A better Wing Commander, hurray!
Pros:
Good graphics, more sense of "battle", multiplayer, refined gameplay
Cons:
Can't think of any, really!
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Freespace (short for Descent Freespace: The Great War) technically has nothing to do with Descent, but they need to borrow the name to get themselves "established", and they sure did. This game is what Wing Commander should have been.
Freespace, at its heart, is a space dogfight sim. You have the variety of fighters and bombers, and you perform escort, space superiority, fighter sweep, anti-ship strikes, patrol, and more. The weapons are varied, and the AI is tenacious, but nothing really new. All that had been done before in Wing Commander. What's special about Freespace is the way the whole thing is packaged together, and a much better sense of "scale", as the ships and bases in Freespace are HUGE (a couple kilometers long is not uncommon).
Freespace and Wing Commander:Prophecy (the latest) are about equal in terms of graphics. Both have quite decent special effects. I think the music in Wing Commander is a little better though.
The way Freespace stands apart is through the mission packaging. The ability to call in reinforcements (usually available) can impact your score, but then you won't fail the mission. The repair ship feature is nice (repair and resupply during the scenario). There's also more fighters flying, thus giving you a better feel that you're not alone, and it's not "you vs. the universe". There's also several mid-mission objective changes. If you fail the mission 5 times, you're offered the choice of bypassing this mission or try again. Now that's freedom!
The game is also very customizable. Even individual HUD features can be turned on-off, and there's an onscreen cue to the objectives that you have or have not completed, thus there's really no question on what do you need to accomplish when/where. There's plenty of options to optimize your 3D performance and other settings.
Freespace also has great multiplayer support, through its own server and Parallax Online, where squadrons and wings have been organized since the initial launch. There's even a full mission editor included, where you can build your own missions and campaigns.
The backstory and the plot are pretty usual, though overall, this is one game that the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts. I can't really think of anything bad about this game, and that alone is worthy of a recommendation.
With the "gold" package called "Freespace Battlepack" as low as $10, you have to pick this up. Think of it as practice for Freespace 2 (already in stores).
