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The best computer game ever made!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 36 / 40
Date: March 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

What else can you do for a game that has garnered as many awards as Freespace 2 has? Why add new missions of course! The result is Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition, a product which includes 20 extra missions as well as some high-res artwork and wallpaper not included on the original CDs. The missions have been crafted by users and are approved by Volition and Interplay.

First the specs: Freespace 2 requires at least a Pentium 200MHz processor and 32MB of RAM with a 4MB 3D video card. Ideally, you'll want to run the game on a Pentium II 266MHz or faster processor with an 8MB or higher video card and 64 or more megs of memory. Because the game has a 1024x768 screen resolution option the maximum install is about 1.2GB of hard drive space. But it's worth it, all of it. Freespace 2 is the ultimate representation of what any computer game should be. From the opening cutscene, which chronicles the Battle of Deneb from the previous game, to the first battle in which a cruiser destroys another with an iridiscent energy beam the game unfolds in magnificent fashion. The plot is set 32 years after the first game and casts you as a pilot flying sorties and missions against a rogue faction of Terrans called the New Terran Front (NTF). The implacable Shivans make a return from the previous game with new ships and weapons of mass destruction. Battles range from the cold void of space to the miasmic shadows of ubiquitous nebulae.

Graphics are handled by a game engine that requires a 3D accelerator card; supported chipsets include the 3dfx Voodoo family, nVidia's TNT and GeForce offerings, ATI's Rage Pro, and Matrox's G200 and G400. Direct3D and Glide are also supported as are EAX for Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Live! sound cards, and A3D for Aureal's Vortex audio chipsets. Force feedback deepens the level of immersion with wrist-rattling effects that will make you swear your den (or whichever room your PC's in) is a cosmic battleground.

Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition is the culmination of excellent gaming. The music, graphics, and missions will have you in awe for hours on end. Get this game and experience it today!

The standard to which others must be compared

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: July 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is one of the best games to come out in the last couple of years. I'm not sure that I would say that the extra missions included in the 'SF Sim of the Year' edition make it worth paying the ten extra bucks, so you might want to point yourself in the direction of the standard edition if you're pinching pennies this week.

This is a space sim (duh); so you want to have a joystick or a gamepad unless you're into punishing yourself. I'm of the understanding that a lot of people avoid or are disappointed in games that are built around a joystick, which is too bad. This game deserves wider sales than it has had, because it's the spaceflight equivalent of Half-Life or Starcraft.

System requirements are also fairly heavy. It can be played in 640x480 or 1024x768 (older Voodoo owners, take note: no 800x600) at 32-bit color, and at 1024 in 32 there still is no game to date that looks better. But you've got to be prepared to throw some hardware at it. I get fairly decent framerates on my Celeron 400 with TNT2 Ultra, but it's the kind of game that makes you want to buy a whole new system just for better play. If you want consistent 30fps and beyond, think bigger CPU.

Enough with the technical details. This is a work of art. As gamers we live for those jaw-dropping moments when you see something that you've never seen before that astonishes you with sheer visual impact and wonder, followed by a rush of adrenaline as you try to survive what's being thrown at you. The first time you see a huge beam of alien energy scream by your puny fighter and start carving up an allied capital ship like a roast, you'll have one of those moments. This is, as people have noted, the closest thing so far to having a movie-like experience in front of your computer, and then some.

This is a great game: The storyline is great, the voice acting is tops, the graphics are eye-popping, the gameplay is white-knucked, the interface is fantastic. It's the new standard for the genre. The only thing I can think of that's a crying shame is that not enough people brought it to a cash register for there to be a true expansion pack. If there's a FreeSpace 3, it won't be for a couple of years...but I'm sure that when it does arrive, you'll be sorry you weren't following along.

This is one of the best games ever.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: February 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Review System: P3-450, 96M RAM, RIVA TNT2

Sweet mother of god. Just thinking about this game gives me goosebumps, bringing me back to long sleepless nights spent in the eerie confines of a nebula, told that SOMETHING is out there, but silently knowing you won't see it until it's too late... Then something appears out of the shadows.

Freespace 2 is without a doubt the best space combat sim I have EVER played, blowing away its contemporaries X-Wing Alliance, Independence War, Starlancer and Tachyon: The Fringe. Graphics wise, unmatched. It's like playing a $100 million movie. Huge explosions, screen filling shockwaves, and incredibly detailed and bump mapped ships. Sound: Excellent. Atmospheric music, good voice acting, and perfect sounds for weapons, engines and more. Value: Great. A long campaign and good multiplayer options will keep you playing for a long time.

But, you say, Starlancer had great graphics! Tachyon had great sound! X-Wing had great value!

Where Freespace 2 really excels is atmosphere. I remember the first time I went up against a capital ship. All other space sims had taught me to believe cap ships were big, sluggish tugs, useless in a fight and just waiting for me to light 'em up with a few well placed torpedoes. Heck, even the first Freespace didn't do much to shake this belief.

So, towards the ship I went in my bomber, thinking this would be a cakewalk. I saw the normal ineffective and poorly aimed lasers flash towards my squadron. Smirking, I armed my torpedoes and fired a volley. As they streaked towards the bridge of the enemy corvette, I saw strange looking flashes surround the torpedoes, then they exploded 500 feet away from the target. Hmm, I thought. Better get closer in.

My ship began rocking as flak from the corvette filled the space around me. This isn't right at all! I thought! This shouldn't be happening! I fired two more torpedoes, and they exploded a second later, flipping my ship around from the force of the blast. Then, I heard a noise. A kind of powering-up noise. I faced the corvette, and I saw a ball of energy growing on its nose. What the....? And then my ship was cleaved in half by a huge pulsating beam of death. I replayed that mission with a new respect for my advisary.

If things like that don't shake you up, I guarantee you the nebula missions will--especially one when you go on a scouting mission with the GVD Psamtik near the middle of the game. I'll leave it up to you to discover why.

In short, buy this game.....buy it now.

poopies

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: May 21, 2000
Author: Amazon User

What else can you do for a game that has garnered as many awards as Freespace 2 has? Why add new missions of course! The result is Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition, a product which includes 20 extra missions as well as some high-res artwork and wallpaper not included on the original CDs. The missions have been crafted by users and are approved by Volition and Interplay. First the specs: Freespace 2 requires at least a Pentium 200MHz processor and 32MB of RAM with a 4MB 3D video card. Ideally, you'll want to run the game on a Pentium II 266MHz or faster processor with an 8MB or higher video card and 64 or more megs of memory. Because the game has a 1024x768 screen resolution option the maximum install is about 1.2GB of hard drive space. But it's worth it, all of it. Freespace 2 is the ultimate representation of what any computer game should be. From the opening cutscene, which chronicles the Battle of Deneb from the previous game, to the first battle in which a cruiser destroys another with an iridiscent energy beam the game unfolds in magnificent fashion. The plot is set 32 years after the first game and casts you as a pilot flying sorties and missions against a rogue faction of Terrans called the New Terran Front (NTF). The implacable Shivans make a return from the previous game with new ships and weapons of mass destruction. Battles range from the cold void of space to the miasmic shadows of ubiquitous nebulae.

Graphics are handled by a game engine that requires a 3D accelerator card; supported chipsets include the 3dfx Voodoo family, nVidia's TNT and GeForce offerings, ATI's Rage Pro, and Matrox's G200 and G400. Direct3D and Glide are also supported as are EAX for Creative Labs' SoundBlaster Live! sound cards, and A3D for Aureal's Vortex audio chipsets. Force feedback deepens the level of immersion with wrist-rattling effects that will make you swear your den (or whichever room your PC's in) is a cosmic battleground.

Freespace 2: Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition is the culmination of excellent gaming. The music, graphics, and missions will have you in awe for hours on end. Get this game and experience it today!

Wow.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: June 27, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It's funny, I picked up a copy of BattleCruiser 3000ad back in the day, and the most entertaining part of it was a trailer for descent:freespace, depicting crips, beautiful graphics together with epic space battles. So I bought that game and played it in conjunction with X-Wing Alliance. I thought the two were pretty comparable in terms of replayability, so when Freespace 2 was announced I was pretty psyched.

But the game blew me away. The mission designs are well varied, the opportunity to be a hero is tremendous, the satisfaction you get launching 8 hornet missiles at a bomber and watching the thing explode into fragments, all while tearing along at high speed, afterburners blasting, across the hull of a capital ship over 2 kilometers in length... it's intense. Even if you don't like the genre, the game is too damn close to a movie. I swear, my older sister, who's 22, and hardly a video game buff, stares at the screen while I'm playing and just shakes her head.

The plot is just as fascinating. I know sometimes reviews of games mention the plot and people say "yadda yadda who cares". But in this case the plot makes the battles that much more desperate and epic.

The gameplay is great, too. For a novice, the controls are relatively easy to learn, and weapons essentially similar in usage, but the depth available is tremendous, with experienced players knowing exactly what weapons present the best balance of firepower vs energy, and which ships do slightly better in a knife-fight vs which ones can take a flak cannon volley and live, etc. The list goes on.

Immersive. I guess that's how I'd describe this game. If you have 20 minutes free, you can tool around and play a single mission. Or the game can keep you going mission after mission, well into the night, until you're on your fifth cup of coffee and second pack of smokes.

Definitely a must-have for anybody remotely interested in these types of games. Or games in general.

The all-time pinnacle of space sim games?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I remember getting an ad for the original Freespace just before it came out back in 1998 and mentally dropping my jaw at the "life-sized" starcruisers exhibited in the glossy fold-out I'd been sent. I bought the dramatically titled "Descent: Freespace - The Great War" and enjoyed it immensely. Not since the release of the first two Wing Commander games had a computer game blown me away in quite the same way.

A couple years later, I was in the minority in hearing about the release of this, the sequel. The same amazing graphics (updated to accomodate Moore's Law, of course) with added features like nebula effects and beam weapons -- something for which sci-fi sim fans have clamored for ages -- are instant buying incentives. But most importantly, these games have a plot worth paying attention to, which, keeping the short attention span of the game playing populace in mind, explains why Freespace 2 sold as poorly as it did. That Interplay (FS2's publisher) barely promoted it probably didn't help much, either (I never got a glossy fold-out about Freespace 2).

It's honestly bewildering to look back on how badly this series apparently fared; the original's main competition at the time was Wing Commander: Prophecy, a shameless and despicably cartoony co-opting of the franchise name that most closely resembled an ugly, speed-addicted old hooker wearing too much makeup. A "Moulin Rouge" to Freespace's "Return of the Jedi." For many, Freespace 2's failure marked the sad end of an era for the genre.

More recent contributions to the field of space sims include Starlancer and Freelancer, two games from the original creators of Wing Commander. Starlancer is the gaming equivalent of the Wing Commander movie (you know, that endlessly terrible suckfest starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Chris Roberts's ego), taking Chris Roberts's strange obsession with World War II in space to an illogical and tedious extreme.

Freelancer has breathtaking graphics going for it, but its plot and gameplay leave something to be desired. It's overreaching goal of creating a living, breathing universe fails since Digital Anvil's idea of a "living, breathing universe" is apparently synonymous with a big game of Madlibs in space, turning Freelancer into a mildly amusing diversion a couple notches above a screensaver. And as far as repetitive shoot-the-monster role-playing games go, Diablo II has it beat quite soundly in terms of both replayability and sheer fun factor.

As a political footnote, Volition (FS2's developer) was forced out of their contract with Interplay a while back. In lieu of being able to make a Freespace 3, the source code to Freespace 2 was made available to the public. Since then, an outpouring of freelance talent has created such interesting projects as "FS2_Open" (largely a graphical updating of Freespace 2 to take advantage of advances in video card technology and processor speed) and the "Wing Commander Saga," a Freespace 2/Wing Commander mod. If the included FRED (FReespace EDitor) wasn't enough to keep one occupied playing user-created missions, the near-unsettling drive of the FS2 mod community is sure to create literally endless replayability for this series.

As far as space sims go, the duology of Wing Commander and Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi will forever sit as kings of the hill in my view, but Freespace 2 takes an entirely respectable second place. It's well worth the lofty prices one is forced to shell out these days in order to get a full, working copy, especially considering the thriving mod community surrounding the game.

Freespace 2 artfully balances style and substance. Volition made a visually-stunning masterpiece with a pulse that, while not as intimately cinematic as the Wing Commander series, skillfully sets the "suspension of disbelief" button in the gamer's mind to "On." This is the real deal. You can't go wrong with Freespace 2, no matter how you slice it.

Raises the bar for sci-fi flight sims...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

If you're looking for a short review: "Amazing, if you've played Freespace 1 and enjoyed it, buy Freespace 2 now!"

But if you're like me and critical about buying computer games, here's more info for ya. Freespace 1 was an amazing game, and while Freespace 2 betters it in every aspect, it isn't a large technological leap forward.

The Good: Ambience. Sound, speech, and music are important to immersing the player in the game. When you get to the first mission in the nebula, you will understand EXACTLY what I'm talking about. While there isn't as much of a storyline as say, Wing Commander 3, the information contained in the pre-briefings and briefings is enough. The chatter of wingmen keep the missions interesting and the dynamic music ensures that you're getting the right background music at the right time. If you are a fan of explosions and action as I am, you are going to love the new capital ship battles. In the previous game, capital ships stood idly by, not necessarily interacting with the mission much. FS2 changes that drastically. Cap ships aren't going to sit there and let you get a target lock anymore. They are equipped with death-dealing weapons such as flak turrents and anti-ship beams. After you die once from them, you will be conditioned to fear the next time you hear them charging up. Much like the end-battle sequence in Return of the Jedi, multiple capital ships will jump into the fray, and the result is pure, beautiful chaos.

The Bad: If you're expecting character interaction akin to the Wing Commander series, you're going to be terribly disappointed. But surprisingly, without an actual main character like Christopher Blair from WC3, the plot moves along fairly well. Instead of watching a character talk and choosing what to say. You actually feel like you're the pilot, moving along the campaign.

Final Thoughts: Like I said before, if you played the first Freespace and liked it, don't have ANY doubts about buying the second, it just gets better. If you're a Wing Commander has-been, download the demo if you have any doubts, all it will take to make you a believer is one mission.

Not to be missed by any sci-fi fan.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is addictive. I've been late for work every day for 2 weeks straight from playing this game all night! The production values are so high I've almost been killed several times by being distracted with the action going on around my ship. Anyone who was ever thrilled by a Sci-fi movie simply must get this game!

Possibly THE Best Game I Have Ever Played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 14, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When I got FreeSpace 2, I thought it was going to be another one of these space sims like Independence War. I was far off. While I-War is a great game, FreeSpace 2 tops it indefinitely. The graphics are the best I have yet seen in a space sim. The gameplay is frantic and action-packed. The capital ships are enormous, with their beam cannons, and laser and flak turrets. Just don't look away from your screen while playing, because your ship will probably be blown away. My advice to any sci-fi fan is to buy this game immediately, and prepare to be amazed.

The best space combat game ever created by human hands!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 12, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game will check the meaning of the word "game" for you.

1.) Deep, well-writen sci-fi plot.

2.) Incedibly dog-fighting action

3.) Capital ships have huge beam cannons that can punch right through hostile ships (awe-inspiring). Bottom line here, the graphics rock!

4.)Dozens of user-made campaigns online. Done with the main campaign? Go download some more.

5.) Amazing battles and dogfights composing of seemingly endless swarms of allied and hostile fighters.

6.) Rise through the ranks, earn medals, and even acquire your own squadren to command.

7.) Great multiplayer modes!

8.) An excellent mission editor which allows you to easily, and quickly, create missions of pro developer quality...without any programming!

9.) Some missions are very non-linear. So sometimes what you do in one mission, effects the next mission (fail to destroy a cruiser? It may just show up in the next battle).

10.) Amazing cutscenes, better than any other game i've ever played.

11.) High replay value.

12.) Heck, everything about this game rocks.

Bottom Line:

This game blows away any other space combat game! BUY THIS GAME NOW!

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