Any good space shooters?

S

skytripa

Gawd
Joined
Oct 31, 2007
Messages
745
I've been playing Battlestar Galactica Online off and on. It kind of got me wanting to play a good space shooter. Any other good ones out there beside eve wich I will not try. :D
 
Eve is an MMO. It's not really a "space shooter." The only game that's been made in the last 7 or 8 years I can think of which is well known would be X3 The Threat, but its terrible. It's not really a shooter either. It's a horribly complex sandbox game with emphasis on other things besides combat.
 
If you want mindless side-scrolling shooting in space try Jets N Guns. It's really well done.

I think the last space sim/shooter I played was Freelancer but that's probably showing a lot of age now.
 
Freelancer was amazing and more recently Darkstar One was excellent I thought. After that, it's time to track down Freespace and Descent games.

I sorely wish this genre would get some more attention.
 
MMO's are ok I just don't want to try EVE. Maybe I should have just said space game :eek:
 
While I'm not a big fan of it, the Star Trek MMO has some pretty cool space combat.
 
The deadest of dead genres, which is a shame, because it used to be my favorite.
 
castun said:
All you need is FreeSpace 2 w/ the SCP (Source Code Project.) Just be prepared to compare every single space shooter to it for the rest of your life.

FS2 SCP Trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ
Watch in HD. There are a lot of other videos as well showing missions playthroughs.

http://scp.indiegames.us/
Click to expand...

Not sure what to say about this. One the one hand it's epic that folks work on this, on the other hand the gfx will never live up to modern games, seems like a lot of man-months of effort were sunk into a relic of times past.
 
Dan_D said:
I just threw up a little.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong. The rest of the game is complete shit and there's a serious dearth of content. But the starship combat in and of itself isn't bad.
 
Freespace II....with the graphical overhaul mods out there it still holds visually up today...and good gameplay never goes out of style.
 
castun said:
All you need is FreeSpace 2 w/ the SCP (Source Code Project.) Just be prepared to compare every single space shooter to it for the rest of your life.

FS2 SCP Trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhAR8rWPluQ
Watch in HD. There are a lot of other videos as well showing missions playthroughs.

http://scp.indiegames.us/
Click to expand...

Sorry, but that didn't look good at all. The models are still too low poly and the lighting effects are just bad. The textures are plain jane and repetitive. Sorry but it looks pretty much like a game from 1999. In fact I don't remember the original FreeSpace 2 looking that bad. Those games were great in their day, but they are seriously dated now. The modding community may be keeping the games alive and if people are enjoying them then that's great, but sorry, that trailer / cut scene looked like ass.
 
Freelancer gets my vote. Also look up...the name escapes me: Another space/flight sim where you're convicted of blowing up a space station and thrown into a sector of space for criminals...and you do missions, upgrade your ship....from 10+ years ago. Still works on Win7, even if it does look bad. I'll find the name tonight.

Also, Futuremark has a space FPS. Dunno if anyone plays it anymore though. Was kinda like descent.

Is Sony's MMO still around?

Didn't SEGA have an MMO kinda like that too?

Star Trek Elite Force is another.

But I REALLY can't think of any current ones, good or bad...and that's sad.
 
Halo

/thread











:p

Ok, that was sarcasm. Don't kill me.


Eternal Silence is a free source mod
http://store.steampowered.com/app/17550/

I liked it quite a bit but there weren't more than about 2 servers when I played. Seems like it's still alive and has progressed(it's on steam now at least), so maybe there's more players.

FPS combat was really interesting imo, and spaceship combat was also cool. Graphics aren't terrible but they aren't great either since source is so old now.

Oh, and Planetside 2 is coming, but it'll probably be shit.
 
Dan_D said:
Sorry, but that didn't look good at all. The models are still too low poly and the lighting effects are just bad. The textures are plain jane and repetitive. Sorry but it looks pretty much like a game from 1999. In fact I don't remember the original FreeSpace 2 looking that bad. Those games were great in their day, but they are seriously dated now. The modding community may be keeping the games alive and if people are enjoying them then that's great, but sorry, that trailer / cut scene looked like ass.
Click to expand...

Thuleman said:
Not sure what to say about this. One the one hand it's epic that folks work on this, on the other hand the gfx will never live up to modern games, seems like a lot of man-months of effort were sunk into a relic of times past.
Click to expand...
images
 
rampantandroid said:
Freelancer gets my vote. Also look up...the name escapes me: Another space/flight sim where you're convicted of blowing up a space station and thrown into a sector of space for criminals...and you do missions, upgrade your ship....from 10+ years ago. Still works on Win7, even if it does look bad. I'll find the name tonight.
Click to expand...

Tachyon: The Fringe! That was a great game!
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR2oVeN2Kq8


/thread



less twitch and more tactical, but even though its ~5 years old it holds up well graphically. Wait till you see the explosions, to this day the best ship animation explosions. The upgrade ship is flashier than the starting stiletto, but that is one of the few higher quality videos to get a good look at the game.

It was fantastic, and anyone who has not played it is no different than anyone who has not read a game of thrones and series, husks of human beings, cattle, a waste of existence.
 
Apparently there are folks there that really want to do it, but I don't see it ever happening unless someone else puts one out that breaks the dam so to speak. I'd even be thrilled if Volition made a non-FS space shooter, seeing as how they wouldn't have to reacquire the franchise rights.
 
CannonDub said:
Freespace II....with the graphical overhaul mods out there it still holds visually up today...and good gameplay never goes out of style.
Click to expand...

Uh, yes it does. I have tried to connect my old playstation to "revisit" those classic games I came up with, the ones when "gameplay was everything"

It was shit. Graphics are every bit as relevant.
 
Last edited:
drako said:
Apparently there are folks there that really want to do it, but I don't see it ever happening unless someone else puts one out that breaks the dam so to speak. I'd even be thrilled if Volition made a non-FS space shooter, seeing as how they wouldn't have to reacquire the franchise rights.
Click to expand...

Volition is never going to make Freespace 3. You can tell in the 10-year Volition anniversary video or whatever that was posted on Hardforum awhile back that Freespace 2 was a big financial disappointment for them and they feel that the era of space sims has passed.

That said, that was for the PC market. If one ever catches on in the console world, that's a different story entirely.
 
Anyone get any info on Planetside 2 other than those weak teasers they sent out? I'd loooove for a great sequel but I don't want to get my hopes up too high yet...
 
Spare-Flair said:
Volition is never going to make Freespace 3. You can tell in the 10-year Volition anniversary video or whatever that was posted on Hardforum awhile back that Freespace 2 was a big financial disappointment for them and they feel that the era of space sims has passed.

That said, that was for the PC market. If one ever catches on in the console world, that's a different story entirely.
Click to expand...
I agree with your first point 100%. Just stating how Volition staffers expressed their desire to do a sequel. I think the sad shape Interplay was in at the time contributed to the poor sales of FS2, and I think V knows that, but they've long since given up thoughts of convincing THQ to agree.

And that's what I expect it will take... a strong selling cross-platform space shooter. I don't even care if it's dumbed down these days. I'll take anything. Rogue Squadron was very console tailored but it was a fantastic game.
 
If you have a joystick, Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. GoG's got it for $6.00. It's predecessor, Independence War Deluxe is also good but its missions are severely scripted and it doesn't look as pretty as I-War 2. (you don't need to play 1 before 2 IMO)

But there is a learning curve. This ain't Wing Commander, X-Wing or Freespace.

The graphics still stand up pretty well after 10 years.
 
Last edited:
Could never get into I-War 2, the space physics (although probably realistic) were really difficult to get the hang of.
 
tybert7 said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR2oVeN2Kq8


/thread



less twitch and more tactical, but even though its ~5 years old it holds up well graphically. Wait till you see the explosions, to this day the best ship animation explosions. The upgrade ship is flashier than the starting stiletto, but that is one of the few higher quality videos to get a good look at the game.

It was fantastic, and anyone who has not played it is no different than anyone who has not read a game of thrones and series, husks of human beings, cattle, a waste of existence.
Click to expand...

Of course, you can see the 'upgrade ship' if you look at some later parts of that series. Anything past part 7.
 
drako said:
I agree with your first point 100%. Just stating how Volition staffers expressed their desire to do a sequel. I think the sad shape Interplay was in at the time contributed to the poor sales of FS2, and I think V knows that, but they've long since given up thoughts of convincing THQ to agree.
Click to expand...

Here's the source for that info:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/08/volition-would-commit-murder-to-make-freespace-3/

A producer at Volition has said that there’s a group of people on the team that would “commit murder” to get the chance to make Freespace 3, citing Freespace 2’s poor sales as the reason Volition hasn’t returned to the space sim series.

In an interview with NowGamer, Producer at Volition, Jim Boone, was asked how the team would feel about making Freespace 3. Boone said “You have no idea. There is a group of people that would commit murder to do that game. The biggest problem that we have is… oh man, that game is so beloved. I did a bunch of missions for both games and it’s so dear to my heart I can’t even tell you. The problem we had was Freespace 2 didn’t sell as well…”

Boone says that he believes that Freespace 2 sold poorly because joysticks were going out of fashion. “this was a time when Quake was out and it was very much about the mouse and keyboard. Before that, when we did Descent for example, it was perfectly common for people to have joysticks – we sold a lot of copies of Descent. It was around that time that the more modern FPS with mouse and keyboard came out, as opposed to just keyboard like Wolfenstein or something.”

“My theory has been, ever since we’ve got analogue as a standard controller for consoles no one has done a heavy-duty, top, top quality space sim on console.” When asked if he felt Volition were the developers to make it happen, Boone said “I feel like there’s an opportunity there.”
Click to expand...

I also don't remember much of a marketing effort for Freespace 2, I suspect that probably most of the people who bought it were those already intimately familiar with the Descent universe. Its not like the poor sales could be blamed on online piracy at the time, high speed internet was basically non-existent for most of the world.

I guess from Boone's comments there is a glimmer of hope that FS3 could be made, but you have to wonder whether it would end up being far too streamlined to accommodate console hardware and input constraints.
 
Dan_D said:
Sorry, but that didn't look good at all. The models are still too low poly and the lighting effects are just bad. The textures are plain jane and repetitive. Sorry but it looks pretty much like a game from 1999. In fact I don't remember the original FreeSpace 2 looking that bad. Those games were great in their day, but they are seriously dated now. The modding community may be keeping the games alive and if people are enjoying them then that's great, but sorry, that trailer / cut scene looked like ass.
Click to expand...

I agree that the capital ship models tend to look rather dated, even with updated textures and such, but the updated models of the smaller fighters look great compared to the originals. I'm also thinking that it may just be a limitation of the engine itself that the cap ship models don't have more polys, and I'm not even 100% sure they made higher-poly models for them yet.

With that being said, I never had the chance to play FS2 when it first came out, but the game was recommended to me 100x over as simply the best space combat game out there, and having tried it with SCP, I'd have to agree. So I'm not looking at the game through the rosy glasses of nostalgia. I even fired it up without the graphics updates and of course it looks like utter crap in it's original form, but it looks sooo much better now. Never mind that you can actually run it in 1920x1200 or higher. While it may not look as fancy as games like X3, it's still pretty serviceable.

Then again, I also never played the original Fallout games when they came out, and made it a point to play through the first two before FO3 came out. Even with the very dated graphics, they were still a blast to play, and probably the reason I didn't enjoy FO3 quite as much simply because I wanted them to stick to the turn based combat model like originally planned in Van Buren.

Also, I'm sure there are probably better videos out there, that was simply one of the first results that came up when looking for a trailer. The capital-ship to capital-ship combat is totally epic though, and IMHO has never been done as well in any recent games.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top