I owned this but never played very much of it. I keep hearing some people say they prefer it to the orginal. ANy thoughts about that? Is the Windows version of the game compatible with todays Windows? Thanks.
Boring, repetitive, features godawful FMV and they took away one of the best design elements featured in Privateer - being able to run from a fight thru a jump hole. Yep, in P2, you gotta kill everything before you move on.
Pick up Freelancer (if you haven’t yet), it’s much better. Or better yet, fire up that old 486 DX2 and play the original ;)
Cheers,
-S
I liked it. Plus, it had Walken! :) The originial is better, though not as pretty.
Everyone I talked to who played both games says the first one is better than the second.
I only played the second, so I can’t give a comparison opinion. However, I thought P2 was pretty good. The only real problem I had with it was that it was overly linear in the plot scripting, and a bit too short overall, so you didn’t have enough time to mess around on your own…
I think it is much much better than Freelancer in essentially every respect except the cute but essentially irrelevant Freelancer feature of having each random NPC ship actually be doing something instead of just floating around being a target or an enemy.
Anyhow, in that vague “freeform merchant/pirate/bounty-hunter” genre that probably started with the excellent FTL game Sundog and was immortalized in most old gamers’ memories with Elite… Privateer 2 is the best game of the type I can recall in the last 10 years. X: The Unknown, or whatever it was called, I bought with great anticipation a couple of years ago, and found to be completely unplayable; I gave up in a disgust after an hour of floating aimlessly around the starting system.
Privateer two is not that good. It’s also not exactly too compatible with today’s machines although you could probably get the “Deluxe” version to work if you try real hard.
X: Beyond the Frontier is WAY better than this game.
Heck, even Freelancer (which the critics damned with faint praise and I despised for being so much less than it should have been) was better.
Mira, are we talking about the same Privateer 2 I played? The one published by Origin? The one where you could be guaranteed to be jumped by pirates just about everywhere you went? Where every battle devolved into dumb circling fights where your ships would repeatedly crash into each other head-on like big bumper cars?
Ick. P2 was a major disappointment. I prefer Freelancer, myself.
X:BTF had a bad difficulty curve it’s true.
I don’t think Privateer 2 is playable on modern machines, because there’s no framerate limiter.
Put me in the camp of Privateer 2 haters. Peeve number one: the inescapable and ubiquitous pirates. I remember one trip of maybe three jumps that found me fighting over 25 pirates in that short a distance.
Also, it was buggy; we called it “the Crashening” rather than The Darkening back then.
Peeve number one for me: That goddamn camera. FMV starts up and
WHOOSH!
------------------------------------------------------------ AND OVER HERE!
AND BACK!
------------------------------------------------------------ HEADACHE!
Incidentally, is it just me who really misses having a proper cockpit in space sims? Full-screen just isn’t the same.
P2 sucked, big-time. The collision detection boundary boxes were only about twice the size of the actual ship models, so it was impossible to skim along the surface of larger ships without the bumper car effect. Joystick support was flakey thanks to ‘let’s release in time for X-mas sales’, which is like Doom 3 shipping with iffy mouse support. It’s like the developer sat there and one day decided, “Hey, let’s fuck up support for our game’s primary input. . .that would be kewl!”.
And having a warp drive that refused to work because other pilots in the vicinity were emoting hostile intentions toward its own captain is almost Trekian in its stupidity.
…needs more cowbell.
I don’t remember disliking Privateer 2 or anything, but holy shit other space sims are so much better. Heck, I have a hard time saying Privateer 2 is any better than the original - judging by others’ comments here I’d say it probably isn’t.
Unless you must have RPG elements in your space sims (in which case, why not play Freelancer instead?), I’d say go with Freespace 2. It provides many memorable moments that I haven’t seen any other game of this kind top. And unlike Privateer 2 it still looks good by today’s standards.
Also, I definitely mourn the apparent death of space-sim cockpits. It gave different ships a certain personality. I could tell that the Rapier was way way cooler than the Scimitar in Wing Commander. In Freespace 2, Freelancer, et al, I can’t even remember the name of the various ships you can fly, let alone what they might look like.
I liked Privateer better than its sequel. There seemed to be more focus on the trading aspect and there were more locations to be visited. Privateer 2 was ok, but could have been a lot better. And the story was kinda “Eh?”.
In Freelancer there was the “Turnip” the “Aardvark” the “Bowling Ball” and the “Jaw Harp.” Freespace 2 featured the “Trapezoid” the “Mildew” and the “Pantyliner.” I believe the best fighter in Privateer 2 was the “Aquatic Flea” but the best cargo ship was the “Alpaca.”
Although I could be wrong.
Plus, it had Walken!
Walken? Bah. It had Clive Owen!
-Tom
…needs more cowbell.[/quote]
ROFL :lol:
Now I’m gonna have “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in my head all night.
OK, I’m a non-hardcore occasional sim player and I loved the old Privateer 2, cut scenes and all. Clive Owen was outstanding. Yeah, bad dialogue, cheesy sets, weirdo Brit-sci-fi stylings. But that Amanda Donahoe! Woohoo! And Clive Owen in his long duster. And maxxing out the upgraded ship and nailing big cruisers.
I liked P2 and I like Freelancer. I actually have never gotten into any kind of “real” sim with flight controls - too hardcore for me. I like the easy flight, and cheesy fun of the P2/FL type games.
But gameplay aside, the Clive Owen and Walken stuff in P2 was excellent. The whole FMV thing in PC games was vastly overused, a cliche ridden genre choked with crappy performances. But of all those, there are two games that stand out: Privateer 2 with Clive Owen, and Gabriel Knight 2. That opera in GK2 was probably the high point of FMV in all gaming.
Dan
I didn’t really dig X:BTF, I really dug X-Tension. Freelancer was fun, had some good times linking up with friends online. Greatly looking forward to X2. I was just curious because I keep hearing on other boards (usually the X2 boards) how some preferred the 2nd privateer. Like I said, I never played the second for too long, but I remember loving the first so I was surprised to hear so much praise for the 2nd.
P2 was pretty gawd awful, but not as god awful as Fragile Alliance or Renegade. ;)