Freespace 2

We all know this is the best space sim ever made. What you might not know is that Volition open sourced Freespace 2 before closing their doors for good, spawning the Freespace Sourcecode Project. If you can extract the GOG installer on a Windows PC (or in WINE), you can use the FSP installer to install on OS X or Linux (or Windows) and give the FS2 updated graphics! Yea!

Where to begin? With the gorgeous graphics, which even ran on modest hardware at the time of the games release? With the gripping storyline? With the complex yet fast and furious missions? Anyway, this game REALLY is, as one reviewer stated, the "pinnacle of space combat". Take the heart-pumping action of the wing commander series, the challenging and intelligent mission design of tie fighter, great graphics and then add a cool plot and still you couldn't really describe this game. Sadly though, this game didn't get quite the attention it deserved and the whole space sim genre went into non-existance soon after the release of Freespace 2, so there are many people not even knowing that such a gem exists. Now, you can have it, even optimised for Vista/XP. AND FOR JUST 5 BUCKS!!!! Please, if you're interested in how good games could be before the degeneration into todays graphics focused mass industry, give this game a try. You'd hurt yourself, if you didn't. Oh, and don't forget to set your speakers on max volume when in a capship battle...beam cannons are the keyword here...

There is a community of dedicated fans at Hard Light Productions that have created a wonderful thing called Freespace Open, which improves gameplay, graphics, and brings a whole range of new campaigns to the field. You need a full version of Freespace 2 installed. GoG's version works perfectly. It also gives you "Freespace Port" which allows you to play Freesapce 1's missions, with full voice acting and music. With the bonus graphics! The community has also re-made Silent Threat, cleverly named Silent Threat: Reborn. All worthy of the highest praise. www.hard-light.net

This one is quite possibly one of the best Sci-Fi shooters ever. It has an incrediby compelling single player campaign that really keeps you wondering what will happen next. I would recommend also buying Freespace 1 & playing it all the way through first, though, in order to become more familiar with the plot line. I also have the original CD, so I found it nice when GOG was offering a download that wouldn't require a CD. Be advised; however, that the GOG version was somewhat modified from the original CD version in that there is no longer a basic setup utility (i.e.; there is no utility to allow you to set up screen resolutions, choose between OpenGL or Direct3D, etc). Because of this, it doesn't run very well on my aging Athlon XP 3200+ PC with 2 GB of memory and a 512 MB AGP GeForce 7950 GT. At the time of the original CD-ROM title release, I was running this with a much older 500 MHz K6-2 desktop and a GeForce2 card, and it ran far better. Either way, I must give this five stars--for many of you with much newer computers, this game should run flawlessly. I just need to upgrade.

A sensible space combat sim is almost dead genre today. Even if it wasn't it would be very hard to match greatness of Freespace. Good missions, choice of fighter and equipment, decent AI on wingmen and enemies - it's all here. With upgraded graphics and engine (hard-light.net) it's great again. The only bad thing is craptacular mouse handling and not so great handling of cheap joysticks.