freelancer demo is out

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Damn that game is fun!

I just stayed up to try it out and it's pretty good. Unfortunately, it plays, and feels, too much like Earth and Beyond. I wish it looked and played like Privateer. :) Ahh well, maybe we can mod it hahaha.

Fun stuff. Can't wait to get the full version!
 
True, the navigating part is similar to earth and beyond. But combat is so different and so much better. The control scheme used for combat is very intuitive and after playing the PR beta for the past 2 weeks; I don't miss the joystick at all. In earth and beyond combat was, pick target, warp, turn on auto-fire, press fire button, get a drink, come back and collect loot. Freelancer combat has the same feel as regular space sims but instead of guiding the ship's movements with a stick, it's done with a mouse.
 
This is one game I know I'm going to be active in as far as multiplayer is concerned. Hope to see you guys there once I get the game; trading and lighting fires under your asses will be fun!
 
I wouldn't say that Freelancer has the same feel, my tactics are somewhat different than with a joystick based game, turn to get them in sight and then aim my forward guns, use keyboard controls to strafe a bit, turn to get them back in sights. I'm always going to preffer joystick controls BUT I'm not going to complain about the transition.

Combat may not feel the same but it is enjoyable and if Freelancer is a success it may re-introduce space combat to the masses, this would be much harder to do with a joystick orientated game as the audience would be undoubtedly smaller.
 
Wow, I really look foward playing both games. This is the kind of game I'd love to have 10, 15 years ago... It will be cool now, too.
 
15 years ago, your computer wouldn't have been able to handle Wing Commander 2.
 
Hmm I dunno about Freelancer. Would be interesting how the real game works (story wise and in regards to more items,...)

I certainly dislike the steering and I also don't see what problem implementing a joystick as an alternative steering method would have been. Granted the mouse aiming is better then I feared, but still not optimal (aiming is good, but steering is bad). All in all one can live with it, but the alternatives are still missed. I wonder if I'll try to play FL with throttle and mouse. Hmm - sounds interesting...

What I don't see in any way is that FL will revive the genre. Tell me one innovation? I mean the game probably is fun, but it is more or less privateer 2 and that's it. In no way do I expect this game to cause enough hype as to drag non space-sim players to it. It most likely won't sell more then SL did.

It just doesn't have any real highlights. Even the graphics are rather weak when compared to other recent space things.
 
Well from a tiny demo of only 2 plot driven missions innovation I noticed:

The controls
The method of getting from one nav point to another, those high speed tunnels (I forget their name) let the player feel more immersed in the game as hes never just being asked to assume he went from one place to another. Also the ability to be attacked in the tunnels I thought was damn cool
Also lets not forget theres been a lot more call for an elite/privateer style game than another Wing Commander, Tachyon really didn't have the kind of freedom required.
In game engine conversations (not innovative to games in general but to the genre).

Give it a chance, the previews thus far have been great and I certainly wasn't dissapointed with the demo.
 
Originally posted by cff
What I don't see in any way is that FL will revive the genre. Tell me one innovation? I mean the game probably is fun, but it is more or less privateer 2 and that's it. In no way do I expect this game to cause enough hype as to drag non space-sim players to it. It most likely won't sell more then SL did.

Then I can't wait to buy a dozen for $1.99 to blow up at DragonCon 2006! I do think the multiplayer aspects are innovative. I don't think there's any multiplayer implemented in the demo, but the way it works is that people are free to set servers up that host anywhere from a few to a few dozen (or more, depending on dedication and bandwidth) people who create a new semi-persistent character. You can't transfer these people between servers or offline as far as I can tell, but you can get a mini-community going there. I know half a dozen people or so in the game and we've just sorta hung out, done missions together, etc. The interface for doing group missions, formations and communication and so on are decent, and they really did solve the "autopilot problem" we all imagined for Privateer Online. You have regular combat and afterburner speeds.. You also have (closed scoop) cruise speed that is marginally faster than you can travel at afterburner speed, but you have your weapons off. There are also vast series of "booster rings" throughout known space. If you line up with the rings, you have access to quick travel between major planets and bases. If there are pirates lurking along the route, the booster rings will be disrupted, and you'll have to kill or outrun the pirates or try to get back to another ring (spaced the equivalent of ever several thousand klicks in space). And then there are system jump gates/points which function like in WC. The system seems to really gel and work for all the travel needs we'd want in a Priv game. You've got combat taken care of, two nice ways to traverse "autopilot" interplanetary distance, plus standard WC instellar travel. And then couple this with the free nature of independent semi-persistent servers and you've got something to keep at least a cult following going indefinitely. I do not see this fading away like Starlancer has. I also notice Freelancer has broken GameSpot.com's top ten for most searched for games today, so it may even sell a decent number. If it sells better and ends up with a better following than Starlancer, I do think it will help pull a few people from the "lost generation" back into the space sim fold.
 
my thoughts on freelancer

First of all i would like to say i love all space sims and i miss the wc games and the joystick controls when i first heard that freelancer was mouse and keyboard only i was a little disapointed
and spread the word we should have a joystick option.DA and microsoft had told us they put joystick in then out then in again and then out again because of the interface it would be to hard to pilot and would ruin the game i tryst DA because of some of the pple that worked on freelancer worked on Privteer and wc games so i shut up and waited for the demo then make my decsion on the game now that i have the demo i can tell you this they made the right decsion on the no joystick option.

Another problem was the dev time of the project most games that take this long never come out and get caned i mean 5 years is a very long time for a game look at duke nukem forever its still not out and probbly never will. so i was so happy when they released the freelancer demo and the word it has finale gold status.And now i know why they took so long to make it they made the space so full of life and beuty it makes real space seem empty and dull... <personal note badlands is a great place to fly in the demo lol>.

now that i have said that i would like to say that this will be a new bench mark in the spacesim genre. the controls are great combat is very enjoy able... i recamand this demo and game to everyone....
Blackwolf
 
Did they really make the right decision on no joystick support? Sure, it's not as terrible as I thought it might be. The game's fun and all, but as far as I can tell, the entire game could have been played like a WC game if they decided to implement it that way. There's nothing about the game that implies mouse-play would be most logical interface. Originally they talked about your neural net flying the ship and that sort of thing, but you still fly the ship. You just hold down the mouse buttons and try to keep the cursor over the target. All the icons and everything along the screen can be invoked using keyboard commands (or mapped buttons on a joystick). I really don't see anything about Freelancer that couldn't be done perfectly well with a joystick, or why they even chose to give it this mouse interface at all. Yeah, it works, somehow they magically pulled it off.. but it's like they pulled off this crazy mouse driven space combat sim for the sake of making a mouse driven space combat sim.. why?
 
Originally posted by ChrisReid
Did they really make the right decision on no joystick support? Sure, it's not as terrible as I thought it might be. The game's fun and all, but as far as I can tell, the entire game could have been played like a WC game if they decided to implement it that way.

2 words:
"joystick patch"

2 more words:
"open source"
 
Ouch, Freelancer would be insanely hard with a joystick! Not to mention the motion-sickness one might get from all the dogfights... Sure, mouse control isn't my cup of tea, but in that game I'll... have some Issues.
 
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