[Nemesis6]

For some reason, I'd completely missed this series of games. It was apparently released a few years before the first Freespace game. It looks nice diversion, so I'm gonna see if I can somehow get a hold of these games.

[Angelus]

These games s'port newtonian physics and stuff, that's fun.
Also, these games are infamous for their difficulty level.

[Astronomiya]

gog.com is your friend here.  They have both I-War 1 and 2 for $5.99 US apiece.

[CP5670]

I played IW2 for the first time a few months ago but gave up a third of the way into the campaign. I really "wanted" to like this game as it has numerous original ideas and is unique even among space sims, but I found that the difficulty and lack of save games ultimately made it a chore to play. Some missions are absurdly hard and you also often die due to random events and bugs, which can mean replaying the last 20 minutes (most of which consists of just moving between places) to get back to that point.

It's worth trying out though, as there were a lot of things in it that impressed me. It's like a much more hardcore version of Freelancer. The graphics still look pretty decent too.

[NGTM-1R]

It's worth trying out though, as there were a lot of things in it that impressed me. It's like a much more hardcore version of Freelancer. The graphics still look pretty decent too.

One could also make the argument it's a slightly-less-incomprehensible version of Battlecruiser Millennium. I'd personally consider that a stronger argument, considering the way I-War likes to kill you with bad luck.

[karajorma]

Some missions are absurdly hard and you also often die due to random events and bugs, which can mean replaying the last 20 minutes (most of which consists of just moving between places) to get back to that point.

This was my biggest issue with the game. Flying for 10 minutes to get to the place a mission starts only to die 30 seconds into the mission is frustrating to say the least but when that happened so often that I was actually pulling out a book to read during the travelling sections I realised that this was a game I no longer wanted to play. 


And I speak as someone who absolutely loved Glenn Williams' original game Warhead (which the I-War games are based on).

[Klaustrophobia]

would i get crucified here if i said i'd never played freelancer?  by the time i even knew about it i could barely find any official mention of it anywhere, and i'd seen it referred to as the "horrible, gurgling death of sci-fi sims" more than a few times.

[Mongoose]

would i get crucified here if i said i'd never played freelancer?  by the time i even knew about it i could barely find any official mention of it anywhere, and i'd seen it referred to as the "horrible, gurgling death of sci-fi sims" more than a few times.

If you are, I'll be right in line behind you. Though I think GameTap has (or at least had) it in its catalog, and since I have a subscription, I should probably give it a shot.

[karajorma]

Freelancer and Starlancer aren't anywhere near as bad as they're made out to be.

They're not Freespace, but then, what is?

[Hades]

Starlancer was pretty good, but I found Freelancer (mainly mods) to be extremely dull, the vanilla game is ok, but mods usually make it boring because the only way to make money is trading, which is essentially moving halfway across the map and back...

Singleplayer's kinda dumb in some areas of the plot, but otherwise I thought it was pretty ok.

[Davros]

Hail the mightyness of the I-War intro (all 13 minutes)

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

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

[Thaeris]

Dear God, that is epic...

 

[Unknown Target]

It really was a good game - IMO it was the best free-roaming game ever made, probably the most true to the old Elite games and stuff must have been. If you want to get an idea of it, it's pretty much Serenity and you're a pirate instead of a hauler. In game terms, it's like a single player EVE online.

Unfortunately the very long pace, lack of random events or any "jobs" that you could pick up in between the main story (I didn't find anything) really killed it for me. That, and I gave up on the SP JUST when it started to get interesting (after a warm up phase of almost 10 hours or something), because after playing for the last 2 hours of traveling between points and picking things up (not even doing anything exciting, just kind of droning on, selecting nav charts, etc), I died due to some random freighter jumping on me and getting a lucky missile off.
Bam. Dropped back to nearly 2 hours of gameplay ago because I didn't save (because you can ONLY save inside your main ship).

[CP5670]

Yeah, I think what really hurt IW2 was the lack of save games, as this amplifies all its other flaws with the difficulty and randomness. They would have been far more tolerable if you could save any time. You get attacked by randomly spawning Marauder wings frequently, and they aren't just a nuisance and often destroy you. They can come in at any time, even while you are docked or in the middle of a mission, and sometimes break the mission scripting. I also ran into a bug while entering jump points where your autopilot tries to jump even if there is another ship in the way, resulting in your death (this even occurs with the invulnerability cheat). I stopped playing after this happened twice, after spending a hour each time to get that far.

As karajorma said, after a point the game starts to feel more like work than fun, which is a real pity as it had all the ingredients to be a classic. The gameplay has some serious depth with the 6DOF Newtonian flying mechanics and all the different ship subsystems you can use, the story and universe are very detailed and the missions have a lot of variety in them.

As for Freelancer, it has its issues but is highly regarded on all the other forums I've been to. I think we've been spoiled by FS around here.

[Sushi]

Freelancer is actually pretty good. It's definitely "sim-lite" compared to FS or I-war: more of an action RPG than a sim. One of the things it did right though is make the universe feel very alive and full of stuff. The combat was reasonable, and the game was very accessible and easy to play. Playing online is the closest I've come to enjoying an MMO. They've got a pretty strong community still: see http://discoverygc.com/forums/index.php?act=uportal for an example.

It's too bad the Freelancer source code was never released. Despite all of the love for it, the lack of source code access severely limits what kinds of mods can be made for the game. If code had been released for Freespace 2, it would probably have seen the same amount of attention and tender loving care.

[Hades]

Frankly, I always found Discovery to be boring, the only way to get anything that isn't a vanilla fighter is to trade between systems and it is boring, not to mention some of the rules for the Discovery server that most people play are are in, a lot of cases, asinine, as is the 'plot'. Discovery always felt the same as vanilla, just with a few more ships to fly.

[zookeeper]

What's this about IW2 being difficult and random? Sure, it wasn't easy, but I don't recall it being frustratingly difficult or particularly random either, and I don't count myself as an expert player. If I recall correctly, enemies almost always appeared far enough that you could run away if you weren't up for taking them on, and there weren't nasty instant-death surprises.

I'm sure I died near the end of a mission plenty of times, but I guess the general awesomeness made up for it... Best space sim I've ever played without a doubt.

[Flaser]

Flying through jump nodes on manual also helped, as did playing dirty (as you should), and shooting up the escort of freighters from behind when they jump out of a node. I only used the autopilot for travel between jump points/stations.

[Thaeris]

I don't think I'll be able to buy any new (or rather, new old) games for a long time to come, but I would love to get a hold of I-War, especially now. That said, grabbing I've Found Her might fill my Newtonian physics needs. Then again, I've got a copy of Starshatter that has been collecting dust - that might be a better place to start first.

[Flaser]

I-War & Defiance - 6$
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_deluxe
I-War 2 - 6$
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_2