I don’t think that there are fifty of them left. Went to have a quick look at 3000ad.com which I haven’t visited in a long time and was shocked by the lack of posts on the forums. What used to be small but dedicated lively community looks to be pretty much gone, with very few new posts. The whole site seems to be have redesigned, and looks like something someone in a high school html class threw together. The old one was very nice in comparison.
Kind of sad really but I guess we are seeing the cumulative effect of all that bad karma.
if they do want a license to back it (and i dont think thats a bad idea at all) they should have them totally games dudes re-do x-wing, tie-fighter and the rest of those, all the way up to x-wing alliance. Don’t change a singly byte of their gameplay, just sex0r up the looks and they’d be golden.
That video doesn’t look too bad. Sure it’s a little oversaturated, but I can’t begrudge someone their stylistic choices. Well, I can, but in this case, it doesn’t bother me.
Looks like it actually has potential. If it does end up on XBL, it’ll have to work on a gamepad, and that will keep Derek Smart’s crazy complexity in line (hopefully).
If you like Derek Smart stories just do a Qt3 search for any thread that he used to contribute to while he was a member here. Many were quite entertaining.
But Gametap has games like Shadow Magic, JA2, Tachyon (still?), etc. They aren’t afraid of non-casual games. That excuse is BS.
I agree that the FreeSpace licence doesn’t have meaningful name-brand recognition, which would translate to additional hype and brand-based purchased. But I strongly disagree that it doesn’t have value - the story and setting were extremely strong and real strengths of the series; strengths which a new space sim would have difficulty recreating.
I actually think the Wing Commander ‘universe’ has a lot less creative value, since its world was pretty trite and easily recreated or replaced.
Yep, me too. Wing commander had strong characters in Hobbes, Maniac, Angel, Paladin, that porno chick, etc. That’s what gives it lasting value.
Really what we need is a sequel to tie/fighter, AAA, simultaneously released on 360, PS3, and PC with cross-platform multiplayer and fresh story-driven campaigns regularly released episodically. Ahhhhhhhh…
Wing Commander was definitely more character-driven (you were a generic grunt in FreeSpace), but FreeSpace 2 had one of the best plots of any game I’ve ever played in any genre, let alone compared to other space sims - intelligent, adult, almost philosophical - with great alien designs, culture, intelligent perspective and motivations - creative brilliance, in my opinion.
I like the Wing Commander games (a lot), but they’re more pulpy adventuring fun, with the Kilrathi as furry Klingon-rips and no real development to its world, technology, etc. Just fun games - FreeSpace 2 was art, and perhaps the best game I’ve ever played. I still play it every year or so, and there’s maybe 2-3 other games I’ve played more than twice, and only about a dozen games that I’ve even replayed.
The warlike-spacefaring-race stuff I guess they have in common, but yeah, Kilrathi are pretty clearly derived from Niven’s Kzinti IMO. But then, “cat people” probably isn’t such a rare idea that it might not appear independently from time to time.
Wing Commander was definitely more character-driven (you were a generic grunt in FreeSpace), but FreeSpace 2 had one of the best plots of any game I’ve ever played in any genre, let alone compared to other space sims - intelligent, adult, almost philosophical - with great alien designs, culture, intelligent perspective and motivations - creative brilliance, in my opinion.
It’s strange. While I remember really enjoying Freespace’s story at the time, my memory draws a total blank on everything beyond a traitor character called Bosch, that first mission where the Shivans show up, the first proper nebula mission, and the names of the biggest ships. The rest just… whoosh.
Whereas I remember so much about Wing Commander, from taking a nuke to Ayer’s Rock, to Jazz being the traitor of WC2, to Maniac’s breakdown, to Vagabond’s story, to the whole political arc of the fourth game, and the mere existence of Prophecy. Odd.
I remember when Crytek were developing a great looking space sim called Silent Space with semi-newtonian physics, no sounds in space (just the soundtrack and in-cockpit sounds), a focus on battles that use realistic military tactics (not that we actually have space battles in real life - I believe they were using naval tactics as a model?), in-depth space combat and what they described as a ‘realistic war theme’.
Then Far Cry sold a fuck ton of copies and they canned their other projects (they were also working on a dark cyberpunk thriller called Engalus) to make sequels. Or they canned them to finish Far Cry? I don’t remember exactly. Either way, no chance we’ll see them now :(
Ideally I’d want an I-War 3 or Freespace 3 (I’d say Elite 4 but I can only imagine it ending up a vast disappointment if it did happen), but I’d be happy to get a Freelancer 2. Hell, any decent, new space sim would be nice.
And yeah, I was always much more interested in Crytek’s other projects than Far Cry/X-Isle.
I’m not saying you are wrong, Rob, but that doesn’t make any sense. If they already have the game, what would they lose by putting it up? They have some crappy games on there, already. So it’s not a quality issue. They have plenty of less-casual gamers (you can tell by the ratings on some of the more complicated games), so their excuse doesn’t sound right. The whole thing smells funny.
