Best space shooter sims since 2000?

T

TigerNightmare

Guest
Hello, all, I know that I haven't kept up with this community in years (I used to post as "Race"), but lately I've been having an itch to play a new space sim and I'm hard pressed to think of any I don't own besides Freelancer. I plan to get Freelancer eventually, but what else is out there besides the fan mods and projects? I know the CIC has blurbs about upcoming games, but not much else is said.

I have Prophecy and Secret Ops and plan to replay those eventually, I never finished Independence War Deluxe and plan to get through that and my girlfriend bought me Independence War 2 and I haven't even installed it. Games I have finished are StarLancer and the original Independence War, and of course, Freespace 1 & 2.

So, what's been out there since the year 2000 that is especially noteworthy? List your favorites and why and let me know if there's a downloadable demo or something. I've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm especially interested in stuff with well-written and involving stories (think more Longest Journey or Grim Fandango and less Fallout or FEAR) that have some of the more recent graphics touches I can finally take advantage of, sort of.
 
Freelancer is ok- I mean, graphically it looks good, but the times when you would have to build up money and your opportunities to do so only ranged between "run trade route" or "clear nav point of pirates" were really obnoxious. I wish they would have spent more time on the design of the (pardon the pun) "freelance" missions. (as in, freelance = side missions you picked up, not the game itself in its entirety)
 
Well, Tachyon: the Fringe was very funny, at least because of the voice of Bruce Campell...

Games I played: X-Wing Alliance, Project Freedom (simple shooter, not quite so much fun at all)...

And I-War 2 was beautiful...

So much for the non-WC-Games.

Deacan
 
I-War 2 was good, but its a slow starter, if you can put up with the tedium in the beginning I found it to be quite solid

X3:reunion was pretty good, once again, if you can put up with a little tedium at the start while you get enough cash to get your mitts on the good stuff
 
X-Wing Alliance is nice. It's nothing new, though... if you didn't like X-Wing or TIE Fighter, don't bother. It does make a larger effort to have a good storyline than those other two, and I think its story is actually more immersive than average, but it's still far from being a grand plot in the WC tradition. Same goes for the I-War games, they're above average, but nothing revolutionary.

One game I really like is Terminus, but the graphics are outdated and there is too little of a plot. However, as an open ended space combat game, it's the best since Privateer, hands down (Hardwar is almost as good, but it's not in space). With a longer and more involving storyline, Terminus could be a real classic.

Freelancer? Too linear, too repetitive, unsuccessfully tries to make you feel like it's a dynamic universe where your actions have consequences ("You have just killed a named bad guy, so *now* you can use that jump point! What's the connection? I don't know!" or "You will have to destroy an entire space station... Which has just spawned in this previously empty place for your convenience!"). It is a fun game, but it's too uninspired and shallow to be fun for long. After a few hours it goes from fun to annoying. It tries to hide behind graphics, but they are too flashy, IMHO.

The X series? They're very pretty, and they are good "space trading" games, although the interface is extremely obtrusive. That's all they are, though, trading games. It's good for people who like spreadsheet-type games. Combat is extremely disappointing, inconsequential, and the games are too slow-paced to be fun (this is particularly bad in the original, but the follow ups still don't come close to the action-oriented likes of Privateer either)... This is basically the opposite of Freelancer - after a whole lot of hours, it goes from extremely annoying to mildly fun, in that you will be buying factories and clicking things (in awkward menus) to see your bank account grow richer.
 
Aerial Strike: the Yeager Missions is an atmosphere-based game, but still pretty fun. And, the main character is voiced by Bruce Campbell, I believe. It may be worth a try.
 
Well, Freelancer has a lot of mods designed to lengthen its play-value, so that can extend its life somewhat. And for the X series, X2 and X3 have mods that make them much funner.
 
Spertallica said:
Freelancer is ok- I mean, graphically it looks good, but the times when you would have to build up money and your opportunities to do so only ranged between "run trade route" or "clear nav point of pirates" were really obnoxious. I wish they would have spent more time on the design of the (pardon the pun) "freelance" missions. (as in, freelance = side missions you picked up, not the game itself in its entirety)
Click to expand...

One thing that I misses was that you almost didn't have to build up your money and upgrade your ship. That was one of the most fun things about Privateer to me. But in Freelancer, you can pretty much just get the most basic stuff and then start the story. The story will give you enough cash to keep upgrading. On top of that, the story takes you to regions where better hardware is available and tougher enemies exist. This kind of hurts the immersion. There's no way a maxed out "first quadrant" player could compete with an average enemy from the "last quadrant" of the game. The nations aren't balanced. In Privateer, you could spend as long as you want beefing yourself up in Troy System, and then you'd be able to compete on the front lines of Clarke Quadrant. And then there's lots of area to explore afterwards, but this is mostly fun in multiplayer and kind of a downer solo after you've finished the story. All this being said, Freelancer is probably the best space sim of the last eight years.

PS. We don't own this base, but we have an understanding with those who do.
 
FreeLancer has excellent color balance! I agree with what most everyone has said. The single player has some flaws, although I really liked the story. It's also a very beautiful game, and there's some fun stuff to find exploring. It also works a lot better in multiplayer - it could have been an amazing persistent universe game. There's also a huge base of fans who have modded the game extensively at LancersReactor.com - there's pretty much unlimited FL conversions to explore if you're into that sort of thing.

Tachyon is a fun game, but despite the setting it's more Wing Commander than Privateer. You go through the game in a linear fashion rather than with much freedom. I don't think anyone remembers the ships or the universe or the story, really... but it's worth it for Bruce Campbell!

I installed I-War 2 and didn't get past the crummy intro. Grrrrrrrrrrrr, little kids in space. I can't even remember what Tachyon was about, but seeing a little boy fly a spaceship in I-War 2 still makes me mad.

I didn't like X-Wing Alliance much. In my opinion the Star Wars games got a lot uglier when they started texturing the models... they lost their unique look (and fast performance!) in exchange for some gray goo glomped onto all the ships. Nuts to that. The story didn't really click with me - it *should* have been a Han Solo-styled Privateer game, and cleary began its development life as that... but ultimately wound up as the original X-Wing dumbed down a little and glued to an incredibly bizarre space junk collection simulator.
 
There's that Starshatter game; but it never really gripped me enough to want to play it outside of the training missions.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I installed I-War 2 and didn't get past the crummy intro. Grrrrrrrrrrrr, little kids in space. I can't even remember what Tachyon was about, but seeing a little boy fly a spaceship in I-War 2 still makes me mad.
Click to expand...

You should give it another go - you only play as Young Cal for the tutorial missions.
 
Personally, I wasn't all that impressed with Tachyon, in spite of Campbell's participation. It's horribly linear, as LOAF noted, and to add insult to injury once you finish all the missions in either of the 2 story paths (one of them being rather unfulfilling) you can't even launch into space.

Overall, if I had picked it up in a bargain bin somewhere, I'd not have been too annoyed, but I bought it at full retail price when it came out, leaving me feeling cheated of my hard-earned money (and, yes, at that point the $30 or whatever was "big money", for me).
 
my faves

Actually I have stumbled across this forum as I was looking for more space combat games to play, but here some I really liked:

there is a new game called SpaceForce, which is in fact graphically amazing, and although I have just started to play it, it looks quite immersive.

there are also some free stuff like Vega Strike, Privateer remake, Babylon 5: I found her, FreeSpace2: Source Code Project (which is far more superior visually and gameplay than the original), oolite :)

Spiritos.
 
The story of Freelancer is prettey good until the Nomads show up. Alas, the best part of the game is exploring: it's great to find an uncharted planet in the middle of a nebula. The lack of balance between nations hurts the single player experience outside of the story, however.

Outside of Privateer, the only game that has great balance in that way is the origal Elite: the planets had a tech rating and a goverment type. If you wanted certain high-grade, expensive military stuff, go to a Demorcacy with a high tech level. Want some illegal stuff? Go to a criminal system. But they are all mixed up in a fashion that makes sense. In Freelancer, it's absurd that Liberty has such weak gear for sale, since for the story it's the strongest nation.
 
I have to admit (which will probably get me burnt for Heresay) I like Frontier better than Elite
and the bonus is that its shareware now and runs on DosBox. Yay!
 
Ehm, "Free"lancer is anything but. It's just as linear as a WCP with mini side-quests. The freedom you're given, to go out exploring, or to haul cargo or take on missions to make some money, or to work on your reputation with the various factions.... all that is made absolutely inconsequential or is severely restricted by the terribly poorly developed storyline.

- As Chris said, you're almost never short on money. When you are, you are short not to upgrade your ship to fight tougher bad guys, but to reach the next artificial and absolutely meaningless treshold the game imposes upon you ("You must earn another 10,000 credits to, erm, advance to level 10.")... And even in those cases, you usually only need to make one or two profitable cargo runs, or two or three missions.

- It takes too much killing for someone to hate you, in a way that it's nearly impossible, after doing the initial missions, to get the "bad guys" to like you at any point earlier than when they actually get turned into the "good guys" by the linear story. And in some missions that doesn't even matter, because even if you "grind" your reputation with a faction so that they are now friends with you, they might be scripted to kill you on your next story-related sortie. Heck, from the very first mission in the game, you are already forced to work for a specific faction, ruining your reputation with a lot of other guys, and you are not given the option to simply say "screw this, I'm done with helping the navy kill pirates" (because you are restricted to one star system until you advance the story enough). So, you have absolutely no reason to work on your reputation with anyone - just wait and the story will do it for you. If you do it on your own, you're likely to find that you can't currently buy anything from that faction anyway, or that they're scripted to turn into enemies soon.

- Even if for some reason you made a huge fortune, and got on good terms with the factions of your liking, you'd still not be able to buy all the best stuff, because the universe isn't fully open at any time. You are always restricted to certain portions of space, either by being denied access to certain jump gates, or by having a scripted event in the linear storyline make everyone in a certain area suddenly want to kill you. So, you have absolutely no reason to save money, just play the storyline until you find yourself in the system that has the equipment you want to buy.

- As those areas open up, the single most disappointing aspect in the whole game becomes evident (as others have already pointed out) - each system that opens up is "harder" than the previous ones, with "higher level" gear and better ships available - even though it might not make any sense from a in-universe perspective that a bunch of random pirates in sector Psi-Tango-33 have light fighters that are better equipped than the mighty Liberty Navy Battleships from the first system in the game. So, you have absolutely no reason to go back to previously visited systems... just always keep upgrading to whatever it is they're selling in the last system the storyline took you to. But hey, if you hang on for another mission, the next system has even better stuff, so just don't bother upgrading either, unless you absolutely have to.

- The storyline cheats all the time. It uses a cheap plot twist every other mission. When you run into your first battleship, your underarmed light fighter is just enough to take it down. When you run into your tenth battleship, your overpowered ultra heavy fighter is just barely enough to take it down. Nevermind that both battleships were supposed to be the same class. When you have to destroy a station for a mission, it spawns a station for you to destroy, in a place where you knew there was nothing just a minute before, and you will find out that you can't destroy any other stations that are exactly like that one but which were not spawned specifically for you to destroy (how is that an improvement over not being able to destroy any stations at all?). You are now friends with pirates? Great, now you can buy all the drugs you want, which sell for a huge profit in police-patrolled planets - oh, wait. It did sell for a huge profit in those police-patrolled planets that you can't go to anymore now that you're friends with pirates. For some reason, illegal narcotics are actually cheaper in the police-patrolled planets that you can now visit than they were in the pirate bases you bought them from, which are listed in the navmap as great places to buy it!

Damn, I get all worked up when someone says anything good about that game. Come up with a dozen colorful nebulas and combine WCP's mouse-flight with semi-turreted guns, and your subpar game is now magically considered "pretty" and "fun".
 
Thank you all for your great suggestions. I will look into a lot of these and I actually had a demo for X-Wing Alliance that came with an old Turtle Beach soundcard I bought years ago and I tried it out and it seems fun. I'll hunt it down if the demo holds up.

Descent: FreeSpace is from 1998. I thought it was cool how
your ships started out with no shields and how hard it was to take damage until the squints could reverse engineer Shivan tech.
The amazing FreeSpace 2 (gameplay-wise) is from 1999. I wish they made a third in the series. I know that the multiplayer is defunct now, but I should probably try the open source project thingy where it's on a different server or something.

I hear stuff from both sides on FreeLancer. I think I'll get it if I can find it for $10 or less, even if the intended gameplay is a big disappointment. If it's pretty, mods MUST make it better, right? I also preferred using a mouse in Prophecy over my old MS Sidewinder 3D Pro because my shots were more accurate in my old choppy framerate 166 mhz computer. But replaying it with my new Saitek EVO Cyborg rocks.

What I really hope is that the game where there's a seamless transition between space and atmospheric flight is really, really good. I'll even forgive a mediocre story if the gameplay is stellar.

What I really miss is a game where the pilot you play as actually has something to say besides the occasional "You're going to the vet, kitty!" I remember playing this old DOS game called Realms of the Haunting, which is an adventure/FPS where your character says tons of stuff. If some demon sprouts out of the floor and freaks you the hell out, you can hear Adam say, "Oh, god!" I hated how the other pilots in Secret Ops would carry on a conversation and Casey would be mute the entire time, even during the game engine cut scenes.

Okay, let me ask you guys this: Are there any, ANY, adventure games based on space flight? I-War 1 feels kind of like that sometimes, but I like the fluidity of the adventure game.
 
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