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.