Freelancer Preview

Gameplay

Flyin’ high

Let’s get this out of the way first: even if Freelancer supported joysticks, you wouldn’t want to use one. The way the control scheme works with mouse and keyboard is brilliant. A joystick player going up against the AI or a human opponent would be as crippled as… well… a joystick player in Quake.

Edison Trent's log

Edison Trent's home

A debris field

Freelancer uses a very basic but effective cursor movement system. The cursor/targeting reticle is of course guided by the mouse. If it’s put way off on the right side of the screen, the ship will turn right very quickly. If it’s a little off-center, to the right and bottom, the ship will slowly rotate to the right and bottom. The guns shoot where the reticle is, so they are semi-independent of the ship’s location. This all makes for some extremely intense combat and targeting accuracy will be through the roof. Sim players, like those from IL-2, Combat Flight Sim 3 (review coming soon, I promise!) or even FreeSpace 2 would be at a disadvantage compared to FPS players. Particularly since ships can strafe left and right using the standard first-person shooter WASD setup!

Speaking of Freespace 2

For whatever reason, Digital Anvil decided not to give a nod towards the Freespace games and include massive capital ships with beam weapons. The scale and difficulty of ships is approximately on par with Wing Commander: Prophecy. This does allow the player to actually take a Rheinland battleship down if he has to.

Manhattan!

Screenshot utility takes really dark shots

Wow, nice asteroid field

Graphically, the game is quite impressive. For all the time it’s been in development, it has managed to stay up-to-date. While it won’t be on the same level as UT2K3, Unreal II or Doom III, it definitely compares well with many of last year’s titles. Some things the designers created extremely well, like transitions from open space to asteroid fields.

Back to gameplay

Freelancer’s player-run MMORPG roots show, and proudly at that. There is a ton of exploration to do either after the campaign or during the freeform game. Simple computer-generated missions give players rewards who enjoy combat, or they can discover trade routes.

The campaign features remarkably strong writing and a very good opening scenario which sets up the first half (a mystery), then the story takes a back seat to the frantic action that fills the second half of the game. Even when the campaign is finished, only about half the singleplayer game is done. The world is filled with dozens of bases, worlds and planets that aren’t even on the maps! Then there are all the worlds the player just blazes by during the campaign mode.

Cut down to a manageable size or not by Microsoft management, Freelancer is still a huge and ambitious concept brought to life. Yes, there are issues (like allowing the player to affect permanent change in the world) which the final months of development won’t touch, but these are issues only for those who are expecting the original design. However the final version turns out, this is the first game in a long while and certainly the first beta that had me pulling a Friday Night Redeye Special.