[soilder198]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/freespace2

Read this guys review and tell me he isn't an asshole. 7/10 for the final score??

[Lorric]

Heh. That's pretty mild compared to the  DYNASTY WARRIORS RAGE  I have for reviewers 

He seems to think it has to behave like Wing Commander or it's not right. It doesn't.

Maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but:

"The only real innovation in the controls department is a "match speed" function, which is totally useless in practice. What they really needed was a "match velocity" function, matching your target's speed and direction."

It sounds to me like he wants the ship to not only match the ship's speed, but also it's direction, as in follow the ship for you. Where's the fun in that? What's the point of being a pilot if the ship flies itself? Star Trek Invasion has such a mechanism, and I never use it.

[deathfun]

This was written in 1999
I give people who write things in 1999 far more credit than those of today

[-Norbert-]

That he claims that match-speed was new tells me all I need to know about that guy. FS2 might have improved upon the concept by implementing an auto-mode for speed matching, but the match speed command was done by other games before (like Freespace 1 for example)....

And since when did games absolutely need to implement new and innovative features to be good? The wing commander or command and conquer games didn't exactly invent the wheel with each part either and were still very successful.

And I think with "match velocity" he means to match not the actual speed of the target, but the relative speed between you and your target. But that can't work in practice.... it would mean to set your engines in reverse, if the target comes directly at you.... and slowly flying backwards on a battlefield full of hostile fighters, AAA-beams and flak is suicide (unless you play on very easy). Typical brainless ranting without first thinking things through.

[The E]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/freespace2

Read this guys review and tell me he isn't an asshole. 7/10 for the final score??

There are a lot of valid criticisms in that review. However, what we regard as one of the major points in FS2's story these days is assumed to be an unintended thing by the reviewer:

But playing the game makes you realise just how little effect any one pilot has on a war, and how futile and dehumanising the whole thing is. I'm sure it wasn't meant to, but there you go...

So there's a misunderstanding of the narrative at a fundamental level, and the review as a whole was colored by it.

[Fury]

Wait, you're complaining about a review that was published, let's count here... 14 years ago? About a game that was published, let's count again... 14 years ago. The same year as X-Wing Alliance was published and only two years after Wing Commander: Prophecy. Let's be fair here, FS2 doesn't really have many improvements over FS1 which was published a year earlier. Biggest improvement it had was support for higher resolutions.

*sigh* You people.

[Arpit]

Biggest improvement it had was support for higher resolutions.

And NEBULA MISSIONS.

[Deepstar]

Biggest improvement it had was support for higher resolutions.

And NEBULA MISSIONS.

And BEAMZZZZ

as well i think that FS2 had better and more varied missions.


But i think many people like the FS1 Story more and the story telling was better because of cutscenes like Hallfight and that the Ancient Monologues does have a connection to actual events in the campaign.
But i have to say, i do not like many missions from FS1 like i do from FS2.

[Dragon]

I always preferred FS1, though FS2 did have a better engine. I agree with a lot of criticism from this review, actually, he pretty much mentions all reasons why I'm not really an FS fan. Thankfully, we've got a lot of mods that fix all that, and BP even manages to fix most of the problems with canon, without actually changing anything.

[Killer Whale]

fRESSPACE 2 WAS BETTER THAN fRESSPACE 1 YOU KNERDS. yOU'RE AN idiot!! iF YOU SAY OTHERWISE!!1!

[Phantom Hoover]

Completely true, although I don't know why you've capitalised it so weirdly.

[The E]

Because CAPS LOCK MAKES ARGUMENTS ALL BETTAR!!11!!! Don't you know?

[General Battuta]

fRESSPACE 2 WAS BETTER THAN fRESSPACE 1 YOU KNERDS. yOU'RE AN idiot!! iF YOU SAY OTHERWISE!!1!

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

[An4ximandros]

 Freespace shucks! Ie onlye hiere fore mods!

[Drogoth]

FS1 was much better then FS2.

Haters gonna hate. The story and emotion in FS1 were far superior. Between the desperate, back to the wall struggle for survival and the ancients cutscenes, the shivans put the fear of god into you. The Lucifer wasn't just a big ship, it was as far as we knew absolutely unstoppable. And the visions of the ancients made it clear to us just exactly what the price of failure was. No matter what glorious victory you scored the shivans just kept coming. Vasuda Prime was just meat through the shivan grinder, and nothing suggested Earth would be any different.

FS2.. the majority of the battle with the shivans is fought in Shivan, not Terran/Vasudan space. That lowers the stakes. Additionally, we'd stopped them once. By the skin of our teeth perhaps, and at terrible cost, but it had been done. That changes the face of the enemy significantly.

Furthermore, the Sathanas was never as intimidating as the Lucifer. For this simple reason: It can be destroyed, and that is clear from the get go. Only its massive size and large firepower made that impractical. Until the very end of FS1 the Lucifer isn't just hard to take down - it's impossible. And you KNOW this, beyond a shadow of doubt.

The psychological power of the story in FS1 blows FS2`s out of the water.

[Arpit]

Between the desperate, back to the wall struggle for survival and the ancients cutscenes, the shivans put the fear of god into you.

Thats what they did in FS2 too. Morever, there was no hope to destroy them in FS2.

The Lucifer wasn't just a big ship, it was as far as we knew absolutely unstoppable. And the visions of the ancients made it clear to us just exactly what the price of failure was.

And when did the GTVA build 80 Colossuses (Seriously, this is not JAD!) to stop the Sathanas Fleet. In FS2 they were unstoppable too. And it looks like supernova really didn't make it clear to you the price of failure.

No matter what glorious victory you scored the shivans just kept coming. Vasuda Prime was just meat through the shivan grinder, and nothing suggested Earth would be any different.

The Lucifer Fleet is still smaller than the Sathanas Fleet and the destruction of Capella sun is way bigger than the devastation of Vasuda Prime. (Although life losses were less in supernova but that was due to the sooner started Exodus.)

Furthermore, the Sathanas was never as intimidating as the Lucifer. For this simple reason: It can be destroyed, and that is clear from the get go. Only its massive size and large firepower made that impractical. Until the very end of FS1 the Lucifer isn't just hard to take down - it's impossible. And you KNOW this, beyond a shadow of doubt.

The Sathanas can be destroyed but who has the daring to take over a Sathanas fleet. Also Sathanas cannot be destroyed by bomber strikes. You require massive beam firepower to overwhelm them. (which the GTVA NEVER had.)

Lets see in which systems the player experiences battles in both the games.

In FS1:

• Betelguese-Terran-Vasudan War
• Antares- Terran-Vasudan War and Great War
• Ikeya- Great War
• Beta Cygni- Great War
• Ribos- Great War
• Beta Aquilae- Great War
• Deneb- Great War
• Alpha Centauri- Great War
• Altair- Great War
• Sirius- Great War
• Delta Serpentis- Great War

In FS2:

• Deneb-NTF Rebellion
• Gamma Draconis- Second Shivan Incursion
• Mysterious Nebula- Second Shivan Incursion
• Epsilon Pegasi- NTF Rebellion
• Polaris- NTF Rebellion
• Sirius- NTF Rebellion
• Binary System- Second Shivan Incursion
• Capella-Second Shivan Incursion

Basically in FS1 there was combat in MANY systems while in FS2 there was HEAVIER combat in fewer systems. Also FS1 was more emotional but FS2 did show desperate spirit and struggle for survival in a little less emotion.

So both the game are awesome (after all  created them) in their own aspect. There are MANY players who have played both the games and not just either one of them. (Those who haven't played FS1 play FSPort.)

[yuezhi]

fRESSPACE 2 WAS BETTER THAN fRESSPACE 1 YOU KNERDS. yOU'RE AN idiot!! iF YOU SAY OTHERWISE!!1!

mAYBEEEEEEEEEEE

[NGTM-1R]

And when did the GTVA build 80 Colossuses (Seriously, this is not JAD!) to stop the Sathanas Fleet. In FS2 they were unstoppable too. And it looks like supernova really didn't make it clear to you the price of failure.

Hi, we collapsed some nodes 4u.

More seriously though in FS1 there is a period where nobody has plan, where it's full "GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER" mode. That never happens in FS2. I personally consider that a positive (FS1 didn't use its period of panic well).

[Drogoth]

Arpit I wasn't saying that the GTVA was capable of destroying 80 Saths. But 80 Saths CAN be destroyed, provided you have the ridiculous amount of firepower necessary. And that was made clear, by the very fact that you destroy a Sath fairly quickly (chronologically speaking) after encountering it in the campaign.

The thing that always made the Lucifer so menacing to me was the fact that it didn't matter how much force the GTVA brought to bear. It was just invincible. It made fighting the shivans different from fighting anything else. It was like fighting an elemental force, not a sentient enemy. the Lucifer was there for most of the game, reminding you that no matter what you accomplish, you still lose. We don't get our 80 sath deathblow till near the end of the FS2 story arc, which critically changes the atmosphere.

I would argue that the loss of Capella while scientifically more devastating (in terms of sheer destructive power), is no where near as bad as the loss of Vasuda Prime, or what the loss of Earth would have been. Densely populated or no... it's just a colony. Not the homeworld.

The systems you listed. All the NTF ones I don't really count. It was a rebellion. Civil war. Different feel. It was hard to get a back to the wall feeling when fighting the Shivans when only two of the systems we fought them in were in our space, and only one was even useful. That's nothing like hearing 'The Shivas wiped out our major base in Ribos', 'We've lost all contact with our forces in the Ross 128 system' or 'we've lost contact with every outer colony'. The Shivan advance waltzed into our core systems and blasted everything in its path all game long.

Furious war or no, when half the war takes place on enemy soil, the stakes aren't as high.

For most of FS2 the GTVA feels like they're winning - or at least giving as good as they get. Just cus they turned out to be wrong doesn't change the overall feel when they think they're winning. I'm not saying FS2 is bad, I'm saying the atmosphere is fundamentally different, and that it doesn't hold a candle to the atmosphere of FS1

[Rodo]

lol, how come this is a fs1 vs fs2 thread?

give it a rest ppl, everyone knows fs3 is better.