Freespace 2

As in the original, the story unfolds in FreeSpace 2 through a combination of mission and command briefings, sporadic cutscenes, and, most effectively, through events depicted within actual missions. Gameplay in FreeSpace 2 will be very familiar to Freespace veterans, but there are several significant improvements. You'll still pilot fighters and bombers, but the capital ships in the game have been made considerably more dangerous. The cruisers and destroyers weren't exactly puny in the first game, but they're positively gigantic in FreeSpace 2, and unlike in many space sims, the capital ships are as deadly as their ominous size suggests. Almost all the capital ships in the game are now equipped with powerful beam weapons similar to those that were on the Shivan dreadnought, the Lucifer, in the original game. The main beam weapons are primarily used in battles between capital ships, but most of the larger ships are also stocked with smaller, anti-fighter beam weapons. Capital ships have been decked out in flak cannons as well, which let them make quick work of bombers and fighters foolish enough to wander in range. They are also still equipped with laser turrets and missile silos as in the original game, collectively making capital ships flying fortresses you'll learn to fear.

For those of you unable to play the game after the initial cinematic because of the game being unable to go full screen. Simply change your screen resolution to 1024 x 768 and select caracter size 100%. The game launched perfectly well after thoses changes.

Important to note. Yes, the game is open source in it's original form, the difference with GOG is COMPATIBILITY! I find it funny and a little annoying when silly people overlook this. The same could be said for the Feist; Krondor RPG here. It's freely available online. So if you can get it, and can get it to work on DOSBOX, and can make your peace with it every time it crashes and you have to re-jig it to work again, that's fine. But for the rest of us, GOG handles the compatibility for a pittance with insurance that if you have a problem and contact them, someone will sort it out, and that's not something you get with open source. I just thought someone should represent the other side of the coin. Hope this information helps any unsure browsers. Anyhow, I'm not rating this game as 1 star, it's awesome and still holds up as what was probably the pinnacle of the genre for gameplay. Between a 4 star and a 5 star for me.

You should play it to find out. :P In all seriousness, here are some thoughts on why Freespace 2 is a classic of the genre in no particular order: 1. Mission Design - okay so there is no random campaign generator which I love from my flight slims, but the missions are, by and large, very well constructed - intense (with multiple, changing objectives in mission), feasible (always important), and logical (they fit well into the story). 2. Story Elements - Voice acting, writing, atmosphere, and story structure are all very well done. The story is dark and gritty with twists which never feel too gimmicky. Admiral Bosch, Petrarch, and Commander Snipes are all memorable characters. The atmosphere cultivated in the game is perfect for a military space sim with a pervading sense of doom and a dash of hope and wonder. The developers tread the line between giving the pilot a nice feeling of importance, but also of being a "cog in the wheel". This goes hand-in-hand with Mission Design and Gameplay elements. Personally I would have gone for more of the cog-in-the-wheel approach with a random campaign generator, but that wasn't the modus operandi for military space sims (and still isn't). I think there was something ineffable about the story, especially with some of its unanswered questions, that keeps it alive with people making mods. Freespace 1 and 2 together told a grand, almost mythic space opera and story of survival against the odds to which a lot of people connected. 3. Gameplay elements - Scale. Much more so than in Freespace 1, you and the rest of your fellow fighters will be scurrying underfoot while behemoths bludgeon each other. It makes for a very intense battlefield. Other than that the gameplay elements are very similar to Freespace 1, except more polished in areas that needed it. The Freespace Open Source engine keeps them up-to-date and polishes them further. The visuals in the FSO engine are really quite spectacular and just beautiful. The open source engine and FRED tools have also kept the game alive with new fan-created mods and an engine that refresh the game and improve its performance on modern systems. I don't think Freespace 2 brought anything truly unique to the table (that crown goes to Independence War 1 for bringing in Newtonian physics around the same time as FS2), except perhaps the aforementioned sense of scale, but it does everything it does do very, very well. It learned from its predecessors and improved upon them. Now whether or not Freespace 2 was the best of the 90's space sims or of any of the space sims, I'll leave to the judgement of history because it has some pretty tough competition. However, I think that for the reasons stated, Freespace 2 should indeed be held in high regard as a classic of the genre for the quality of its craftsmanship.

This game was a high point for space combat. It filled a void left by the lack of a continuance of the x-wing vs. Tie Fighter series and raised the bar at the same time. Get this game, you won't regret it. Also there is a great selection of MODS out there to keep things fresh.