Freespace 2

This is why GOG.com is going to be the greatest thing to ever happen to PC gaming. I have seen this game going for 100 bucks or more on ebay in the past. It's a fantastic game that everyone should play, but who wants to have to pay 100 bucks in order to play it? The space flight sim genre is all but dead. That's a shame. I think Freespace 2 is the pinnacle of the genre as far as gameplay goes. Wing Commander began to focus too much on storytelling and uninteractive movie sequences. Freespace 2 does away with all of that and instead, it gives you hours of tense combat. It's also very very pretty. Its visuals hold up very well for a 9 year old game. If the genre were still alive today, I wouldn't think any new games would look much better than Freespace 2.

This is the best space shooter ever. Did you know it's source code was release and that there is a big online community for Freespace 2 the Freespace Source Code Project? http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FSSCP_Introduction

There are few games that gave me the rush that Elite did. While this is not a space trading sim, it did bring a new concept at the time: Fighters VS Capital Ships. There was somthing that kept me playing this through the end, and I still own the CDs. When I found that one of my discs had a massive gouge in it, I went in search of another copy & finally stumbled upon GOG. I was more than happy to pay $6 for an updated, compiled, all-in-one installer.

I'll keep it short: The game is all about playing through excellent, fun and fluid combat space missions. It even has a kind of a story that successfully holds the missions together and even player choices in some of them that changes the way the mission then plays. Oh, and no bugs or crashes. Enjoy.

GOODPLAY