Freespace follows much in the tradition of Origin's Wing Commander series with the idea of you being the space commander of a wing (or two or three). Your objectives are given to you in briefing, and you are responsible for ensuring those objectives are accomplished by you and your team. If you don't, command reams you out and you have to play the mission again. After repeated failures, it would be a wise idea to turn down the difficulty (there are 5 settings to choose from).

If you're familiar with any of the modern space sims, you'll know that you're placed right in the pit of the ship that you choose each mission. From the pit, you play with your joystick and unload your space cannon blasts into the various baddies. The display is filled with all the info you'll need to watch not only your own ass, but the asses of you buddies too. You're given info on the condition of yourself, your wingmen, critical ships, and the enemy that you have a lock on. Due to the huge amount of information displayed on the hud at all times, things can get a little crowded on screen, making it sometimes difficult to figure out what the hell is going on. Otherwise, the tactical information supplied is very useful in helping to fufill your mission goals.

Graphically, Freespace looks great. Running on my 15" monitor with a voodoo1, the special effects are well done, and the backgrounds are beautiful. Detail levels can be adjusted to match your computer's speed and memory, with a PII 266 about maxing out the detail levels. If you've played Wing Commmander Prophecy, you'll likely remember the lens flare feature that simulated light reflecting off of your visor or canopy. In Freespace, you get a similar lighting effect that can blind you when you're facing into a star. Kills aren't as fufilling as Prophecy's mainly due to the only mildly interesting explosion graphics, but the inclusion of blast damage is excellent. If you're too close to a capital ship when it blows, you're going to take a pounding from the explosion, possibly disabling some of your subsystems and potentially destroying your ship and you with it .

The flight controls feel more like Wing Commander than X-wing vs Tie fighter, so movement doesn't feel as fast. The scale and size at which the capital ships are rendered are massive, so trying to fly around to the other side of one can feel like it's taking ages. The size of the capital ships does convey a realistic sense of space armadas, with you being a mosquito to the human sized ships you fight. The gameplay overall is quite good, offering good control with any of the ships.

One of the things that made the Wing Commander series to memorable (other than the atrocious acting) was the story line. Each Wing Commander game since the beginning featured a carefully constructed plot, with interesting twists, turns, and decisions to make. In Freespace, this is severely lacking. You're just a lackey, told what to blow up, and when to blow it up. Command gives you a briefing on the war effort, and then your air boss tells you what you need to turn into a pile of space crap. Your job is to do it without question, or choice in the matter.

Descent Freespace isn't the best space sim I've played, but it's definitely one of the better. Other features included are a mission creator to make your own missions to fly, and multiplayer support through a network or the internet. Missions can be found on the internet when you've exhausted the on disc supply, and an expansion pack is already available in stores. At the going price of about $50, it's definitely worth a try if you're a space sim fan.

Requirements

• Pentium 133 w/ 3D accelerator or P166 without
• 32 mb ram
• 8X cd drive
• 100 mb free HD space