There wasn't much of a hype going on with this game, actually none. So when I read some reviews of Conflict, I was pretty much surprised how good grades it got. If you liked X-Wing, you will most likely love Conflict: Freespace. X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter isn't the only game Conflict was influenced by and Wing Commanders have also been under some heavy investigation. I haven't played either of those games, so that doesn't bother me. If the game itself isn't original, it's not very difficult to guess what's the plot like. Not even that original, the story goes like this: Earth is in war with an alien race called Vasudans, that no big deal, but then happens the worst. The vasudan legends tell that in some day, a powerful and evil race of aliens attack destroying everything and everyone, that means terrans (the human race) and vasudans. They are called the Shivans, at that time their ships and fighters seem to be

A huge ship going down, you'd better get away from the explosion and fast.

invulnerable against any weapon known. You can guess what happens after that, so I won't try to spoil your gaming experience.

What is taken from X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter is the same kind of flying model, which is both a good and a bad thing. I honestly don't know what's it like flying around in space, but I know Conflict hasn't got any realism in it, in fact it feels almost the same like in X-W vs. T-F. Of course it's fun, but as a big fan of Babylon 5, I can't stop thinking what would it be to pull manouvers like Sinclair, or was it Sheridan always did in the serie. That's just imbossible to even try something like that in Conflict. Let's just wait for Babylon 5: into the Fire, which was recently abandoned by Sierra, but I'm sure we'll see that, with a different publisher of course. The problem in the dogfights in Conflict is that almost every one of the kills you gain, you gain it with the same pattern: fly behind the enemy, match it's speed, get it into your sight, aim and shoot it with your "frickin' laser" guns, or missiles. This starts to repeat itself after hundred kills, not a surprise, but perhaps they do it the same way in the real life, who knows. This might be because of the shielding systems wielded by everyone, personally I don't like this at all. Your opponents seem to be invincible, especially when they are extremely difficult to hit. I'm pretty much sure you won't like the Dragon as an enemy, it is incredibly fast, agile and it's got powerful shielding. Can and will cause you a headache. If you've got only one enemy fighting against you, it's pretty easy job, but beware if you get more than two or three behind you. Of course you can order your wingmen to clear your six, at least it makes your survival easier. The orders you can give are pretty limited but you can manage with them perfectly. It would have been much more exciting if there were not shields at all, just like in Babylon 5. Or, on the other hand, weapons would have been made much, much more effective. The fact, that the shields can be recharged only makes it worse. Now there were the bad news, the good news are, that despite the little shielding problem, the dogfights are even more exciting than in X-Wing. Remember what were the dogfights like in X-Wing, at first both of the fighters took a little distance, then they just turned towards and tried to shoot each other, with bad luck they both crashed and exploded. With a good luck and shields, only you survived.

So, what about the missions then. Some of the missions are almost like some in the X-Wing, in other words, simply great. Luckily the biggest part of them are original and innovative. For example there's a mission where you and your wingmen have to secure a safe passage for your cruiser through a cloud of asteroids. Yep, you have to shoot them, a thrillingly original

Inside an asteroid field, your radar system will be screwed up a bad time.

idea. What comes to the storyline and so on, the GTA (Galactic Terran Alliance, can't remember for sure though) has to invent new ships and weapons to get rid of those evil Shivans. It's nice that you can really see the technology advancing, but it's kind of unfair since the enemy doesn't even seem to be trying any new tricks. When your scientists get to work, they'll get so many new guns and ships prepared for you, you can't even test all of them properly. Although some of them are pretty useless stuff, there will be enough for you to find your own favourite setup. Own setup!?! Yes it's possible and even recommended to set up your own ships, you can decide what kind of ship armada you'll take with you and even choose the weapons. Of course there are standard setups for every mission, but you won't get far without setting up your own setups for each of the later missions. Remember the R2-unit in X-Wings which always repaired your subsystems, now you'll have some kind of repair ship to the battlefield to keep you company. You should also know that it won't repair any hull damages, it just reloads the missiles and repairs damaged subsystems. The ships aren't quite what I expected, I mean on the graphical aspect. The large GTA Cruisers look just like a few milk cartons attached to each other and the enemy cruisers are too pretty unimaginative. Only a couple of own and enemy fighters impressed me, so you can't really praise the designers for doing too good job.

Graphically Conflict is almost photorealistic with high details, but my trusty old P133 couldn't keep framerates at the decent level so I had to put detail settings to very low. It didn't bother, because the graphics were still ace and the game ran smoothly enough. If you shoot for example an enemy fighter, the shields will glow for a moment and the sound it makes is great. When you hit enough, the shield will collapse and when you shoot the hull, you will notice it. Gas of some kind starts to leak around and when you've pounded it enough, it surely looks

The HUD tells you every single detail of everything you have to know in a mission.

like that. The explosions look terrific especially with the highest detail level, it's really worth of seeing a giant enemy cruiser exploding into few pieces and after that the space around is filled with metal parts. The musical department is well done, except for the music in battles, but the menus and cut-scenes have very space-ish background music. When your own ship gets destroyed, the music enhances the feeling brilliantly. That't about the only time I really liked the music, otherwise it's too "background". I should be overjoyed because Conflict's musical world isn't based on techno too much. Brilliant music always creates the mood that is needed to improve the gaming experience, but I have to say that this is where Conflict fails to impress. The sound effects are at just about the same level with the musics. The gun sounds are nothing unheard before but they work just fine. Wingmen report their status once in a while, but otherwise the radio chat is a bit too quiet. So, the music and sound effects are OK, but nothing above that.

One of the most important aspects in games today is multiplayer. Despite that, Volition haven't been working on that aspect properly. I haven't been playing Conflict's multiplayer at all, so I can't say anything about it. From what I've heard of it, it's slow and laggish, even the updated version. So much for the multiplayer.

In the end, Conflict is probably the best "spacefighter simulation" to this point. At least as long as it takes time for Conflict 2 to appear, or Babylon 5. Conflict has a brilliant storyline, the best flying model in sight and customable ships, add to that the jaw dropping graphics. You can't ask much more, actually you can, at least some own ideas by the developers would have been nice. One of the best games in the whole genre.

Gameplay: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sounds: 3/5
Lastability: 4/5

Overall:


Reviewed by: Janne "Blizzardic" Mankila

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