…expecting the links and smileys and words to start shooting at me. I can still hear the music. My brain is now totally tuned to playing freelancer. For hours every bit of sensory input will be processed as if it is part of the zooming universe of the game. The edges of my vision all seem to be moving outwards (as if my bedroom is the galaxy and I am traveling slowly (relatively speaking) towards the planet shaped like a computer monitor. Individually the words and other elements of the screen are twirling around, as if trying to avoid my guns.
Not making any sense? You play freelancer (or any intense computer game for that matter) for 12 hours straight! Then maybe it will.
(The game starts off good, and gets better. And just when you think you are nearing the end it becomes apparent they you are virutally still at the beginning)
It’s not much to look at (especially the on-world graphics) And the dialogue between characters can be a bit silly at times. but it is a vast and adictive game. And it has John Rys-Davis (Gimly) as the voice of one of the characters.
It is almost identical in style (although not in just about every graphical way) to ‘Privateer’ A game of many years ago, which I also loved. And I am led to believe that both are a ‘copy’ of an even older game called elite or something.
(ack, my brain is still trying to use chase-the-fast-dodging-ship-guns-blazing-mode thinking to type this post).
I never really liked the game, it was just a matter of charging headon into the enermies with guns blazing and dropping mines. Then grab loot and refuel and sell loot. Regrade when possible.
Repeat this for about 30 hours and that sums up my Freelancer experience.
You obviously didn’t progress through the ‘main’ missions Rabid_Squirrel.
If you lack patience it can seem repetitive. But it is really all about doing secondary missions to get enough money to progress in the primary missions.
I just played the demo that came with this month’s issue of PC Gamer magazine. I agree, it’s pretty good. I’m temped to go buy it, even after only playing an hour or two.
Yeah I did finish the actual plotline (finished the [deleted] sphere and got the cheap Very Heavy Fighter, you’ll see later), but it nevery really gotten past the stage of going to ‘x’ and blowing stuff up. Sure, some of the set pieces were nice and the production values for the voices were excellent but I just found the dogfights were not very challenging. I suppose it was in part due to me powergaming though it by building up thick wads of cash in the midgame (huge payments for the seconday missions in the 3rd system you go to, hint, hint), but it was also neccessary due to the lack of funds given for repair mid mission.
Admittedly I’m more into space sims (one of my favs is Freespace 2) rather than open space based space games, and start screaming in fustration over the time spent walking for the decent trade routes after the plot has finished. It’s not a bad game by any means, but perhaps I’m spoilt by huge amount of stuff to do in GTA3, GTA3:VC, Morrowind and DiabloII and tend to judge open-ended gameplay by those standards. Of course with any game, YMMV
Had a 17hr Counter-Strike binge yesterday. Stopped at 7, me and friend went down stairs, and watched TV.
I kid you not when i say my hand moved to hit reload when i stopped using my hands. I didn’t notice i was doing it until my mate pointed it out.
Sometimes a scare myself.
Oftentimes i dont think crouching would be a bizzare thing to do as i walk around the house.
Actually Rabid_Squirrel Having completed the level with the aliens with the transparent blue ships (yet again my memory fails with names) I now agree with your original point.
I thought things would get deeper after that, with access to hyper-gates and massive new systems. But it was a bit of an anti-climax - “right. get back to doing smalltime jobs. oh, and by the way, you don’t get paid for the saving of the whole universe that you just did”.
I thought “right, well a bit disappointing, but after a job or two I’ll be back doing story missions”
Not so, I think I have done about 10 ‘jobs’ now, each increasing the ‘level’ I am on. but none leading back into the story.
It had got to the point (before it was time to get ready for my real job) where I was flying to the ends of all the trade lines that showed nothing on the map(s).
Having said that - I am still enjoying the game, and will probably spend another 6 or 7 hours playing, next time I turn it on. Qis That reminds me of when I first played quake [for many hours non-stop] afterwards, head spinning, I had huge urges to dive behind walls or unleash rockets every time a family or friend entered the room.
The docking rings usually ‘grab’ me pretty far away. I didn’t know it was possible to go through them manually. How do you do it?
And is it possible to get into the trade lanes manually? Because it can be boring waiting for the auto-pilot to line up with it at ultra-slow.
It’s amazing how quickly you can destroy a battleship (the ones belonging to the transparent-blue-ship-aliens) in a fighter, with the right guns (I never use missiles)
It’s been a while since I’ve been that addicted to a game (but now I’m going to have to check out Freelancer), but do NOT play a racing game for a few hours and then drive down to the 7-11! Don’t do it!
My biggest, and pretty much only, complaint with the game is that the last mission was insanely easy. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that unthreatened during a final battle for a long time. (Admittedly, the whole “rescue the president” mission earlier sort of made up for it, since I somehow lost all my shield batts while blowing up the satellite instillation at the very beginning…thank goodness for autosaves. ;))
Other than that, though, it’s been fun to try to make a character and stick to it. Personally, I tried to be as bounty hunter-esque as possible, which meant only accepting certain mission types, and making enemies out of lots of criminal factions. Made it kind of wierd when the main plot events occurred…
The other thing I’ve found particularly amusing was flying into independent systems, and destroying wave after wave of Xeno ships, in order to make everyone else not hate me. Hey, it worked (and I finally got my Sabre…my precious, precious Sabre…precious…precious…drool).
Do we have a Star Control fan here? That’s one tactic I don’t think I’ve used yet, and besides, my roommate might look at me kinda funny if I started shouting “Jerk! Nerd! Dweeb!” in a funny voice at my computer.
The ‘hot jumping’ really isn’t that hard, just manually fly to the middle of the jump point (after guessing which end to go through), and hit the docking button (…umm… F3?) when you’re about 100 metres away. Saves the bother of waiting as you can go all the way in cruise mode. Just watch out for the collisions and burning up in the planet’s atmosphere (yes, it’s possible).
Shame you can’t barge your way in front of the queues in the interstellar jump nodes.
Ah, makes sense now. I will just have to re-define the goto key (I am left-handed so have redefined pretty much every single oft-used key in the game)
Who, apart from those who haven’t played the game, *hasn’t wondered what happens if you try to fly into the planet manually. I tried to fly into one of the suns too. Got warning messages about 10k away.
While playing Vice City, I kept finding myself keeping an eye on the other cars on the road…so I could figure out if they were the ones I needed to steal. It was a little disturbing.
