Every now and again I reminisce about how great flight and space simulators were, from Sopwith (all right, not exactly a realistic simulator, but it’s still brilliant) through the likes of Elite, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Wing Commander and Gunship 2000 to the X-Wing series, and how it’s a pity there are so few coming out these days. If a survey had asked “How much would you like to play a space combat MMOG on a scale of one to five, where one is There is literally nothing I would like more, my every waking moment is devoted to fervently wishing such a thing could happen and even during slumber do I dream of the same, albeit having forgotten to put my trousers on and in the company of Diego Felipez de Guzmán 1st Marquis of Leganés, and five is I would rather fashion a rudimentary cudgel from whatever objects are closest to hand and do my very best to bludgeon myself senseless rather than do such a thing“, I would’ve answered 1.736.
I’m sure it’s been established that people don’t always know what they want, but if more proof were needed space combat MMOG Black Prophecy turned up a few months ago, I downloaded it, gave it a try, found it fun enough, and haven’t logged in since. If it’s any consolation to the poor, abandoned desktop icon I do mean to get back to it at some point, along with the full version of Wings of Prey I picked up in a Steam sale and any number of others, but just in case any company was planning a multi-million dollar game project based solely on a survey I filled out, you might want to do a bit more market research.
Anyway, what really sparked all this off was an e-mail from Good Old Games announcing 50% off Interplay games, meaning you can get one of the greatest space combat games of all time, Freespace 2, for three dollars. Less than two quid! Many games don’t stand the test of time too well if you drag them out of the gloomy cupboard of fond memories and dust them off in the harsh glare of current technology, but Freespace 2, with a bit of a spruce up from the Source Code Project, really does; as Kieron Gillen said last year “In short, there’s no reason not to play Freespace 2 now. It’s as good as ever.”
Also in the sale are the first two Fallout games (or three, if you count Fallout Tactics), generally very well regarded by RPG fans, but I don’t think time has been so kind to them; I tried Fallout 2 several years after its release and just couldn’t get on with it. That might just be me, though, if you’ve ever been tempted to give it a try then three dollars is surely worth an impulse buy.
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