Freelancer (PC)
Not exactly free of the Wing Commander legacy.
By Susie Vee

PLATFORM: PC

PUBLISHER: Microsoft

DEVELOPER: Digital Anvil

GENRE: Space Sim

ESRB: Teen

SCORE:

Back in “the day,” we like to refer to the early ‘90s, one of the premiere brand-name game series out there was Wing Commander. Created by Chris Roberts and occasionally featuring the vocal talents of Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill, the Wing Commander games straddled the line between complex sim and fun arcade action.

Years later, Roberts parted company with the series, but not before destroying its rep with his directorial debut, the Wing Commander movie. Pairing the modern-day Hope and Crosby team of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard with such “real” actors as Jürgen Prochnow and David Suchet, the film was such a tremendous disaster, that it effectively killed the game series as well.

Roberts soon after left Origin Systems, and his new company, Digital Anvil, announced a pair of new space combat games, Starlancer and Freelancer, both of which would revolutionize the genre. In 2000, Starlancer came and went, and was considered a solid if uninventive entry in the Wing-Commander-lite vein.

The much more ambitious Freelancer, which promised almost total freedom of movement and gameplay, was often delayed, and has only now finally been released.

Chris Roberts left the game in mid-development, leading to rumors that it would never come out. But in the end, the final product bears his strong stylistic trademark.

While not exactly ground-breaking, especially after so many years in development, Freelancer is a solid space exploration and combat game. Its main unique development is to swap any kind of flight stick control options for mouse-only steering, leading to a more mainstream, easy-to-play style of flight. The game also offers many more auto-pilot options, to take some of the radium out of standard docking and navigating.

The new control scheme takes a little getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it’s very intuitive.

In Freelancer, you’re a fairly generic looking male pilot, who needs to fly various missions, earn money, and buy new ships and upgrades. Along the way, there’s a somewhat convoluted plot, which you can follow closely or almost totally ignore.

Once you get past the first few hours, the entire galaxy opens up for you, and you can fly around from planet to planet, looking for jobs. The job types include hunting down criminals (the most common type), escorting other ships, mining debris or other raw materials and even smuggling.

While there are tons of planets, factions and ships, everything does start to seem the same after a while. While you are free to roam anywhere you want, and build a reputation as a good guy or bad guy, you’ll still spend much of your time flying from checkpoint to checkpoint, and engaging in combat.

Graphically, the game sports some really nice effects, along with some plain-jane ship design. If you’ve got a fast machine, turning up all the visual options adds a lot to the experience.

While flying itself is pretty simple, you on-screen HUD can be a bit tricky. There are several tabs of targetable objects to click through, from vessels to nav points to floating space junk. In the heart of battle, it’s really hard to keep track of things and get your bearings.

Overall a solid effort, Freelancer is largely undone by its shoddy scripting and voice acting. Stilted readings and generic reactions make every conversation painful to listen to. On the plus side, the female NPCs you run into all seem to be smart gals in positions of power. Too bad the guy you play as is such a lunkhead.

Despite it all, we had fun with the game, and especially liked its gently sloping difficultly level that didn’t make it frustrating for beginners. If an open-ended version of the classic Wing Commander game sounds appealing to you, then by all means, suit up for several dozen hours of Freelancer fun.