[AtomicClucker]

Newton haets me and even fighters make damn good missiles.

Finally stopped being lazy and downloaded I-War from GOG.com over Turkey Day and have painfully learned that it isn't Freespace and my 'fighter' is a 160 meter long semitruck with rockets strapped to it, not too mention my PBCs can quickly overheat. Damn you thermodynamics.

And I have not Trebuchets or Alpha One powers. Dang.

Currently, the snag driving me nuts are some of the bugs in the missions that either make into loop-ville or else breaks it entirely. Par for the course, on one mission involving a booby-trapped base and defending a carrier, I find that I've killed more than I can kill, thanks to a loop that keeps spawning enemies. The flipside is that I've learned how to fly better, but nonetheless, I'm sick of killing re-spawns.

The good parts:

Newton and flying an over sized frying pan, the Dreadnaught is not forgiving and it doesn't turn on a dime, and I can die quickly due to a few wrong turns. But she is still a fine ship, just make sure to take advantage of free flight mode to give an enemy on your tail some missiles and a few PBCs to smoke.

Cinematics are pretty awesome, hard to believe that this came out in the late 90's but arguably makes the game more immersive. The briefing cutscenes and in-mission movies help to strengthen each of the points of the overarching plot and also gives plenty of ship porn for the players to oodle over.

Remote Control: In I-War2, I hardly used the game's remote feature to control other ships, in the original, this makes the game a hella lot funner. While it leaves the Dreadnaught a sitting duck, nothing rocks like slicing Indie ships with a super-blaster that is somehow called a fighter. Though in the game's defense, that's what it really is, a giant PBC gatling cannon, rapid fire mode is even more insane.

Plot is pretty sweet and worth surviving through a mission to see, and there are many clues scattered throughout the strings of missions that hint to the larger picture. At first it's pretty cliche, but the execution and story are well told and makes for a very memorable experience when you finish it.

Cons:

Bugs, lots of 'em.

Hammy controls, solved happily in the sequel, but I still slap the keyboard trying to get my lateral thrusters.

Borked cinematics, seems to be a problem with the engines graphics wrapper, but the awesome cutscenes are marred by video issues, I would recommend finding a program to convert the files into a more viewable format so you don't miss out on the ship porn.

I still recommend this game as one of those "must play" titles that falls into the ranks of Freespace, BG series, and others.

[karajorma]

I always recommend that anyone who likes I-War get hold of an Amiga or Atari ST emulator and try Warhead. The graphics are dreadful by today's standards but the game was written by Glyn Williams who later went on to make I-War and in many ways it is a prototype for I-War except that you fly a fighter rather than a dreadnaught.

[Mikes]

Currently, the snag driving me nuts are some of the bugs in the missions that either make into loop-ville or else breaks it entirely. Par for the course, on one mission involving a booby-trapped base and defending a carrier, I find that I've killed more than I can kill, thanks to a loop that keeps spawning enemies. The flipside is that I've learned how to fly better, but nonetheless, I'm sick of killing re-spawns.

You need to listen to the radio chatter and think about what it means... and what you "could" do with your Corvette and it's damaged hyperdrive... in that situation.

Don't wanna spoil it so I'm not gonna say more...

Anyways... it's certainly not a bug, if you stand and fight in that mission then the whole point is that you will get killed. duh.

Plot is pretty sweet and worth surviving through a mission to see, and there are many clues scattered throughout the strings of missions that hint to the larger picture. At first it's pretty cliche, but the execution and story are well told and makes for a very memorable experience when you finish it.

The plot is by far the best plot a Spacesim ever had. I'll just say please really do read that radio chatter or...
 

Spoiler:

... you might find yourself ending up on the wrong side of the war about halfway through LOL.

In any case, I-War was beyond awesome The only mission that i really found a headache was one of the optional side missions where you had to dock with what essentially was a magnetic decelerator (a capure device used to catch cargo coming in on ballistic trajectories from other planets in system) that was 10 times as big as the dreadnaught (meaning your ship handling/inertia went really down the crapper) and had to use it to "catch" an unstable reactor (or something, don't remember anymore heh) before it impacted a station. Had to match trajectories exactly and being just a little big off meant the reactor impacted either you or part of the capture device meachanism that wasn't used for catching cargo...  leading to the expected fireworks. THAT took a couple of tries.

[Davros]

Also has the bestest intro evar all 13 minutes of it (which i never get tired of pimping)

part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7AsRQXOUSY

part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw1m2ZW1u84&feature=related

[Mikes]

Let me add this tribute to I-War with Mal's song... which fits the mood of the game perfectly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7uEF-gDY8

[AtomicClucker]

I finally remembered how to complete the stupid Metallake mission, you fly into the giant tub to win that particular mission, but died from either collisions or my favorite was being killed by a drifting tug that I'd knocked out, but discovered after I was floating helpless in circles until I caught it in the viewport at the last minute.

[Wanderer]

For me it was the same case with both I-Wars, game was awesome... but mixing in the aliens really bored me out.

[Davros]

quick heads-up to the o.p
be aware there are 3 endings

[karajorma]

I got bored of I-War II once I realised I was taking ten minutes of flying through space to get to a mission which would kill me within a minute.

Bad game design 101 level mistake right there.

[Commander Zane]

Or it could just be a bad piloting mistake.

Three Cutter-class Corvettes can space my Tachyon-class Advanced PatCom or Devastator-class Heavy Dreadnaught if I **** up on a turn or a pass.

[karajorma]

Or it could just be a bad piloting mistake.

Nope. It really did take that long to get to the mission.

[Mikes]

For me it was the same case with both I-Wars, game was awesome... but mixing in the aliens really bored me out.

I-War 1 really wasn't about aliens. 

[Kszyhu]

What mission are you talking about? There was one where you were tasked with retrieving some gunstars, and IIRC that one required quite a long flight (tug with LDS 1), but it didn't take 10 minutes. That said, autosave right at the start of the mission would be nice, but lack of it didn't stop me from completing the game two or three times. It's a shame that there's no new games where you can ram a ship at 10km/s and survive, or dodge 10 missiles without a single flare. Or destroy a space station with an explosive container hurled through space at a ridiculous speed. Or kill a capital ship while going around in a circle at 1 km/s, when one stray shot could end the fight.

[Mikes]

The reason that I-War has no checkpoints is that it was standard game design to have no checkpoints in space-sims as it was released.

Frankly... I don't really consider that complaint as "fair" as you could use it against pretty much the whole genre, including both the Wing Commander and Freespace series.
Old-school gamers may even point out that the adrenaline rush during combat is greatly improved by a lack of savepoints that let you instantly recover every single time you screw up.
(Yes, back in the day we had no savepoints and we LIKED IT you young whippersnappers! HAH!.)


Anyways...  I think one should take the release date, as well as the rest of the genre into account when talking about savepoints. It's kinda hard to fault one of the finest, if not the finest, Space-Sim ever made for a lack of savepoints with the rest of the critically acclaimed titles in the genre not having savepoints either.

[Wanderer]

For me it was the same case with both I-Wars, game was awesome... but mixing in the aliens really bored me out.

I-War 1 really wasn't about aliens. 

I distinctly remember the 'Xmas tree' alien combined with the flashing red dot aliens of weird gooey pink space which you needed to visit for some oddball errant. So... no, not in key role but they were there.  As for that matter neither were they really key issue in I-War 2 either until the very end where they were used as deux ex machina to steamroll the plot to predetermined conclusion (coincidentally similar role, except far grander, as in I-War 1).

Nothing can be traced through capsule jump, which served as constant theme in the game until you --> meet the aliens <-- after which anything can be tracked through capsule jump...

[AtomicClucker]

According to one of the lead designers for the project on the GOG forums, they had an epic final act planned where you took the fight to the Corporates in Earth, but had to whip out the Chaos aliens as a cheap deus ex machina when the publisher rattled about funding and release dates. So we got 3 instead of 4.

[Kszyhu]

The reason that I-War has no checkpoints is that it was standard game design to have no checkpoints in space-sims as it was released.

Anyways...  I think one should take the release date, as well as the rest of the genre into account when talking about savepoints. It's kinda hard to fault one of the finest, if not the finest, Space-Sim ever made for a lack of savepoints with the rest of the critically acclaimed titles in the genre not having savepoints either.

I'm aware of that, I'm not blaming the game for lack of savepoints either. Reaching missions took some time, and possibility of  simply reloading at the start of the mission instead of the base on the other side of the cluster would be nice. Besides, being restricted to saving in one place was side-effect of developing the game for PCs and consoles (at least according to wikipedia).

[karajorma]

The reason that I-War has no checkpoints is that it was standard game design to have no checkpoints in space-sims as it was released.

Frankly... I don't really consider that complaint as "fair" as you could use it against pretty much the whole genre, including both the Wing Commander and Freespace series.

I think you miss the point. It wasn't 10 minutes of action like WC or Freespace. It was 10 minutes of the ship flying itself to a destination only for me to get killed after about a minute of the actual mission starting.

When I'm picking up a magazine to entertain myself while playing a computer game then something is ****ing broken with the game's design.

What mission are you talking about?

It was around 10 years ago so my memory is hazy but it was in the last act near the end where I had to fly to another system and I timed it as taking 10 minutes in real time to get there.

[Mikes]

It was around 10 years ago so my memory is hazy but it was in the last act near the end where I had to fly to another system and I timed it as taking 10 minutes in real time to get there.

Are you by chance talking about the second game while i talk about the first? /shrugs.

Just can't recall that mission either. I-War 2 had a lot of flying around in an open world... I-War 1 had just awesome missions.

[CP5670]

I gave IWar 2 more than a fair try but eventually gave up on it. This game was really hurt by the lack of saves, more than any other game I have ever played. That turned what should have been a legendary title into something that was honestly a chore to play. The game had other flaws but they would have been much easier to overlook if it had saves. I was quite impressed by all its innovations though and can appreciate what it tried to achieve, even if it's not something I actually want to play.

10 minutes of flying was actually on the low end of things. I recall more than one instance of taking half an hour to get to a combat section in a mission, and then being killed by a random event or a bug. Perhaps some day, I will revisit the game when virtual machines with state snapshots have better 3D support.