by John Reynolds

  Yet another feature is the ability to call in both reinforcements and repair ships. The latter can be quite handy for particularly heated or hostile engagements. Though unable to improve the overall hull integrity of your fighter, repair ships can still restore damaged subsystems and replenish your secondary weapons, i.e. missiles.

Re-entering a fight with a second cache of missiles can be decisive, especially since I felt the primary weapons, or guns, to be somewhat less effective than in most other space sims. It's worth noting, however, that capitol ships don't crack under one or two torpedo hits in Freespace; instead, these behemoths shrug off such gnats and continue to plow a furrow of destruction in the wake of their flight paths.

With 3D accelerators becoming mainstream components since 3dfx's Voodoo 1 cards, graphics features and image quality have largely stolen the limelight in almost all action or combat titles these days. Freespace 2 is no exception to this trend, for Volition's programmers obviously labored long into many nights on the game's graphics engine.

In other words, no other space sim can even begin to compare its imagery to that found in Freespace 2; supporting both D3D and Glide APIs, the 3D-powered (in fact, required!) graphics are nothing less than spectacular, with amazing explosions, missile trails, varied gunshot effects, massive beam weapons, misty nebulae, prismatic backdrops, and detailed ship models filling your monitor.

Though I admit it's still fairly high-end, my gaming rig consists of a P3 550 o/c 616, 128MB of system memory, and a V3 3500TV, and it played the game like microwaved butter, even in the largest of battles. And the game should scale fairly well on slower or middle-ranged systems, for Volition recommends a 266mhz+ processor and at least 64MB of RAM, not to mention the obligatory 3D card with 8MB+ of onboard memory.

Yet there's no such thing as a perfect, bug-free PC game these days, and unfortunately Freespace 2 is no exception. The game ships with support for both EAX and A3D sound standards, which is great. The bad thing is that certain sounds, particularly your own weapon fire, will cut out entirely or become so muted you can't hear it. Worse yet, players should habituate themselves to frequently glancing at the Directives Display section of the HUD, just in case new mission orders were drowned out by a battle's cacophony and go unheard.

On the graphics side of things, Freespace 2 is virtually flawless, though running under Glide would on occasion result in corrupt textures on larger capitol ships (an upcoming patch promises to fix this).

Click to continue

One last caveat is that online play seems to suffer the usual lag problems, with ships often 'warping' across your gunsights and out of view. LAN-play is another story, supporting both TCP and IPX network protocols, and it's here that the game's cooperative multiplayer mode really shines.

The original Wing Commander was the first game I ever played on a PC (a 386 SX/25, with an amazing 4MB of system memory that probably added over $150 to the system's cost), so I freely admit to being partial to the series. Yet since leaving Origin in '96, Chris Roberts hasn't offered anything new to the genre, choosing instead to focus his, umm, talents on a Wing Commander film that left this particular movie-goer feeling nauseous, to say the least (no offense Chris. . .you're a damn fine game designer, but please get back to doing what you do best).

In the meantime, Volition has rightfully stepped up to the dais and taken the space sim genre's crown for themselves, earning the bejewelled head-wreath by developing what's simply the best game of its type for the PC. Offering an interestingly storied campaign, multiplayer mode, challenging missions, solid, responsive controls, fantastic graphics, and the sheer thrill of flying in the midst of truly epic battles, Freespace 2 is an instant classic. Combatsim is proud to bestow our Top Pick award upon this outstanding title.

Core Rating: 95

• Gameplay: 90
• Graphics: 100
• Sound: 80
• AI/Intelligence: 90
• User Interface: 90
• Fun Factor: 95
• Learning Curve: 1 to 2 hours

Overall Rating: 95

For the 1.01 patch or the 60 MB demo go to Freespace2.COM

Join a discussion forum on this article by clicking HERE.