It's worth that same magazine had their top 100 games of all time listing in it;
at number
23 came Freespace 2
"We pray nightly for a Freespace 3. This is one of the all time great space sims, that still bears comparison to modern peers like Freelancer or X2. Moment to saviour: nervously cruising through a dense nebula searching for a wayward battlegroup, only for the dust to clear in front of a truly terrifying battlecruiser, armed to the teeth with vast lasers and multiple gun ports"
Incidentally, that puts it ahead of (amongst others) Grim Fandango (25), PES3 (26), Quake 3(27), Doom 2(32), Homeworld 2(39), Syndicate (41), Starcraft (42), UFO (50), Fallout 2(53), TIE-Fighter (62), Sam & Max (66)...... it's also the highest ranked space sim, with neither X2, Freelancer nor any of the Wing Commander games mentioned.
EDIT; why the hell didn;t I notice this mentioned in the first post? Must have been the red mist from seeing Derek Sma...nope, can;t bring myself to finish that name.