Introduction

Developer: Volition
Publisher: Interplay
FS2 official page: http://www.freespace2.com
FS2 demo download page: http://www.interplay.com/freespace2/downloads.html

High Expectations

As you all know, I've been pretty pumped about FreeSpace 2 since I did the FreeSpace 2 Preview. Day after day, my expectations rose and got higher, and quite honestly I let them get way too high. Why did I do that? Well, quite simply, I became a PR tool and, all niceties aside, I'm a critic. After lawyers and politicians, we're the lowest form of life on the planet. Some writer once said something to the effect of "A critic was someone who wanted to be a writer, but being miserable at that, he took his vengeance on legitimate creators."

Fighting in nebulas gives that glow

Torpedoes away!

So yeah, you could say that I was ready to tear into FreeSpace 2 like a starving wolf jumps a herd of sheep… =P (it's all in good humor folks, come on, we're not really like that. :) (The rest of us aren't, but Jakub sure is. -ed)

Then CalBear tells me over ICQ a few days ago that Interplay has sent off FreeSpace 2 review copies out and I'm quivering with anticipation over it. Two days later a small little package arrives, and there, lo and behold, are 3 silver discs… 3 beautiful silver discs containing what may be the first game to tear me away from Irrational Games' baby, System Shock 2. Within a few minutes the game is installed and ready to go.

Missile destroyer

The interface selection screen

The installation itself was a breeze, customizable and with the default setups being good choices for inexperienced users. About the only thing to worth noting is that a full install is quite big indeed. My custom install with (I think) everything but movies ran up to 800MB! Impressive to say the least!