Freelancer (PC)

When Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts announced that he was leaving Origin Systems, fans of his games were concerned that he had abandoned the space simulation genre. In 1999, those concerns were replaced with eager anticipation when Roberts announced that his next game, Freelancer, would be one of the most ambitious space simulations yet. But then Roberts left the project, and gradually several of its more innovative features were scaled down or dropped altogether while its target release date was constantly postponed. Freelancer has finally arrived, and while it's not the revolutionary title it initially promised to be, it delivers the exact combination of addictive and accessible gameplay that the genre has needed for a long time.

One of the most distinctive features of Freelancer is its control scheme. Perhaps in order to appeal to a broader audience than die-hard simulation fans, the game eschews the use of a joystick altogether and instead offers a simplified mouse-and-keyboard interface. While other space sims have allowed the use of a mouse to emulate a joystick's functions, mouse control in such games was generally a poor alternative. Freelancer, on the other hand, was designed with the limitations and advantages of that input device in mind, and as a result its mouse control works efficiently and actually enhances the gameplay.

You can opt for either a mouse-look system that steers your ship in whichever direction you move the curser toward or a system that requires you to hold down the left mouse button in order to change your vessel's direction, and you can quickly switch between the two by tapping your keyboard's space bar. The mouse control lets you direct fire at opponents anywhere in sight instead of merely those in the center of the screen, while simultaneously having your ship strafe, move backward, or charge forward using keyboard controls similar to those used to effect similar commands in most action games. It's an elegantly simple and effective control scheme that should both be accessible to simulation neophytes and satisfy fans of traditional space sims.

Freelancer consistently straddles the line between an arcade-style action game and a more hard-core space simulation. On one hand, most of the control and interface conventions of the space simulation genre have been ejected entirely or simplified considerably in order to make gameplay more manageable for beginners. There's no radar to track the positions of your opponents; there's no power allocation system to adjust the strength of your vessel's shields or weapons; and even if your mouse had a hat switch, there's no way to check what's happening anywhere other than directly in front of or behind your ship. You also never have to wait for weapons such as missiles and torpedoes to lock onto a target, and, if you have the requisite supplies, you can instantly and fully repair your craft's shields or armor with the click of a button. The default camera perspective is behind your ship, although a cockpit perspective is also available and works well.

On the other hand, while fans of traditional space simulations may initially object to its simplified control scheme, Freelancer offers the sort of free-form gaming world that such fans have been clamoring for since the original Elite and Privateer games. It's a gaming world that's truly massive and full of colorful interstellar phenomena and a wide variety of potential enemy types, and the single-player campaign exposes you to less than half of it. While recent space simulations have provided similarly expansive gaming worlds to discover, they've also required you to micromanage controls and master situational awareness in order to succeed in your explorations. Freelancer offers simplified gameplay but makes it easier for you to quickly discover the appeal of the genre's action-oriented gameplay and free-form exploration.

You can elect to enjoy the gaming world entirely as an interstellar sandbox, governing your explorations by whim, by ignoring the main storyline's missions or by playing the game's multiplayer mode. Gameplay outside of the campaign primarily consists of undertaking missions to kill the enemies of one of the many political factions represented in the game or embarking upon your own self-directed trade missions. There are dozens of outposts, planetary bases, and vessels littered throughout the galaxy, and each one will offer you the opportunity to trade in a variety of goods and equipment or undertake randomly generated missions on behalf of represented factions. Those missions lack variety or depth and generally involve traveling to a nearby location and exterminating a handful of vessels in exchange for some cash.

Successfully performing missions on behalf of any of the many outlaw, corporate, security, or military factions in the game will cause your character to gain prestige within that faction and lose favor with its enemies. Whether or not a faction likes your character will determine whether or not its ships will attack on sight and whether you'll be able to access its facilities, but it will otherwise have no lasting effect on the gaming world. If you'd prefer to become a trader and transport goods across star systems, there's an excellent interface that tracks the prices for the types of goods at every base you've visited, but the game doesn't provide noncombat missions to direct your efforts.

And there are other activities you can do of your own volition that will vary gameplay and benefit your character. You can loot passing transports, blast asteroids for minerals, or just tag along with police or military fighters and fight any outlaws they randomly encounter in their preset patrols. All of these activities vary in difficulty depending upon your location in the gaming world, and randomly traveling around will let you consistently uncover unique sights in addition to opening up new adventuring possibilities.

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