You know the guy that you always see in clubs waving his hands around like a genetically modified monkey on speed. The one that’s obviously high on some weird concoction of drugs and booze, well were said guy to be a space-trading PC game, he’d be Freelancer.
Despite possibly one of the worst opening paragraphs in journalistic history you get the point. Freelancer is a busy game with lots going on throughout the game. Simply put, every single second of playing time in Freelancer is full of things going in directly and indirectly. It takes ‘making the most of the time we have’ to a whole new meaning.
To give you a brief introduction to those of you who haven’t heard about Freelancer it’s the latest attempt at bringing an Elite style open-ended space trading game to the modern PC. Developers Digital Anvil aren’t content to just plop an open-ended universe in the game, but have also written a largely interesting, well-written plot to bring some atmosphere to the overall experience, and you know what? It works.
First impressions are important in all walks of life, and the opening sequence to Freelancer is one of the best FMV introductions in years. Alongside this the cut-scenes throughout the game using the in-game engine are well directed, written and acted, whilst the plot is interesting enough to keep you interested throughout.
Ultimately, however, the plot simply doesn’t last long enough. It’s not a major problem as whilst the story is being played through it’s great, and we’re big believers in quality over quantity yet when it does finish there’s very little incentive to continue playing the game.
This isn’t helped when you realise quite early on that each new planet is simply a slightly different version of the previous one, but maybe in a different colour. The same goes for the missions with all of the missions being very similar regardless of which company you’re carrying out the mission for, pretty much the only thing that changes are the names. This means that carrying out an assassination for one company is exactly the same as carrying it out for another only the names are different.
Had the story been stretched out further then this wouldn’t have been such a problem, but seeing as the game’s been in development for some five years now it gives the impression that Digital Anvil just wanted to get the game out into the shops, as well as not having the resources to plough into a longer storyline.
The game gives the impression of giving you tons of freedom but in reality it’s a very limited experience. There are at most only five different types of missions and as we’ve already mentioned taking a certain type of mission with one company is almost identical to taking it in a completely different star system with a completely different company.
But, and it’s a big but, a little like Vanessa Feltz if you will, despite it’s shortcomings, it’s still absolutely great fun to play. Some games allow you to look past their weaknesses as they have so much more to offer, and thankfully Freelancer is one of those games.
The game gives off a very absorbing atmosphere and has that ‘just one more go’ feeling to it. You know that you’re not free to do what you want; yet you’re quite happy to ignore it, and carry on playing. When a lack of freedom is this much fun, who wants to be free?
As we mentioned in the ludicrous opening paragraph, there’s always stuff going on, even if it’s just the same stuff over and over. It’s like putting your favourite single on repeat and just listening to it over and over again.
The rest of the game is fairly self-explanatory. It has good graphics without being brilliant. The music and sound effects are great, and the controls and interface are all very easy to get hold of. There’s been a lot of arguing over the lack of joystick control, yet the mouse control is by far one of the simplest and easy to get hold of that I’ve yet come across.
It’s not perfect, but it’s just so much fun that it doesn’t
matter. It’s not the holy grail of space trading sims, but for the time
being it’s perhaps the best one of the market and for that reason alone
fans of the genre would be as crazy as a genetically modified monkey to miss
it.
Flawed but fun
