Bah, I´ll skip this one and wait for Eve-online.

Woot! I just got my (first!) beta test acceptence email for this. Now how do I accept?!

Cheers,
Quboid

War isn't about who's right, its about who's left.

Good point about the demo. I so got burnt with Unreal 2. Right now its collecting dust on the shelf. IT RUINED MY OS AND I HAD TO REFORMAT!

Five years in dev for this singularly uninspiring game? Come on, FreeSpace 2 is better. Independence War 2 - Edge of Chaos is far better once you overcome the fact that it's not some arcade shooter like most space sims. Graphically, IW2, now approaching THREE years since its release, easily challenges, if not surpasses, Freelancer. Anyway, FL is a step backwards. The scale of ships is so wimpy. FS2 and IW2 had a far better sense of proportion, where big ships made little ships feel truly little.

Lack of joystick (and with it--forcefeedback)support demonstrates just how inept Digital Anvil and Microsoft are; it's hardly overrated since it speaks reams about production value! I'm surprised MS didn't push for joystick support. Last time I checked, they still sell 'em! Adding coding for joystick support is just inexusable since the game was in dev for so long. From a business standpoint, it's just stupid.
Since they left out an option which is standard is the genre of space sims, how committed are they to reaching out to fans in the genre with a quality product. IMHO,not very.

I'm definitely appreciative of the demo though. Ultimately that's one thing I really admire 'bout FL. ( And it's free, unlike that demo for Unreal 2--goin' for around fifty bucks ) If you loved the demo, that's cool. If not, your cashflow can run somewhere else.

Well, I dont mean to start a flame war but the game was in production during the time when Nvidia was king and is still Nvidia's whore. Heh, I'm sure after seeing Nvidia's major failure this year in the graphics realm that they may change their mind about ATI. Long live the new king!

point the finger at ATI drivers for the menu problem.

straight from the readme since you didnt bother looking for yourself.

Performance Issue with ATI Radeon text display
Freelancer can experience performance slow downs when a large amount of text is printed or updated on screen. The work around for this issue is to back off your Windows hardware acceleration settings by one notch in Settings\Control Panel\Display\Settings\Advanced. Once in this menu, you will either see Performance tab or Troubleshoot tab. Future ATI drivers may fix this problem, as they are aware of this issue.

This comment was edited on Feb 28, 01:07.

The latest demo does not clock usage or require any other special hoop jumping. It does limit you to earning twenty thousand (approximately) and the first system but it gives you just enough game to make you want the game.

And yes, I do believe Mr. Gates and Mr. Kirk are in fact, bed buddies.
But that's their perogative.

Hey, 'assripping' is a very cool statement! Even my mom thinks so! Would you perfer, "This game stocks a full load of whupass"?

That joystick arguement is overrated in my opinion. Whether it be with a mouse or a joystick, the game is a gratified game of 'keep the circle over the dot'.
At least that's the combat end of things, imo.
The trade system lacks in some departments, but you know what? Until I design a perfect space sim, this will have to do.

This comment was edited on Feb 27, 19:39.

Cool game, horrbile demo idea. Clocking usage? Limiting you? Am I going to have to re-install to fix this? Is there a certain money ammount that it quits after you get? My Radeon 9700 wasn't a "recognised" video card. Is this due to ignorance, or Microsoft's sleeping with Nvidia? Game ran great, except for in the menus, it was slow as a sloth...

Other than that, looks great and play is fun.

I played the non-EZPad version of the demo. It's about as bad as I expected. It really is Diablo in space. Go out and shoot lots of stuff, pick up loot, maybe finish a quest, repeat ad nauseum. The storyline is boring, the dialog is UNBELIEVABLY HORRIBLE, and the gameplay is unoriginal and repetitive. I predict this game will be a smashing success

What if the immigrant was an Irishman?

Between this and MOO3, the modern day PC game industry seems to have been left to the paycheck collecting SUV driving fat greed-heads. This is what happens when the game industry commands enough of the economy that people go after these careers because they "pay well". Not because they love to play games or have shown any aptitude in game design or what-have-you. You get some lame assed project lead whos supposedly been developing software since the early 90's but doesnt even own a PC at home. But no matter how it occured, there is no excuse for taking 2 of the most innovative and enjoyable interactive entertainment titles and reducing them to the mediocrity that plagues the shelves at EB this week... Freelancer has been made so "fisher price" they may as well port it to the consoles, though im sure thats been one of MS's plans all along. So, before i close this post ild like to give a big 'ol "FUCK OFF" to the respective devel teams of Freelancer and MOO3. May all your daughters be impregnated by a jobless immigrant.

Thanks for agreeing. Its hard to believe it took this game 5 years to make but in the end it answers the question on why the game is the way it is today. PCs were still very limited 5 years ago and the internet games were just coming into the market. I'm sure if Freelancer had to be done over they would make it more like a MMORPG. Its a good effort technically but falls short in the SP area. I hope the MP will make up the loss.

I think TangledThorns put this part well:

". Its just more of the same that I feel is behind the times on what PC games can do. "

That's exactly it. It feels like they barely tried. They could have done so much more. How about Deus Ex style bar scenes, where you interact with NPCs? No, instead I get non-interactive 'click this person to go there and talk' type of crap. I figured you'd be able to have some control. I figured you'd be able to walk around the city instead of clicking a destination, which heck, could have been done with a bitmap 10 years ago. I figured takeoff would be like Elite. I figured wrong. Might as well be playing one of those crappy low budget loaded AVI after AVI after AVI ad nauseum games from years ago.

Heck Dragon's Lair (the original!) is more interactive. And dare I say, Battlecruiser, though a mess, has more fun and interactivity (by a HUGE margin, too). Bah why am I wasting my words. There's better stuff to play.

How much did they have to pay that guy on VGM Fusion to call this the best game of 2003? Oh wait, 2003 JUST STARTED. Disappointed, Freelancer guys! Glad I didn't waste much of my time (at all) following the hype trail on this one.

This comment was edited on Feb 27, 16:11.

Ok, I played the game over the weekend and I'm kinda disappointed with some of the gameplay. Its basically Privateer with excellent graphics. Its just more of the same that I feel is behind the times on what PC games can do. I'm a slightly older game so maybe the kids will probably find this game refreshing. I did find the mouse control very cool and fun to use and the grpahics to be amazing, very smooth too. Good sound as well. I probably wont buy it as there are other games I'm looking forward too.

Paul, RTFM next time, hit shift-v to get cockpit mode

-DSR

That's exactly how this feels - like a single player version of Earth and Beyond. I helped beta test E&B, and while I wasn't impressed with it as far as game play goes, the fun part was interacting with the live players. The demo for Freelancer doesn't give this option - so it just sits and stagnates.

I wanted to like it - I really did. But I have to agree with some of the stuff said here - where's the cockpit view? Where's the joystick support? And what happened to being able to "Explore the galaxy" in the demo? I finished the scripted stuff, played a handful of the random missions, and then it just kicked me out of the demo. Yeah - free exploration, eh?

The *only* reason I would even consider buying this is to check out the multiplayer side of things. But - as it stands, I'm not going to. I've got better things to spend my money on.

Like a lobotomy.

Wow, I just tried the demo last night... what's the fuss? I couldn't walk around, I couldn't control conversation, I felt like I had no freedom at all. The only time it felt like the game started was when I was out shooting down rogues, and that was "exciting and fun" for about 30 seconds.

This is what's taken years to develop? This is what's getting hyped so much? I wanted to like it too, but I just don't see it. There is -NO- feeling of "the freedom of space" in this game, whatsoever. It's not continuous, it's not convincing... it's not fun. It's a strange feeling, but I think I have nothing more than apathy for this game.

I'll be waiting and hoping on Elite 4.

Ok, here my opinion to Freelancer.

I used to play space-sims since the first installment of Wing Commander till X or Wing Commander 5. I loved Privateer very much and i till yesterday I hoped Freelancer would likely be the same.

Freelancer looks like an arcade game for me. Wheres the Cockpit-view that makes such a tight gameplay atmosphere? Why Cant u land on planets or stations? Boring cutscenes...
I mean, you don´t have the feeling to fly through space in that one... Hunting down crafts with the mouse in 3rd person arcade style is not what i think of a space-sim. Oh yes, and i think that the inflight interface totally destroys the gameplay feeling. U dont even feel like sitting in a spacecraft...


Bah, I´ll skip this one and wait for Eve-online.

You know what, I can appreciate the joystick arguement for/against as much as any other reasonable individual. But would it really have complicated development ***THAT MUCH*** to add an OPTION for joystick support? Have it OFF by default, fine. But don't dissapoint parts of the core audience [obviously former wing commander players etc] by not allowing it at all. In my opinion, diplomatic solutions will get your game a larger audience than this game having mouse-only.

Having said that, again, I think the full version shows a lot of promise, and ill be checking it out!

this game is just Wing Commander II with some bullshit talking.....

how can you guys call this fun?

takes about 20 mins just to get into space, complete waste of bandwidth, don't waste your time!

How can you have a space sim when we don't even have this shit in real life anyways? Doesn't a sim game simulate how the experience is really like with not real life graphics?

Just a question.


Dan
Intel 486SX, Trident video, 8MB RAM, 14" Generic Monitor, 100 MB HDD, Windows 3.11