Freelancer

"Cool, a swirling vortex of doom!"

I'm a fairly big fan of sim games, especially the Mechwarrior titles, but I knew of few space sims in recent years...until Freelancer. Freelancer is a space sim that bucks the system in its gameplay, yet manages to pull off a satisfying game experience. Cue review.

Gameplay

Freelancer is...big. Huge. Gi-normous, even. However, it starts out rather small. You begin as a freelancer (wow, who'da thunk it?) who has just escaped from a ship destroyed by...something. Since you're a mercenary for hire without a ship, you're pretty much stuck with the one job available to you by someone who wants some protection on a lane jump. Naturally it escalates from there, into the inevitable battle to save the galaxy.

So how does it play? Very well, actually. The big shocker is there's no joystick support. I'll give you a minute to rant and rave.

...

Feel better? Good. As I was saying, there's no joystick support. Now don't run off yet, it gets better. You control the ship with your mouse.

...

Now, stop crying, it's not befitting a true gamer. So, you use your mouse. For a space sim. How does it work? Very well, actually. You have two modes of movement: mouse flight and...non-mouse flight. The latter means you hold the left mouse button and move the cursor on screen, and your ship will basically follow the cursor. In dogfights you would be better off switching to mouse flight, where you no longer need to hold the mouse button. The right mouse button fires your primary weapons, and you can configure the rest of your mouse to operate the rest of your various means of destruction.

However, the majority of the game is done through your freelancer job. You'll take on missions at any given bar handed out by one of many factions. These missions almost always consist of "fly here/there and destroy all the ships." Seriously, that's it. You get paid depending on the difficulty rating, and with the money you make, you can buy a new ship and weapons. You actually can't proceed with the main game until you make enough money, so more often than not you're stuck in a particular star system, and even on a particular planet or space station, until you've garnered enough wages to move on.

The only problem with this is these missions always consist of flying somewhere and destroying some ships. Oh, sometimes you have to retrieve something after blowing up everyone in sight, but they're always like that. Sometimes the faction will send some of their own ships to assist you, and sometimes you'll go it alone, but there's no variety. There's no defense missions or mining missions or anything that takes advantage of the many systems, planets and factions out there. I know it sounds bad, but dogfighting is what this game is all about (aside from the sinister plot in the background). There's no greater feeling than taking on ten enemy ships by yourself and coming out victorious. Between your guns, missiles, mines you can drop and (on some ships) torpedoes, you have the capacity to cause a lot of havoc with just one ship. It's pure sim action.

Now, as for the factions, they're a tad forgettable. There's a lot of them (it seems like one per system...) and taking missions on for one faction will inevitably piss off another. These factions control various planets and/or space stations and may have specialized weapons for sale that you can't get at if you piss off the wrong one. However, it's very easy to get all factions to either like or tolerate you, so it's not that big of a deal.

The aspect that annoys me the most is the speed at which you move. Your ship is slow, and the engine upgrades you can buy throughout the game don't let you go any faster. The worst freighter flies at the same speed as the secret experimental super-fighter. The most powerful engine is no swifter than the one you start with, which is both ludicrous in concept and excecution. There are jump gates that bring you from system to system and trade lanes to get you around within a system, but those same lanes only exist in the major areas of the game. There are many star systems that are either completely uninhabited or occupied by, let's say, non-governmental regulated factions. In either case, going across an entire freaking star system at the pace the game has set for you is incredibly and annoyingly slow. This is compounded by the fact that several areas are completely devoid of enemy or even friendly ships. You can quite literally read a book while waiting to get somewhere. If you're brave you can alter the code for the engines, but this is really something the developers should've addressed.

Graphics

While the textures and such are now quite outdated, Freelancer still has one advantage: its size. The entire galaxy is drawn to scale, including stars and planets. The latter mentioned are truly massive and some very beautiful to behold. The stars, on the other hand, are big bright lights that will destroy your ship if you get too close. Granted, so will planets, unless you go in through the proper channels.

The game really shows how varied a galaxy can be. Some systems are painted blue with space dust and ice, while others are completely devoid of anything besides stars in the background. One of the more unusual systems has this one huge swirling vortex in the background. I've never figured out what it's for. Eye candy, I guess. Still, it's eerie and a little creepy. I want to fly in it...

Sound

There's quite a lot of voicework in this game, and most of it is good. The only problem is more often than not those voices will drown out the music, which is already somewhat muted. What you can hear is good, however, something soft and low that befits interstellar travel, oddly enough.

Replay Value

There's only thirteen story missions in the single player game, though odds are you'll spend much more time going on freelance missions to earn money. Actually, it's most likely you'll spend the bulk of your time flying around space. Once the main game is over, you're able to fly pretty much wherever you want and explore the many star systems. There's a lot to see, too. Once you're bored with that, you can go online and enjoy the game with complete strangers who have by this time gotten the most powerful ship and weapons and become arrogant and cruel bastards. Groovy.

Conclusion

I don't play a lot of space sims, though not by choice. I can't really find any. Freelancer is one of the better sims to come out in recent years, even though the single player experience is lacking in content. Considering Freelancer is now likely a bargain title, you would do good to pick it up and give it a try. For sim fans and especially dogfighting junkies, this is one sweet ride.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/05/03, Updated 06/05/04