Freespace 2

10 Years ago there was a genre of games that was quite popular amongst us gamers. The Space Sims were plentiful and we had a veritable pantheon of great games to choose from. The days of Tie Fighter, X-Wing and Privateer are held dearly in my heart. Volition, the developers of Descent broke new ground with their hit title Descent: Freespace. Freespace gave us great graphics, great performance and some fantastic gameplay. The game sold rather well and Volition emmidiately started work on a sequel. It wasn't long until Freespace 2 came out. Freespace 2 improved every aspect of the first game right down to the Multiplayer. Amazing visuals, a great set of ships and weapons and we loved it. Freespace 2 is one of the last games of a dying genre to be released. With community support Freespace 2 still holds up today as a fantastic game. Get this game, download FS2Open and enjoy one of the best there is.

When I was about 12, my friend showed me a game called freespace. It kicked butt and I was immediately engulfed into the story. A few years later we found out that a true sequal had been made. But for which ever reason, the game was nearly imposable to purchase at a store. Thanks to GoG now I can finally finish what I started so long ago. But enuf about that. This game is a great title and I would recommend it to anyone. Beautiful explotions, challenging missions, a heart griping story, and easy pickup and play controls make this simple the best space flight sim, ever.

That's My Review

Really, pretty much everything you could ask for from a space simulation game (except for multiple endings). I originally bought the game almost a decade ago, when it first came out, and finding it again on this site, decided to buy it again (my original CDs long ago scratched beyond all repair). Actually, what really drove me to purchase the game was the FreeSpace Open project (hard-light.net), which expands upon the original game to make it something, well, extraordinary. Perhaps my rating reflects the original game + FSO, but as FSO is freely available, it still seems appropriate. I don't know what else to say about this game beyond, "great." I'm one for combat-flight-sims, I enjoyed my Rogue Squadron (though this game is infinitely less impossible, with difficulty levels!), but the depth into which the game draws you into its universe is incredible (or maybe I'm just trying to say it's engrossing)... I've lost many weekends to this game in the past, and look forward to losing many more!

This is quite simply a brilliant game and one of, if not the best, space combat simulations ever made. A cool story coupled with great gameplay and awesome amounts of fun. The ships handle pretty damn well, obviously not Newtonian but more in the vein of the classic X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Wing Commander vein yet feels somehow more appropriate. The scale of battles can be quite rather huge with giant capital ships duking it out and you in a smaller fighter or bomber in the midst of some pretty epic battles and this really immerses you in the game and it's universe. It has all the classic tenets of the genre, a lot of targeting controls, power management, weapon grouping controls, communications and the like, and a fair few hefty buttons. It did take me a few trial and error runs to find the perfect setup up my ancient, but still great, Saitek X35/36 Throttle and Stick but once I got that nailed down I had everything at my finger tips and rarely needed the keyboard, which is always nice. The game itself can be pretty damn tough and I had to retry some of the missions a fair few times before I nailed them. Tough but fair, makes a change from all the damn easy games of today. As others have no doubt mentioned there's still large modding scene for this game. The Source Code Project makes all of this possible and then the Upgrade Project which improves the visual quality a lot amongst other things, and dozens of other mods including full conversions and massive new campaign arcs. In conclusion, if you're a fan of the genre and do not own this game then get out there and bloody buy it!