I'd never played the game until buying it from GoG, but remembered hearing many people fondly reminiscing about it over the years. After all these years, could it possibly live up to the hype...? Oh my god YES! The Aliens, the explosions, the collosal starships, swarms of small fighters nipping through space lit up by glowing capital ship beam lasers and flak-cannon fire (now I know where the new Battlestar Galactica got the effect from!), clusters of missile trails weaving after their prey like schools of piranha...Freespace 2 offers the most wonderfully realised and breathtaking space combat ever coded. Your fighter/bomber handles like a dream (even with a mouse!), and in no time at all you'll be defending freighters and attacking cap ships with gleeful whoops of joy. This game cannot be recommend often enough or highly enough; simply UNNMISSABLE, PS: As a default install she looks fine, but you have the option of bringing her graphics into the 21st century using the FS_Open Modding project, which can be found at www.hard-light.net. New models, new textures, and all running beautifully at modern resolutions!
Ignore Eternal Sonata's review, and prepare to play one of history's forgotten classics. Unlike other FPS's from the same era, this game does NOT reward a blast-everything mentality (not initially anyway, not until you pick up some beefier weapons than the pistol). The emphasis here is on subtlety, finesse....and THEN applying a shotgun right to the back of someone's poor sap's skull. Keep your weapon holstered, TALK to people, find out what they know - they might just be able to help you out... This game is a much a precursor of the genre-defining Deus Ex as any of the System Shock or Thief games were and, while inelegant by modern standards (I believe the game ran on the old Quake 2 engine), it is still a fascinating and deeply enjoyable look back at the evolution of one of gaming's strongest genres. The sense of place and culture is also highly impressive, the use of gratuitous language and adult themes foreshadowing the controversial GTA: San Andreas in many ways. Pay no heed to the two unbelieveable 1-star scores here, this is a game you owe it to yourself to check out.