Freespace 2 Review
Space the final Frontier, these are the voy... arrrrrrgggggh, not this crap, turn over... tshhh ...Luke, you are my Son, NOOOOOOOOO... hey, this is better, hmm. Anyway, that was the beginning of this cool review, just to put you guys in the mood :) or not!
Yes, space thingy's have been around for ages, space battles, while possibly not quite what we make them out to be, still appear in games that we all play and love. Just cos we can't do it for real, one says.
The game has you as a pilot for the Terrans in a bitter war versus the Shivans, battling against massive ships great odds and using an impressive array of weapons you have to successfully fly through a gruelling set of missions in the hope of winning the war
The games gameplay kicks ass. Simply put. The storyline, videos and animation set the scene nicely while your out there fighting for your life you notice a couple of things that are great.
You get the obvious tutorial which takes you through every system on your ship and shows you how to fight and the best strategy. If you know how to play these games you might only need to learn the ships systems and could do without the combat lessons.
The massive array of weapons you have at your disposal is a little over the top, in may instances you may not use all of the types you can use. These range from your pissy little blaster to homing missiles and are the best array of weapons this kind of game has.
The enemy AI is pretty good too, deploying countermeasures to combat your intense array of missiles you fire at them, changing fighting styles to suit how your playing style and how much in a shit they are in.
The controls are great, not one to play using a joystick or joypad (unless im on a console), I use the keys, which in this game are nicely programmed. I remember X-Wing when you used the keys there would be a delay just after you pressed the key before you moved. This usually allowed a few things to happen, but one of them was to lose your target. In Freespace 2 and in this day and age of advanced computing, keyboard control is highly recommended for many games and this one too, they are so easy to use and if you do use a joystick/pad then you will need to use the keys anyway.
The menus are all straightforward, as with every other spacey game, you get to look at a the inside of the mothership with various areas of it in view so you can select where you want to go, such as pilot roster, configuration and fly a mission.
The game is pretty well done for configuration with you being able to choose the colour of your HUD, the position of the icons and what they do and your character's attributes. You also get the very standard configuration for your video, sound and controls method. While this may not sound exciting its nice to see that you can set the game up as you like in the colour of your choice.
The background nebulae, yes every game has it, its nice, makes it look more spacey so it in! that's what every developer thinks, and their damn right too!
The Size of the Ships also comes into play, they are quite literally Massive, no, bigger. The biggest so far as far as I know. These games just keep pumping out massive capitol ships for you to combat, its feels like a never-ending nightmare in which you need to destroy a massive ship with your limited firepower. But no matter how big they are, they still die is a spectacular style showing off the lovely explosions to their fullest.
The whole game uses the colour to literally blind you of whats coming, move to the sun and your blinded, allowing anything to fly straight towards you without you even knowing. Giving you that scary, I'm going to die feeling as you just notice a capitol ship advancing towards you ready to ram you into nothing. While the games sound just adds that great onto greater feeling and playing in surround really adds to the game in every way possible, not that it helps in any way, its just there to add to the effect that the complete game has on you.
Freespace 2 is a bloody good game, the best space combat sim for ages, gives you a chance every now and again but the enemy AI will keep you on your toes while the graphics & sound simply blow you away. This game simply oozes action and if that's what you're after then step right up and take on the world!