Gameplay
GameplayIf I were to describe Freelancer for what the game entails, its description would not differ in the slightest from that of Elite. However if I were to go into detail, it would take a small novel to describe, so I’ll try and meet you somewhere in the middle. Freelancer is a space trading, real time combat game that just oozes class. The graphics are unparalleled, all being extremely well rendered, with sun flares and explosions like nothing before. The ship you control has immense detail, from engine burn down to rotating gun turrets that turn with the mouse.
The game play of Freelancer has been designed and redesigned until finally you have a ship, which anyone, beginner to hardcore space pilot, can easily control. You see, what’s so different about Freelancer is the control method used, making the game so easy to manage by way of a standard PC mouse!
Why would traditional budding space pilots want to ditch their expensive joysticks to play on a mouse? Well, the only great difficulty I have run into with the game in general is that there are so many in-flight options/weapons/operations that it is hard to keep track of them all. So if you were thinking you could defy this new way of playing space sims and go with your good old joystick after all then you had better forget it. There are so many functions needed in combat that fitting them all into your pre-programmed pad would be awkward and near impossible to do. Mouse and keyboard is the way to play Freelancer.
Into the vastness of space
While that this strange concept to hardcore players sinks in a bit I’ll proceed with the rest of the review in the traditional sense to calm the nerves! Onto the story line: You are Trent, a space ship pilot, you were docked at a station called Freeport 7 when it was attacked and destroyed by-as yet unknown hostiles. However you managed to get to safety, but of course now you have no ship, no money and no friends. The only way forward is to meet up with a complete stranger, Jun’Ko Zane, who works for the Liberty Security Force, and hope she’ll be able to offer you work. She more than happily obliges you, due to the lack of pilots these days (most have been killed in action by other factions).
To start off you are given a ship, not much to look at, not particularly powerful, but extremely responsive. With such a small ship dodging and weaving between enemy fire, asteroids and scrap metal is easy. From here you can decide to go along with the story line or simply head out to the great beyond, and make your own way around the galaxy. The former is a little more enticing to me. It’s not all story though, there are breaks every now and again where you can stop off at a planet or dock in a space station and do a few private jobs to pay the bills. These jobs include assassinating a political leader, destroying a battalion of enemy ships, capturing escaped convicts etc. And as your skill level increases with the game, so does the difficulty of each job. As different as these missions sound, they are very similar in actuality. They are all set in space, where you have to locate the target, then go out and capture or destroy it. Fortunately it’s not as simple as it sounds; a political leader or head of a crime syndicate for instance, would never wander too far without the aid of his/her personal guards.
For succeeding in a mission you are given a reward, and with this reward you can do numerous things like upgrade your ships fighting capability (Weapons platforms, shields, countermeasures and the like) or you can buy other miscellaneous parts like shield batteries and nanobots – essential for in-flight repairs. You could also choose to spend your money on commodities that you can trade with different planets for a profit or you might simply want to save up all your cash and trade the old ship in for the latest model.
Surviving the Wild!
If you want to survive in the hostile and inhospitable universe out there you’re going to need more weapons, better shields and a faster ship, so it’s a good idea to save up a little and upgrade where possible. To upgrade or sell your goods you need to dock at a planet or station.
Not much happens action-wise whilst docked, you can trade, repair, buy and sell, and that’s about it. Actually, most of the storyline happens whilst docked, but only through in-game movies (requiring no intervention on your part), but the real excitement is out in space.
Wait a second, didn’t you just say “No joystick” ?!?
Right, now the hardcore gamers have had a breather I’ll get back to talking about space flight in more detail. As I said the controls have been orientated towards mouse use. There are two types of general flight mode: Free flight and Mouse flight.
In Free flight mode your ship flies on a straight heading and where you move your mouse the gun turrets rotate to aim. To change course in this mode you have to ‘click and drag’ the left mouse button toward the direction you want to go. This is useful over long distances when course corrections are minimal, and is also useful for initiating manoeuvres like docking, where you need to interact with the onscreen buttons but without having the ship follow your direction whilst you click them.
In Mouse flight mode the ship turns toward your mouse - vital in combat manoeuvres. The quickness in your ability to dodge incoming fire as well as asteroids and ships is the difference between life and death. And so the responsiveness of the mouse and your control of it are imperative. Of course whilst in Mouse flight mode, it is extremely difficult to use onscreen controls so you will either need to switch back to Free flight or you will need to memorise all the in-flight control keys. Sounds daunting I know, and it does take a bit of getting used too I admit, but trust me it does work.
Blast them
Yes, yes, get to the weapons I hear you cry. Ok, here we go. The weapons are, in a word, incredible. Different ships allow for different weapons to be mounted based on size and type. The bigger the ship, the more weapons you can mount and the bigger and better those weapons can be. Weapons range from single guns, to rotating turrets, to torpedo and missile launchers.
The weapons systems are separated into groups. The first group are all guns and turrets. All consecutive groups cover the rest of your arsenal including missile & rocket launchers etc.
You can assign an appropriate key to all these weapons excluding group 1. This group is activated by simply right clicking the mouse, and that’s when all hell breaks lose. If you have a large ship with 10 weapons platforms mounted, all 10 systems fire at a single target, quite literally unleashing your entire fury on whoever happens to be the unlucky recipient. Depending on the enemy, it can take between about 10 seconds and about a minute of concentrated fire to destroy a ship (a lot longer for bases and weapons platforms), but it is a rarity for an enemy ship to stand still and let you blow it into space dust. Be prepared to go racing through asteroid belts, around glacial nebulas around planets and suns and through and around space stations and all sorts of debris, whilst avoiding enemy fire and launching counter measures to fend off incoming missiles and torpedoes! As enemies go, they can be pretty smart, and you’ll often be surprised by the tactics they use, and how tricky it can be to actually destroy one.
|
