Freelancer

[Cerebrus]

is awesome.

Blow pirates up or trade goods or become a pirate and blow people up for their goods or just generally harass people in space.

[Deathguard]

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Freelancer is a most amazing illustration of greatness in space simulation

AND THE MODS

[Normandy]

My god... If only my comp could handle it... It's like roleplaying, except with shiny effects and more people playing it, without risk to their masculinity (or if they're female, their social life with basically everyone but the absolute nerds)!

[M123]

Your computer must be ancient. Freelancer came out in 2002.

[Arcalane]

What M123 said.

For those of you who liked Freelancer, I also recommend Darkstar One. It has a couple of tricky "Flak Defense" missions (these are best done on the lowest difficulty, and even then the second one is quite tricky) but other than that it's a fairly decent scifi adventure.

Admittedly, it has bugs here and there but otherwise it's a decent game.

[The Boz]

What M123 said.

For those of you who liked Freelancer, I also recommend Darkstar One. It has a couple of tricky "Flak Defense" missions (these are best done on the lowest difficulty, and even then the second one is quite tricky) but other than that it's a fairly decent scifi adventure.

Admittedly, it has bugs here and there but otherwise it's a decent game.

Freelancer is win as far as arcade space games go. Darkstar One is several different kinds of fail. Bad story, no exploration incentive, "you're better but so is the enemy" syndrome, non-existant tactical approach...
As far as "the most amazing illustration of greatness in a space simulation" goes, Freespace 2 is still the king of a very steep hill, with X2 and X3 slightly below, but then again, they are a bit of a different genre.

[Elukka]

I played Freelancer. Multiplayer with mods was fun for a while, but everything pretty much got boring once you got one of the best ships.

Then i found X3 Reunion, which is so much better. It has no multiplayer though, but you get a dynamic economy, fleets, capital ships, stuff like that. It's like Freelancer crossed with EVE Offline but with some added awesome.

[Arcalane]

Freelancer is win as far as arcade space games go. Darkstar One is several different kinds of fail. Bad story, no exploration incentive, "you're better but so is the enemy" syndrome, non-existant tactical approach...
As far as "the most amazing illustration of greatness in a space simulation" goes, Freespace 2 is still the king of a very steep hill, with X2 and X3 slightly below, but then again, they are a bit of a different genre.

The learning curve for X2 and X3 seem ridiculously steep to me. I haven't played or seen Freespace 2 either.

Yes, DS1's story wasn't exactly an epic novel, but at least it wasn't utter trash either (on that note, Freelancer's wasn't amazing either, but decent enough in my book). X2's was terrible in comparison, and markedly more cheesy. At least DS1's characters and locations weren't named after articles of clothing and noble gases.

[Anna]

Freelancer is an awesome game, and for anyone who plays it and hasn't got this mod already, I cannot recommend it strongly enough. The Discovery mod. It's awesome, it adds tons to the game, and it's a teeny-tiny file size for how much stuff it adds, because of the way modding in Freelancer works. Ever see one of those Liberty Battleships and think "Damn, I want one of them!"

Well now you can get one. 8) And every other ship in the game, plus a ton of new ones, instead of being stuck with just stuffy old fighters...

[Skyrage]

Aaah...Freelancer...one of the most promising games and yet such an epic fail in the end...

And yes, X3 is infinitely better in so many ways, although it's also harder to get into. If many of the features from the X games were to make it into Freelancer then it would have been one of the best space privateer games ever.

Oh yeah, and also add a touch of Freespace 2 as well. Now there capital ships are truly capital ships.

[The Boz]

Freelancer is win as far as arcade space games go. Darkstar One is several different kinds of fail. Bad story, no exploration incentive, "you're better but so is the enemy" syndrome, non-existant tactical approach...
As far as "the most amazing illustration of greatness in a space simulation" goes, Freespace 2 is still the king of a very steep hill, with X2 and X3 slightly below, but then again, they are a bit of a different genre.

The learning curve for X2 and X3 seem ridiculously steep to me. I haven't played or seen Freespace 2 either.

Yes, DS1's story wasn't exactly an epic novel, but at least it wasn't utter trash either (on that note, Freelancer's wasn't amazing either, but decent enough in my book). X2's was terrible in comparison, and markedly more cheesy. At least DS1's characters and locations weren't named after articles of clothing and noble gases.

If you love... no, scratch that. If you even mildly like space combat simulation games, you must play Freespace 2. I believe you can legally download it off the internet, as noone owns the rights of the actual game Freespace 2 any more.
Reasons?
Controls. Oodles of them. And you'll need them all. And they feel great, to know you have every aspect of your craft under your fingertips.
Story. FS1 and 2 have some of the best storyline and feel I've ever experienced. Few things compare to seeing a massive subspace rift open up and a huge behemoth of a ship emerges and opens up with beams, missiles, cannons, flaks, and your wingmen start screaming and stuff starts blowing up and your shields go down...
Chasing bombs. Great fun flying a purely interceptor craft and targetting bombers and bombs exclusively, relying on your wingmen to take care of your assailants.

[th15]

I dunno, Freespace was a little bland for me. I didn't play through that much of it (the main reason I'd acquired it was to play Beyond The Red Line, the BSG mod for it) but the missions don't seem to be as involving as, say, the missions in Tie Fighter. Combat in Freespace just felt a little too distanced.

[Skyrage]

The Freespace 2 gameplay is linear, but oh what an experience it is. And I believe that there were a few missions with success/fail consequences as well.

In any case the atmosphere is something which very few games can beat. Good voice acting (IMO something which is rather rare in games), good feel to it that you are a "part" of something and not necessarily the "hero", and then of course those frigging capital ships which are humongous in comparison. This isn't one of those games where one fighter can take out 10 battleships without breaking a sweat (Freelancer in particular).

As for the game itself, the controls are really nice, the AI is quite decent - although my only gripe is that all your allies/wingmen die a bit too fast. As for the GUI, it's almost totally customizable. What games allow you to alter the colors of your GUI to your liking and so on to your own liking?

[Arcalane]

This isn't one of those games where one fighter can take out 10 battleships without breaking a sweat (Freelancer in particular).

That always was rather cheesy in Freelancer. The Next Generation makes battleships almost totally immune to fighter weaponry, but in the campaign your options for use of anti-capital weaponry are slim, as the blast radii are so large you tend to obliterate your allies.

Particularly when you enter that mined off sector and have to follow the beacons through only to find a shipyard producing the Nomad battleships. If you rush ahead the AI yells at you, but it's the only way to get proper shots off with suitable anti-capital weaponry unless you have a heavy fighter and full racks of the White Star-esque beam weapons.

[M123]

Freespace 2 = AWESOME!!!

I also liked DS1, but my PC can't seem to run it properly anymore; the games performance actually went down after I added more RAM...

X2 is just too damn... damn... tricky.