Descent FreeSpace: The Great War - PC Review - Gamecenter

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Descent FreeSpace: The Great War

continued
Freespace 101 (or 104)
The single-player campaign is well thought out, with a branching story line based on the player's performance. It acts as a good introduction to the game's various ships and weapons. The campaign's missions are well paced in difficulty, and in-flight tutorials make learning the game easy. Players will definitely appreciate the tutorials, because nearly every key on the keyboard serves some function in the game.
To make things easier, I recommend using a 104-button joystick. My choice is the Arthritis 2000 by CTS Systems. The heads-up-display (HUD) is equally overwhelming, with the potential for more than 20 different "gauges" onscreen at once. Thankfully, the HUD is customizable and players can add or remove items and even change its color. The variety and customization of the controls and HUD are welcome Descent: Freespace--The Great War inclusions that help make what could be a difficult game much easier to learn and play. Adding to the complexity and challenge of the game is a useful communications system, which lets players give orders to wingmen and call for repairs, reinforcements, or wrist braces.
Although FreeSpace is a fun single-player game, its multiplayer capability is its biggest advantage over other games in the space-sim genre. Game hosts have plenty of options. Basic configurations allow up to 12 players to participate in cooperative play, team play, and all-out dogfighting. From there, hosts choose different missions and even campaigns to fly. Other features include time limits, passwords, joining games in progress, the ability to observe games, and even real-voice transmission to other players.
Games and statistics are tracked for free on the Internet using Parallax Online. Multiplayer performance over a LAN is excellent--even voice transmission works well--but Internet performance is still poor. Internet latency is not a problem specific to FreeSpace, but performance is markedly worse than it should be. Other annoyances I experienced included phantom ships and inconsistencies between machines playing in the same game. Parallax is aware of the problems and is reportedly working on them. Regardless, for a good Internet gaming experience, plan to invest in a modem better than 28.8.
When I read the game's feature list, I expected the graphics and multiplayer options to impress me, but I didn't give much thought to its mission editor (Fred). It turns out that I'm more impressed with Fred than anything. It is by far the most comprehensive game editor I've used, and it's free. Learning to create scenarios for a game with a playing field this huge is no easy task; a scenario can easily span thousands of miles. Although I could spend weeks creating proper scenarios, amazingly I was able to make a very simple one in a matter of minutes. Everything is customizable: ships, AI, obstacles, events. It is truly awesome! The fact that you can add your own cut scenes (AVIs) and sounds (WAVs) means that Interplay has given players the tools to create a whole new game. Even though it has a huge learning curve and crashes occasionally, Fred could have easily been marketed as a separate program. Thank you, Interplay!

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Descent FreeSpace: The Great War

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