Freelancer

"A great game, but the sad news of death stings the air."

This is a game that makes you wonder when the next one will come out. The game goes through a not too long but not too short campaign that takes you through a very detailed universe filled with pirates, secret wrecks, and hidden bases.

The campaign is done very well, for the most part. The most annoying thing can be the wait in between. After every mission, you must find jobs to rank yourself up, before you can do the next mission, which can get old after a while. However, there are so many different ways to rank up and so many places to go that if you do something other then the repetitive missions at one base then it won't matter if your doing a fixed mission or just going around at random, your still having fun.

The graphics, even it being an old game, are very good and don't have much of an effect on gameplay. When your in space it's a bit hard to tell that there are some very 2D graphics in the game. All you need to know is if your going to run into that rock in two seconds or five.

After the story is over you can jump into the multi-player gameplay which is online or in a LAN set-up. This alone is set up well. You simply click multi-player and choose either LAN or online. When you click online it will show all the online servers you can connect to. It shows your ping, how many players are on the server. You can also narrow down your search to what you are looking for by using the filter.

Once you enter a server, you will be set up with a ship and an amount of money. Depending on the server, you could start in a startflier (One of the worst ships in the game) or an Eagle (Debated to be the best ship in the game) Or somewhere in between like a Drake.

Chatting in game is easy, and if you want to you can team up with other players and do missions and even trade money and weapons. All of this is easy to do once you find out how.

Due to the recent loss of the Microsoft mercy (They shut down the global server <_> ) you have to find other ways to connect to the servers that are left. To do this you can simply do a google search for freelancer global server workarounds.

The game is a great game to play. It makes people who have never liked space-simulation games to take a second look at a game they never thought they would pick up.

Some sad news, however, is that the game is dying, like all games do. And the possibility for a second one is next to nothing for the fact that one of the people who helped make the game (Digital Anvil) went our of business when making the second one. So don't try to look for one. Though I wish another would come out, it's the sad truth.

So get out there while you still can people! Don't let this game die yet. Let's get it to go out with a nice bang.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/08

Game Release: Freelancer (US, 03/03/03)