Freelancer

[optimusjamie]

Has anyone else heard of this old space sim? It came out in about 2003 or so. I think it was the last game by Chris Roberts before he started Star Citizen. Not quite sure if it counts as 'obscure' since it was somewhat popular in its time and still has some communities out there (albiet based around mods like Discovery and Crossfire). As far as I'm aware, it's not abandonware, but it definitely isn't in print anymore.

 

Anyway, it's actually pretty good. The singleplayer campaign is pretty solid, but it does go kind of off-the-rails when they introduce the alien invasion plot and the man-on-the-run stuff kind of fades out, but it's definitely worth a look.

 

As mentioned previously, there's still some communities. I'd recommend Discovery- it's based around a mod, and has an active roleplaying community around it that puts out pretty awesome stuff from time to time.

[BTGBullseye]

Nowhere near obscure... At the time of release there were medium sized displays for it in all the major stores.

 

I used to make/edit mods for the game, and I'm still trying to find a couple of the mods I used to have. If you're into modding it, I recommend going to http://www.lancersreactor.com/. (don't be off-put by their crappy site design)

[Rover]

I know nobody has touched this topic in 7 months, I know!

 

But I freakin loved this game, played it a lot back in the day.

I did really enjoy the first half of the single player, as optimusjamie pointed out the initial mystery and the subsequent man-on-the-run part of the plot are great and after that I got the feeling the writer(s) ran out of ideas and it became a cliché with a kind of shit ending.

I started out on the vanilla multi-player but the mods made the game a lot better. I thoroughly enjoyed the evolutions mod and the server I played on had their own more polished version of that mod. Eventually I lost interest though.

I did come back to the game about 8 months ago and replayed the single player, which re-kindled my interest in this kind of game.

Right now I'm thinking of picking up Elite: Dangerous and or Star Citizen.

 

Would still love to see a Freelancer 2 though.

[BTGBullseye]

Yes, Freelancer 2 would be awesome, especially if they make it just as moddable... In the meantime, try Starpoint Gemini 2. (it's about as close to a spiritual successor as I can find for Freelancer)

[Rover]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to have a look!

 

Edit: it looks pretty sweet, I think I'll pick it up as soon as I have some disposable income and time

[BTGBullseye]

Have fun! And if you have issues, do post them... The devs are extremely active fixing things.

[Zaraki]

I know it as well,but i don't have enough interest to play it.