The best is with out question Freelancer. It is the most fun, has the best story, it allows you to zip through systems, has upgrades for your ship(s), a good trading system, pirates, good guys, bad guys, all sorts of missions, lets you land on planets or scorch yourself near the sun. You name it, it is there. And the graphics are great too, even though it is not the newest game on the block! It also doesn't restict you to just the ship and intership communications, on planet views and talks with people are part of the game.
All the other games have some draw backs, most especially the user interface.
- Darkstar One does not have such a nice trading system but is more up to date the Freelancer. It is more short term fun and has less bugs than the X series games (see below) but lacks the long term fun you get with a better simulation like Freelancer or the X series.
- X2 The Threat is the best for trading/economy and it has nice graphics, but the storyline is only so-so and it has quite a few bugs. Menu system and command structure is a dog though.
- X3 The Reunion has the best graphics, but even more bugs :-( The programmers refuse to fix some of the story-line bugs so I can't recomend it anymore if you want to play the story. You can get X2 cheaper and there are a lot of mature mods out there for it.
Action adventures shoot-em-up space games (e.g. X-Wing) or strategy space games (e.g. I-Wars) games are also a different breed. They offer no appeal to continue once you have played through the missions.Though I admit they are a lot of fun the first time through.
Freespace 2 is the only space game than runs on a PC I have not played, but it certainly got a few good reviews.
Log in to comment