Freespace 2

The little movie ran fine (albeit low resolution) and then the game crashed while apparently trying to change Win/my monitor's resolution (from 1920x1080 to 800x600, maybe?) - I dunno. I had to evoke Task Manager to exit the game. Might look fine on a legacy system. Got it free from GOG, so no win no loss.

The problem with this game is that you never (!) fight on your own but always as part of a fleet. At first sight this might seem to be a good thing, as it is the more realistic situation in a war and gives you a kind of part of the battle feeling. However, the problem is that there are always so many allied ships that most of the time it feels like it doesn't matter what you are doing. Actually, in many missions you can succeed by flying away watching the battle from afar and letting the others do the work. For me this took every motivation/fun out of this game. Another contra is that the story is boring: alien nation attacks, you fight back alien nation. That's it, basically.

While the story is not nearly as polished as that of the original, Freespace 2 offers exciting gameplay right from the start. Both games are notable for being far more immersive than many other games in the genre, but Freespace 2 goes a step beyond to give you feelings of desperation as you're lost in a cloudy nebula with enemies, being shot at by flak turrets from somewhere in the gas. It gives a grand feeling of scale that I've never experienced from any other game like it. In truth, I think it's the best of its kind.

Sorry for one star, but this game is so outdated. Still have problems to handle HOTAS type controls. Also with FreeSpace Open. CGI on 2K looks very bad. But one thing is great the FreeSpace Open Project and the MOD'ing community. Still only 2 stars worth for me.

While I am a huge fan of the game, unfortantely this version of Freespace 2 will not let me complete the last mission due to ai pathing not working. Giving one star as I can not literally complete the game.