every reason you could think of. Then I played the first Freespace game. Wow. I was blown away. I still liked Wing Commander, but for different reasons, but Freespace was amazing, for the same reasons other reviews have mentioned. Then Freespace 2 came out. It would take a lot to top the first one, with its incredible story and epic battle sequences. Well, it did just that, except for maybe the story (more on that later). FS2 was just jaw-dropping. After I had installed it form GoG YEARS later, I was actually STILL impressed with the graphics, the immersive feeling this game gives of space, the sounds, and just about everything else. This is truly a timeless game. Now about the storyline: *SPOILERS* I really felt like this game was part two of a trilogy, and they never made a third. It ends on a pretty depressing note. At first I thought I had messed something up with earlier missions, but no: It really does end with a bunch of ships being wiped out...and the story ends. It *definitely* feels like they intended a part three. *END SPOILERS* But all of this in NO way would contribute to me lowering this game from the highest rating. Everything else is almost flawless. The bottom line: If you have never played a game from the space combat genre (an unfortunately dying/dead genre), but are worried of wasting your time, play this. If you hate this, then I couldn't think of one that you'd like.