New Freelancer Like Games

I've posted a few threads about some of the recent cool looking and very freelancer like games in some of the other Freelancer communities.. figured I may as well do it here too except I'll combine them into one thread to be less annoying haha.

I may as well start with the most recent one...

X4 Foundations - Split Vendetta

If it wasn't for Freelancer I would never have probably heard about the X series as being a little German studio they seem to go under the radar a bit. One of my mates who got me on to Freelancer in 2003 said "hey I found a game series just like it" and that was it, I was an addict lol. God knows how many hours I've put into the X series over the last 15 years.. and I'm still way behind in them due to my OCD urge to do and see everything haha! These days every man and his dog is making Freelancer like games but back in the 2000s and early 2010s there wasn't that much out there so the X series (particularly X2 and X3) was my way of dealing with Freelancer withdrawal symptoms lol. Sure they didn't have the great story and awesome planet landings Freelancer had but the ships and planets were gorgeous and the game universes huge. Being able to become a business mogul and build my own empire of stations and fleets of capital ships to whoops ass with was particularly fun and addictive for me. I've even been reading the X novels over the years to immerse myself in their universe further (although I'm gonna get stuck soon as they're not all translated to English haha).

Well anyway those who are familiar with X games will also know that pretty much every game they release is practically a friggin disaster at launch lol with endless bugs and broken or missing features. Then rather amazingly unlike most studios they then spend years releasing patches and addons to the games until after around 2 or so years the game is friggin awesome lmao! Sure enough X4 has followed that path and they recently released the first addon for X4 Split Vandetta which appears to be quite an improvement over the messy vanilla release. No doubt they'll be more coming too over the next few years. Presumably Egosoft must make their money back through addons as I don't know how those guys survive the bad first releases and somehow keep going. I think the first X game came out in 1999 so its over 20 years now haha.

Has anywhere here played X4 yet? I don't have it yet as I've been holding out of a physical collectors release (yeah I'm one of those old weirdos lol) which is probably not going to happen as they've said they can't afford it these days sadly but nevertheless I've been drooling over their videos lately to build some anticipation for the inevitable digital only purchase lol. I like how you can walk around the bridge of your capital ships while station construction looks way more advanced than previous games with you putting together all the modules yourself into whatever custom setup you want. Then of course you can walk around them and hire staff and mercs etc.

Trailer for the new Split addon looks cool...

And now they're doing a video series talking about each aspect of the game..

Trading

Fighting

Building - this is the kind of customizable station building I dreamed of while playing earlier X games and Freelancer.

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Over the last few days they've uploaded the final episodes in their series. I really enjoyed watching these.. but my god does the latest version look more complicated than ever! There's just SO MUCH you can do, customize and tinker with.

Think (Missions) - The mission management system in X3 Terran Conflict was a huge upgrade from X3 Reunion & previous games. Every time I'd play those older game sifting through endless cr*ppy news about spawnling donations and people laying eggs etc trying to find decent missions I'd find myself screaming "WHY DON'T THEY DO THINGS LIKE FREELANCER" lol and thankfully Egosoft eventually listened. The X4 version looks similar to the excellent X3TC one but just better organised and with more variety which is fine by me lol!

Explore - the exploring spooky derelicts part looked cool and reminds me of the stuff Star Citizen are toying with, except this game is actually finished haha (well sort of lol).

Strategy - this was one of my favourite things about X3 Reunion onwards (X1-2 it was much harder due to more simplistic system views).. sometimes I would park my ship for days and not go anywhere and just spend my entire playing time in the system views directing my fleets, managing resources, and building stations just like a game of Sins of a Solar Empire.

He's another new Freelancer like game that I'm excited about, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. It's been out for a while but its still not out for me yet as I cbf dealing with the Epic game store lol. Plus my current computer probably wouldn't run it anyway..

You can tell the devs are FL fans as the main character is called Juno and it’s got beautiful planetary landings! The graphics in space are stunning (although some people seem to hate them for some reason haha) and the cockpits look pretty cool too. Looks like you can land at bases & worlds and visit dealers & bars (even play pool lol).

This guy has done a good video review of it:

Here's some sexy screens I found:

It's funny, there I was getting all excited about Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and then someone over in the Freelancer Facebook group posts a video of an even more Freelancer looking game called Starpoint Gemini 3!

I'd listed the previous Starpoint Gemini games over in my Freelancer Similar games thread here at this forum as they had space combat, trading on stations and even some planet landing stuff however they still felt a bit different eg more of a big ship tactical combat game. However for this new game it looks like they've totally gone in a pure Freelancer style fighter game direction (which I think has upset some of their past fanbase but hey its great for us FL fans haha) with all the cool FL stuff like landing on planets and space stations to trade and visit their seedy space bars for work! It also has an interesting (unfinished) side game where you take control of a small probe infiltrating derelicts and space stations avoiding security systems that sort of reminds me of some of X2 – The Threat’s side missions.

The game is still in early access on steam so naturally it lacks polish but is already looking absolutely gorgeous!! The only fault I have with its otherwise stunning graphics are the very plastic mannequin like people but apparently the devs have said they'll be fixing that.

This guy has done a good video preview of it:

[youtube]

Here's some sexy screens I found around the place:

Some cool news I saw today.. Starpoint Gemini 3 will be released soon and has added mod support which is good as the game looks super similar to Freelancer (they even added a mini Sirius sector to the game lol) so if there was ever a good candidate engine for a future Freelancer mod it's this game lol. Of course who's gonna have the skill and motivation to do such a thing these days hey, but nevertheless its fun to fantasize about lol.

https://www.moddb.com/games/st…-modding-and-release-date

Here's another one I forgot to post about here a while back lol! One of the great bonuses of making a Freelancer FB group a while back is that members alert me to all Freelancer & Wing Commander Privateer 'spiritual sequels' on the way haha. Last year was a good year for releases and announcements lol.. first Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Then Starpoint Gemini 3 and now we've got Everspace 2!

The sequel is looking even more amazing than the first one did. The whole rogue like randomly generated galaxy put me off playing the last one but it sounds like they're going proper open world detailed pre-made galaxy like good old Freelancer this time around! And the planet surface areas look awesome too! Naturally it made it's Kickstarter funding total without too much trouble!

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr…ockfishgames/everspace-2/

This guy has done a good video preview of it:

Here's some sexy screens I found around the place:

This guy has done a good review of the Everspace 2 closed beta currently happening. I like how he constantly compares to Freelancer instead of other games haha. He mentioned planet surface stuff but yeah who knows if its gonna be like Freelancer.

Forgot to post about this here.. we've got a new addon on the way! The Terran's are back!

I'm kind of surprised that Egosoft didn't do a Boron expansion (using fan suggestions on how to achieve their look and mobility in non-liquid environments) and then put in a bit of a cliffhanger story ending with a Terran tease, so you could then save the Terrans for a big stand alone game with a new story like they did back in the day with Terran Conflict (same engine but separate to X3 with a sexy cliffhanger to bridge the games). Reckon they would have made more money in the long run IMO even if some fans would have hated having to buy a new game again though of course haha.

Also I was drooling over this video below the other day. The 'Pilot' youtube guy did very sexy video on the Split Raptor supercarrier haha.. my god when the sun reflects off it like that... drools. And those dark red C&C NOD like interiors.. oh baby lol. Can almost see why all those crazy people bought gorgeous super expensive ships in Star Citizen lol!.. almost.

Looks like X4 Cradle of Humanity is out now. I can't run the game on my old rig so I'm drooling over all the videos appearing online instead lol. As usual it was pretty buggy on release but it sounds like most of the issues have been fixed already.

Planet terraforming looks cool:

New launch trailer:

I've always loved the soundtracks to past X games and still hum many of the songs after all these years lol.. the new one sounds amazing:

Quote from Blake00

I'm kind of surprised that Egosoft didn't do a Boron expansion (using fan suggestions on how to achieve their look and mobility in non-liquid environments)

Quoting myself here lol as they finally done it! Egosoft are creating another addon pack for X4 and are bringing back the water based Borons! I've been asking for this for years and years! Every time people would say it's impossible I'd pitch my 'stations with separate water areas and Boron encounter suits for the normal dry areas' idea and how it could work in the X4 engine. So to now see that they've actually done that and made it a reality makes me so happy, as this is pretty much what I pictured in my mind years ago. And I loved the extra touch of redoing the good old Kingdom End music too.