The story

Freelancer's story begins innocently enough: a space station is blown to smithereens by strange ships that appear out of nowhere. Among the survivors is Edison Trent, a freelancer without a ship since it blew up with the station. He is recruited by the local military who give him a new ship (albeit a very small one) in exchange for the promise to consider working for them in the future, and then off he goes adventuring to his heart's content.

Freelancer's story is quite enjoyable if you follow it through to its completion, though it is a little short by most standards (only 13 missions in all). It builds up nicely, bringing in new allies and strange enemies as you move along. You get new story missions when you reach specific levels. But, despite what the publishers might imply, you cannot always drop in and out of the story unless you want to be stuck at the same level for a long while. You will not be able to advance in levels further unless you take on the next mission or reject it completely, even if you were to amass millions of credits. Because of that, the story missions can sometimes become quite intrusive.

This is avoidable though if you decide to forego all story elements within the game. The simplest way to do this is to start up a multiplayer game and play on your own. The problem is that you'll need quite a good machine to run both the server application and the game at the same time. I think I saw a few fan-made utilities floating around the web that can solve this little problem if your machine can't handle it, but it can still be a problem for some to play this way. If you can manage it with the machine you have, the multiplayer game is probably where you'll most likely find the best of what Freelancer has to offer in terms of an RPG.

Flying with friends

Freelancer's multiplayer is exactly the same as the single player game except that there is no story to bother with. Instead you are thrust in this huge universe with a basic ship and some credits. You are free to play whichever way you like. You can even play a villainous bounty hunter if the server owner is inclined to letting you shoot at other players' ships. Of course, honor is left to each players' discretion, and you'll always have a good chance of finding a funny level 20 guy looking for a new player to shoot at when you log in, but that remains in the grief-player department and is no fault of the game.

When you start up the server utility you have the ability to set the number of players that can play on your game. I stopped the counter when it was around 300 because I was already amazed that it would allow me to set it that high! I have already seen a few servers on the game's list that had 50 people playing at once with pings in the low hundreds, which is nothing short of amazing for a game like this. Lag is of course very dependant of the server you connect to, but rest assured that if you ever experience some it is rarely due to the client, which is reassuring.

So, with about 50 or more people flying around the galaxy alongside you, I dare say that Freelancer almost has MMORPG potential, which is refreshing because you don't need to pay anyone to play. Some servers already offer persistent worlds so you can log in and out with the same character and participate in group activities with returning friends. You can also fight against other players if the server allows player vs. player combat, and that can be challenging enough to keep on gaming a while longer after you get bored with the single player game.

Mission: Kill

There are missions you can undertake while you wait for the next available story portion in the single player game, or after you're done with it. Those missions can be acquired at the bars of most stations or planets. They are all of the "Kill target" type unfortunately. Sure, once in a while you'll see one that requires you to take someone prisoner, but that only means that you need to get the escape pod in your cargo bay after dispatching the enemy's ship. Where are the dangerous trading missions? Where are the base-defending or escort missions? Where's the variety?

Still, most missions of this sort are highly rewarding short affairs. Doing just a few may bring you enough cash to advance in level in a matter of minutes, and then take on the next storyline mission. The kill-missions aren't that much less lucrative than the trading deals you can get if you are a careful trader, but they are certainly shorter and require less of an investment. But a word to the wise: I was intent on being a trader in Freelancer's universe, and although it is quite possible to make a good game out of it, don't bother trying it until you're done with the story. Because the freighter ships are few and sparsely found throughout the galaxies, not to mention less likely to carry enough firepower and less able to take a beating, you'll have a much easier time going about things with a fighter ship. All of Freelancer's storyline missions are based on combat.

Let's trade

Once the story's over the fun will finally begin for some players. By that time you will have come across many systems, but still by far shy of the whole lot of those you can go to in the universe. I found that the best way to experience the game at this point was to trade in my cool fighter ship for a more bulky freighter. Then you need to find the places that sell goods at low prices and bring them to those who buy high. The game's interface does a very good job at giving you all the information you need before you buy anything, so you'll never find yourself having to take notes to remember where you found an item at the lowest price. Everything is neatly listed right there on the purchase window in order of buying price from the highest to the lowest.

Once you've bought what you want, you can select it in your cargo and see the same list of places that will buy your goods and at what price. You can even select a particular listed base and the interface will take you straight to the map where you'll be able to plan a trading route with one simple click of the mouse! This is simplicity at its best.

My engine purrs with delight

I have to say that this game displays some of the best sounds I've heard in quite a while. The way the different ship engines purr, the sound of your weapons firing, or the grinding metal as you hit an asteroid in the middle of a dogfight are all perfectly timed, and sound right on the money. The sound of distant intercepted chatter between a nearby base and approaching freighters, the thrusters as you hit the afterburners… The list goes on and on. I was tempted to give sound a perfect score here, but nothing is ever perfect in this world. Some engine sounds are a little too weak, and the various missile launchers could have been given more than a simple clicking sound, but these are just minor complaints. The music is equally as good, if not as superb as the sound production. The tone is always right and it's never intrusive. It properly reflects the emptiness of space, and sets the mood perfectly.

Space is not black and empty

I'll say this before I begin speaking more in depth about the graphics of this game: there's nothing truly spectacular or revolutionary about them. There, I said it. Now, although they are not spectacular, the graphics certainly do a more than adequate job of deeply immersing you in the game, enough to believe that you really are behind the controls of a ship in deep space. Space is made to be colorful with dust clouds and nebulas in which you can totally lose all sense of direction. Space debris is rampant in some systems, while in others you are met with large asteroids or drifting ice pillars. The variety is quite impressive as you go from one system to the next. Some nice visual touches like flying through the rings of a planet, or heading straight towards the central sun make it worth while to fly out of the regular flights paths.

What is nice here is to be able to pinpoint a small dot in the middle of your screen and heading straight towards it at full speed. Watching that small dot getting bigger and bigger to finally become a large planet that takes the whole screen is always nice and impressive. If you can see it, you can go towards it to look at more closely.

Ships and stations are all detailed enough to be believable. Hatches will open as you dock with a station or a larger battleship, jump gates' mechanisms will turn and activate as you approach; every detail has been thought of and executed almost flawlessly.

There's a mouse in my ship!

Freelancer's control scheme has been already widely discussed here and there. The fact that Digital Anvil decided to do away with the joystick in a game that has strong ties with the flight-sim genre made many people's teeth grind. But everyone's fears can be laid to rest. Not only did the developer pull through with their mouse and keyboard driven controls, but they actually made many players completely forget about their joystick! Controlling your ship with your mouse and keyboard becomes seamless in a matter of minutes. Regardless of anyone's doubts, this control scheme is more than appropriate as far as I'm concerned.

As previously mentioned, the interface is quite nicely laid out. You can open up different windows to see maps, the contents of your cargo and the list of places you can sell it at. Everything in the view screen that concerns target management and information windows will feel instantly familiar to any space-sim veterans. The learning curve is quite small, and after you have finished the first mission, which actually serves as a subtle tutorial for novice players, you'll be quite ready to fly on your own.

One gripe I have to mention about the interface is that some very opaque windows appear in the middle of your screen even while in flight. Opening up the map to see where you're headed, for instance, can be dangerous if your flying in an asteroid field and need to get your bearings, which happened often for me. Then again you could just stop, but the frequent random groups of Junkers, or any other nefarious groups of smugglers, could hit you hard while you're not moving. The map window should have been a little more transparent, or better yet they should have made it so the player could have minimized it to use while in-flight.

RPG in space?

Now, I hear you asking: "What about the RPG elements?". Well, the best RPG element in this game lie within the many different factions. There are many, many factions in Freelancer. Most are neutral to you at the start of the game, and it will be your choice (and duty in some occasions) as to which ones you cross and which ones you will keep on your good side. Careful choices have to be made when choosing missions, which under that light may serve purposes far more impacting than to simply earn you some credits. The many factions are what makes the universe as deep and as open ended as it is. You may bribe hackers to correct the factions that you need to be neutral with. The possibilities are many. But don't expect any grand quests beyond the single-player storyline missions here. And if you thought Morrowind's main Quest was linear, wait until you see this one. Still, Freelancer offers more than enough open-ended gameplay to please most RPG fans out there.

Conclusion

There's a lot to be said about this game. The short version is that it's is a lot of fun, and very deep. Of course, it never seems deep enough though, and there are a few things that still seem missing from an otherwise excellent game. For instance, I went into it imagining I could become some kind of Han Solo type of character, hauling cargo back and forth from one system to the next, dodging patrols left and right to make the most profit, and tweaking my ship a little to make it faster, or more powerful. Although this is all possible to a certain degree, what got me a little disappointed was the fact that it's impossible to tweak the ship beyond what type of weapons and shields you can put on it. As far as shields go, your budget, level and ship type will be the only deciding factors as to which one you will buy. Yes, freighter ships should be weaker than fighter ships, that goes without saying, but it would still have been nice if I could have tweaked my freighter to be just a notch above those garden variety ones found elsewhere in the game. All ships go at the same speed too, so forget about making your sweet freighter your very own version of the Millennium Falcon. You'll never be faster than anyone else.

Of course you are given choices along the way, mostly whether you accept a particular mission or not, but that's it. And if you reject it nothing happens except that you can always go back and change your mind. Towards the end of the campaign you're not even given a choice anymore, but you still get the mission description and a lonely accept button as if you still had an option. The real choices you have are which factions to make friends or enemies with, but only once the single-player campaign is over.

But you can't fault Freelancer for all of this. It remains an incredibly immersive game, with a nice story if you're willing to follow it through, and some of the nicest cinematic in-engine cut-scenes I've seen in a while. All this in a very stable package (this reviewer is still looking for a single bug, crash or weird anomaly with an un-patched version 1.0). Freelancer allows you to drop in its galaxy and have a few quick adventures that will be rewarding on many levels. Whether you simply want to explore the universe in a sturdy but light combat ship, help police the free sectors with a rugged heavy fighter ship, or even haul valuable (and profitable) cargo from one end of the galaxy to another in your bulky freighter, you'll find something to like here. Even those who just want to follow an enjoyable cinematic story will find something very much worth checking with Freelancer.