"Your review should focus on your in-game experience only. Let the game stand entirely on its own merits." The character creation is pretty neat. That's all I can play, however, as all it does it crash to the desktop after the intro movie.
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.
When a friend of mine told me that this game was available a couple days ago, I *immediately* went to GoG and bought it. There are only a handful of PC games that I would say are diamond classics, such as Star Control 2, the Wing Commander series, FreeSpace 2, and System Shock 2. This game was a trend-setter in my mind. I hadn't really played any first-person that had RPG mechanics and story elements like this one at the time. They are still excellent to this day, and I'm sure games like Morrowind through Skyrim took their lessons from this. This one is not sandbox-like, however; it is story-driven. The story is a darn good one. You start out thinking you understand what is going on, but you keep getting led on by the game's villain. The villain has to be one of the most menacing presences I've ever experienced in the game. The first time you hear the voice, you will actually dread it. The excellent villain was both chilling and darkly comic. There is a reason that IGN had this villain (from a game that didn't get too much attention at the time, if memory serves) make its top 100 best video game villains. The game is not short, but not too long either. I had done multiple playthroughs with different approaches and had a blast with each. Though it is fairly linear, there are different ways to go about doing things. If you can tolerate antiquated graphics (hey, you're on GoG, so I'm assuming that's a yes), then definitely get this game. You will not regret it.
First of all, I can't speak to SC1, so I'm not reviewing it at all, seeing as I never played anything but the melee mode. Star Control II. I don't even know where to begin. Should I start with the HUGENESS of the game? The difficulty (hard)? (Games are WAY too easy these days.) The immersion? The ambiance of exploring space, and never knowing what you're going to find? The combat? The story? I really have no idea, because every single one of those things pretty much blows every other PC game of that time out of the water, and possibly of our current time. I will STILL pull this game out and play it, almost all the way through, every year or so. I'm serious. Notice that GoG put this under the genres of action, strategy, and sci-fi. Honestly, there's parts of this game that fit under many genres. I see one of the top reviewers titled his review "My favorite game of all time". I do not feel critical of him making that claim. Some people say things like, "This is the fill-in-the-blank ever!", etc. etc., but don't really mean it. You can say this about this game and actually mean it. I'm not sure if it's *my* favorite game of all time, but then, I'm not really sure what is. This would definitely make the top three candidates, though. Seriously, get this game. Also, Google "The Ur-Quan Masters". The game was released as open source, so I'm not sure why GoG is even selling it.
