I enjoyed this game when it came out. Looked good, played good, had a good story. The PC version is massively hampered by not having controller support. It feels like a game designed for a controller, and it can be frustrating without it. If GoG can put out their own patched version of Daggerfall Unity, they could add controller support for games like this.
I love space games. From Elite (and Elite 2: Frontier) to Freelancer, and from Colony Wars to X3, I snap them up like candy.. and there have been far too few attempts at them that this is immediately an attractive game to me. It's exactly what it says on the tin: A space combat sim. The controls are friendly, the combat is what you'd expect, and the story is adequate... but I don't love it. The story isn't what you'd get in Wing Commander, and in those you get a similar combat experience too. It reminds me of a less-polished Colony Wars, in fact.. or a hybrid of the two... but perhaps I was weaned and different games, and Freespacers would think the reverse. :) I wasn't, though, and this is my review. It fights to a four because damn it, it's got pep.. and even if it isn't quite up to either of those in my eyes, it doesn't deserve a three!
I really want to like this game, and I keep going back to try and finish it. I'm not sure why I want to like it, the characters are more than a little cliché, as is the dialogue... but I like the idea of it, I like the concepts behind the world they've made, and I'd still really like to see how the story plays out. The control system is (and was even originally) somewhat clunky, and it'd be nice to be able to pan the screen around without moving, but by far the biggest drawback for me is the unintuitive way the objectives are worked out. The clues as to what you should be doing, or how you should be doing it, are sparse to say the least. I spend a lot of time running back and forth having people give me the same 'I don't know's until I stumble on the one right thing to click. If that one element of the game was a little more forgiving and/or helpful, I'd have been loving it, but if you ever played Day of The Tentacle and thought it was a breeze, you might have better luck. I will finish it, though!! ...someday...
Like most people writing here Fallout 2 was one of those games that I played to absolute exhaustion; not because it had the graphics, or intuitive game play, or any of the things that cost billions of dollars to the gaming industry.. but because it got under my skin. It's for that reason I find it stands up well over time. Every conversation made me wonder what would make it go differently; what if I was more intelligent? What if I could fix this? What if I were stronger, dumber, sneakier, more or less aggressive? What if I were scientifically minded, or a doctor? What if I could beat this guy in hand-to-hand combat? Most of the time I ignored the story entirely and pursued my personal "quick start" method of completing several high-level non-combat quests immediately after leaving my village. I was a made man for four different families mob. I was a defender and destroyer of every town on the map.. all at once or one at a time. I was an expert in explosives and heavy weapons... I was a surgical sniper.. I was an actual surgeon (and I ended up with a certain number of self-designed cyborg implants and immunisations as a result). I was a porn star (which takes a lot more effort than you might think!), a power plant mechanic, a violent thug, and an eloquent diplomat. I even spent a bit of time as a thieving street-rat. And each one of those incarnations reacted differently to almost every situation, and had different options open to them.... although they all had a wicked modded Highwayman fusion-powered car. If Fallout 2 gets under your skin then you and I will share one of the most expansive, enjoyable, and often hilarious gaming experiences I've ever had. I dread to think how many collective years have been lost to it's charms. Fallout 3? Well, somehow the smart jokes (where you can find them) work less well when the apocalypse is made more real... and it's about a hundredth as adaptive and expansive. Still, also a good deal of fun to be had there.
