You play a freelance pilot who makes a living as a mercenary who gets targeted in a conspiracy for alien artifacts. During the devastating war depicted in this game's predecessor, StarLancer (2000), between the two future Earth's superpowers - Western Alliance and Eastern Coalition, the losing Alliance sends, in desperation, five colossal interplanetary spaceships to outer space to find a new faraway world to colonize and live there in freedom. Only four ships make it. They find several inhabitable planets, split the territory between them, form four Houses to rule these new worlds and create large communities similar to the countries that the colonists came from. 800 years later, troubles begin again when a causeless war breaks out between two of the houses and a mysterious conspiratorial terrorist group called The Order begins playing its own game. Edison Trent, a skeptical freelance spaceship pilot, is one of few who survived the Order's terrorist attack on an orbital space station. Trent and the other survivors are sent to Liberty, a hub city on a nearby planet colonized by the settlers from the US 800 years ago. There, he gets hired by a Liberty Security Force commander, Jun'ko Zane, to help her with a smuggling investigation. However, the survivors from the station soon begin disappearing and this time it's not the Order's fault. Trent and Jun'ko investigate and discover it all has something to do with a mysterious alien artifact recently found by the descendants of the German colonists. Now, targets themselves, Trent and Jun'Ko must find the leading expert on alien technology who went into hiding. They will travel through various star systems, find unlikely allies, work together with groups from other Houses and uncover a conspiracy that threatens not only them, but possibly humanity itself. At first glance you may think Freelancer is a gem. A game that gives you lots to do with the ability to do anything you like and your in space. Not in some forest or in some big city. Just space. Lot's to do out there, eh? Not really.<br/><br/>From my experience. You can't be anything you like. If you want to be a trader, you can't. Sure, you can trade. But it feels very hollow because you can only buy the small freighters which don't hold as much as the massive ones you see out in the systems. And to make real money you have to go on very long trips to other systems all the way across the universe. And you don't get the title of trader either. Just freelancer. That's all you are in this. I know, it's silly because that's what the game is called. But i'm asking for a little more depth here. Say you want to be a space pirate and play through the game that way. You know, stealing stuff, causing the government all sorts of headaches. And if you meet up with the end game enemy you can go on a quest to beat them with just the pirates. Sounds anti-climatic but read on and you might not think so.<br/><br/>Being a freelancer isn't all its cracked up to be in Freelancer. About 95 percent of the missions are seek and destroy missions. The people who are hiring you will give you a way point to go to and kill some rebels. And the missions don't vary either. There are assassination, capture a VIP, destroy or capture specific cargo, and destroy weapon platforms mission types. There are even a few missions that even have you destroy space stations. What I have just listed is pretty much all you get from bars and job lists. Seriously, that's it. Destroy, destroy, destroy. No delivering packages or people and no escort missions. It's kill everything.<br/><br/>I've heard people say this game is hard, but it's actually easy as pie. With the exception of the later levels where the enemies get real tough. But aside from that you shouldn't have any trouble beating down foes. Because they generally aren't as strong as you and for the most part, they're dumb. A lot of your foes will travel straight at you. Sometimes they'll get smart and have one of their own act as a decoy so the other can fire at you. But you have to wonder what they're doing because for someone who is being followed by two fighters, they should take a lot more hits than they do.<br/><br/>Freelancer suffers from having too many NPCs to voice. Much like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It has a stellar cast of voice actors such as Jennifer Hale, John Rhys-Davies, George Takei, Christopher Lee, Kevin Michael Richardson, and it even stars Ian Ziering as Trent. Who doesn't really do a good job, but he was OK some of the time. But outside of these people you'll start to hear the same voices over and over again. You can even get the sense that this was suppose to have different accents because you hear words like "mate" and "Oi". And every one of these people are boring. They don't even try to have emotion. They just say the lines and that's it. And this is where Ian isn't at his best. He sounds so much better when his character is talking to Jennifer Hale's character Juni but coming up to some dude in a bar and they sound like robots. Hell, the robots sound better than these people. Least they have a reason to be like that.<br/><br/>Story was kinda intriguing. If it wasn't for the overall bad voice acting and the tons of destroy missions I have to sit through, it'd be even better. Story basically goes like this. You are a survivor of an ambushed space station which was destroyed. You find yourself on planet Manhattan and you meet up with members of the Liberty Security Force Duke and later Juni. Which brings me to another problem with Freelancer. right from the get go your practically working for the LSF. Kinda limits the options doesn't it? Anyway, you come across this artifact and suddenly your being hunted by Liberty and later Rheinland forces. As it turns out. Aliens were slowly taking control over the space colony governments to thin the human population so they can wipe humans out.<br/><br/>The graphics were OK too. Framerate was excellent even when their was heavy fighting going on. There was at times looked like 20 or more ships fighting all at once and the framerate kept up nicely. The effects of the lasers were nice and the view of space was good.<br/><br/>The best part about this that I can think of is just exploring space. Take a break from the killing and going to all the corners of space you can. You'd have to be a die-hard to do it. But if you want something else to do. It's something. And it'd be neat since you don't go to every system during the single player campaign. Unless of course you did that in the middle of it. But like I said enjoy the view because it's pretty good.<br/><br/>A large chunk of this games faults has to do with Microsofts buying Digital Anvil and firing the lead guy leaving the number two man at DA to run things. Apparently Microsoft wanted it done in a certain time frame and it was hurried which lead to a lot of stuff being left out. But it is what is. I've long been a fanatical Wingnut (Wing Commander fan) even to the point of actually enjoying the WC movie, a characteristic that will probably get me flogged by other Wingnuts:). Because of this rabid love of all things WC I was anxiously awaiting Freelancer, and planning to upgrade my computer solely for that reason, since this was the last game that Chris Roberts initiated before leaving Digital Anvil and it was touted, at least in the Wing Commander community to be the new incarnation of WC Privateer.<br/><br/>Anyway the fateful day arrived when the game was released and I quickly snatched up a copy.<br/><br/>My reaction was: Not too bad.<br/><br/>When you start a new game you do have to sit through the opening cinematic that brings you up to speed on events. You are Edison Trent one of the survivors of a surprise attack on Freeport 7. Unfortunately, your ship was destroyed with the station and you wound up riding with the other survivors to the New York system. So you are short on money, clothes, and transportation. Because of this you are forced directly into the storyline, whereas in Privateer you could cruise around to your heart's content before actually starting on the story track. This is perfectly fine since between story driven missions you can take on any combat or cargo running mission you like. Once, you progress to a certain experience level it will activate the next set of missions in the story. The story itself is pretty standard Sci Fi fair, but still enjoyable. The only problem I found with it was that the CGI actors' lips almost never moved. This was only an issue for about the first two or three conversations and then my attention was no longer drawn to their lips. This is pretty acceptable though considering there are a lot of cookie cutter conversation scenes for when you pick up jobs, gossip, or an improved reputation from people in the bars. So the CG actors come off like the old Thunderbirds series but it's not much of a detractor.<br/><br/>The graphics are spectacular as is the environments you can fly through. There are trade lanes available in the "settled" systems that speed up travel between planets and stations in the system but you can also explore the system just using your cruise engine, although the trade lanes do propel you faster.<br/><br/>After the storyline is finished you can continue exploring. There are several unsettled and fringe systems to map and quite a few easter egg ship's and systems, on one planet I found myself quoting a particular Charlton Heston film. There are derelict ships in just about every system, providing a free source for spare parts and commodities. Some of these derelicts are the only place you can get the most powerful guns in the game, although you'll probably be well past the storyline before you can afford a ship that can mount such powerful weapons.<br/><br/>Even if you are a die hard space shooter fan it will get a little old fairly quick, although I still find myself going back to it for a little relaxation. But the game is surprisingly easy to modify so it's just a matter of jumping on the Net and downloading one of the many Mods out there if you want to liven up.<br/><br/>I my personal opinion, it's perfect just the way it is. The stunning visuals of the nebulae and planets is worth the price.
Ilysseleo replied
292 weeks ago