Freelancer
Rating:  -
I have played many computer games and I can say that this game is among the alltime top three: including Half-Life and GTA Vice City. This game rocks. It is almost completely open ended and it can get very intence.
First of all the graphics are fantastic and yet somehow they are not too demanding.
The storyline is great as well as the dialog. It is set a few centuries in the future and the super powers of today (America, Britain, Germany, Japan) have all inhabited their own piece of the universe - each one with mutiple star systems and planets for you to explore. You play as the character Trent, you are a freelancer, looking for jobs and earning money as you please - though at certain points you have to follow the storyline in order to open up new opportunities.
Different jobs have different levels of dificulty - The harder the job is the more money you earn, and vice versa. You will need keep looking for jobs because you will need the money. You can buy all sorts of equipment, buy and sell comodities, and purchase bigger and better ships - You WILL need to buy new ships.
The fighting gets incredibly intence at times. Sometimes it may seem like there is no way of making it out alive, and sometimes you don't, but with a little practice and the right equipment you can demolish your enemies. The explosions are extremely well done, with bits and pieces of ships being torn off as your enemy screams for his life, muhahaha.
The controls are pretty simple. Either click and drag with your mouse (when you're not in combat) or for better aiming you can use the free movement mode by pressing the space button. Select any number of weapons and fire them all at once by clicking the right mouse button.
So in conclusion: great story and cool futuristic concepts, intence space simulation action (you may find yourself sweating in your seat), The whole game is very open ended - choose your enemies wisely.
A superb game. Couldn't have designed it better myself...
Rating: -
Freelancer is a somewhat controversial game because it is somewhat between genres. It has elements that appear to come from a space simulation (eg, you spend most of the game flying around in your ship), but in reality the game is better described as a spaceship based RPG.
The game is not completely open-ended, you need to play the missions in order to advance in levels, which opens up new systems, equipment and ships. The open-ended part really comes in being able to choose what to do to make money between missions.
The game is not a space simulation, really, because the flying and fighting aspects of the game are simplified as compared with most space sims in order to make the game more accessible. Having said that, Freelancer remains a very well done, very entertaining game if you accept it on its own terms.
Players looking for a space sim game would probably enjoy X2 more than Freelancer.
Rating: -
Any accusing Freelancer being a rip off best not without accusing their own favorite as well. Few games these days are not borrowing from another. One critique of this game called it a rip off of his favorite. So happens his favorite could be considered a rip off of a couple others. Homeworld for one. I thought I was playing Sierra's Homeworld when I first started the X universe. Check out the X2 screenshots and those at Sierra's Homeworld. Ever play the game planets? See any similarity? What do you think?
This game is one that fans of single player or multiplayer games will love. There are numerous mods you can download and change the Freelancer universe with new systems, planets, ships, weapons, and much more. Several friends and I are playing the Rebalance Mod and we are having a blast. This game originally sold for fifty dollars so it is a bargain for the current price. If you enjoy games like "Starlancer" or "Star Trek: Armada II" you will probably like it.
Rating:  -
...and that gets old pretty quick with the relatively small universe. I think everyone should just face what this game is. It's a repetitive, boring, gameplayless wreck. You spend more than half the game flying from place to play hitting the F3 key to jump in trade link after trade link. Calling this open-ended is a total joke. There really are only three things you can do, you can be a fighter, trader, or pirate. The most interesting, of course, is the fighter. You get missions to do, but unfortunately, every. single. one. is go here, and fight these ships, and possibly a base and turrets. You can always buy better ships and the ludicrously powerful hidden ships, but doing missions nets in a pitiful amount of cash, so you'll be forced to start the game being a trader. Being a trader defines mediocrity. You travel from place to place clicking buy, then clicking sell at another place. This nets the easiest cash so you can buy a better ship of your choice later. The next step up to a flying joke is being a pirate. Choosing this occupation serves no purpose. The point is to destroy other ships, preferably trading ships, and taking their cargo. The cash you can receive this way is pathetic, and if you choose this, everyone will hate you and you won't be able to dock many places. Since the whole idea is to destroy trading ships and hit that button that tractors in cargo, this gets old reeeaaaal fast. You can't even dock on the other ship and hijack it, even when disabling them. If they decide to make a sequel, there absolutely HAS to be a more personal ship, something you can wander around in, and for heaven's sake it has to be bigger than the teeny-tiny ships you get, even the supposedly massive trading ships are pathetically small. I would also love to see multiplayer done better, it would be a godsend if you could board and hijack other ships as a pirate, or just to climb aboard someone else's ship or dock on a trading ship to get a free ride somewhere, and to act as a deployable fighter escort. Rather than acting as a ship, it should be more as acting as a player, one that can contribute to other players. Anything would do. Being able to assign roles to people on ships, particularly trade ships, would be wonderful. A deeper systems management would be great, someone to worry about the engine powers and to fix any malfunctions, someone to worry about the weapons and the power they sap up, and someone to worry about steering. To think about the huge amount of things they could've done with this game, it's sorry to see how short they sold themselves, particularly considering the development time. Next to worthless.
Rating:  -
This game is beautiful to look at and really makes a strong effort at being an open-ended space combat/exploration game. A literal universe of planets, space stations, debris fields, wormholes, ships, and other encounters wait to be explored. Docking areas are all fairly interchangeable, typically comprising a bar, store, supply depot, and ship dealer. You can talk to people for gossip or side-missions, load cargo for trade, upgrade weapons and equipment, and buy new ships.
Now, I say 'effort' because hidden beneath all the trappings of a free-range space game is a very restrictive main mission. Following the main mission of the game is fun and its elements are interesting, but in order to shoehorn you into it, Freelancer made the extremely poor choice of tying it to your pilot's progression. In other words, if you ignore the main quest and light out on your own, you won't ever get any better. Sure, you may win a thousand dogfights or earn a million credits from trade, but you won't advance.
For example, my current character is a mere 5th level pilot. In order to progress to 6th level, he has to complete a certain mission tied to the main quest. This character, however, has already completed over 50 side quests, blown up over 250 enemy warships, and earned about $300,000 in trade and resold looted equipment. None of that affects his level. Now without going up another level, he cannot buy a better ship, nor can he buy better weapons. Ship equipment, like the ships themselves, is tied to one's level..hence he is unable to buy anything that requires level 6 or higher. So he, despite being wealthy and highly experienced, can not get the many advanced ships and weapons he's already encountered in his explorings.
This scheme makes absolutely no sense. It generates innumerable Catch-22s where one must complete a mission in order to fly back to the base you *just came from* in order to get a better ship, yet completing the mission is nearly impossible with the crappy ship you're currently stuck with. It also makes side-missions nearly pointless unless you've already gone up a level and just need some money to outfit your new ship, or perhaps want to alter your standing with a particular faction. I could, using any number of clever tricks, take my weak ship and explore hidden planets, gaze in awe on their awesome vessels and equipment which I can already afford, yet unless I cleave to the main plot I will never be able to get one.
Thus while the game theoretically lets you explore however you want, that exploration is almost meaningless if you're stuck up against one of the level-requirement missions that happen pretty much in succession for the entire game. Even the fight-induced nausea of 10 swirling enemy fighters attacking you (they always all attack you, ignoring even anyone else you may be traveling with) pales in comparison with the knowledge that you'll be back to fight that particular group over and over and over again if you ever want to go up a single level, without the ability to upgrade your ship or equipment until you do.
In short while this game can be a lot of fun, don't be fooled into thinking it's even half the open-ended 'freelancer' game it makes out to be.
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