video game

Putting it all together

We've all seen the grandiose attempts at adding continuity to network gaming. Probably the best deal going right now is the SquadWar stuff for Descent:Freespace 2. There's also various systems that keep track of statistics for various first person shooters. Naturally, we're all familiar with UO (remember when that just used to be a band?) and Evercrack. But [I feel] all of these games fall short of the mark in one way or another.

It's about time someone really used the network for something.

We all have our favorite kind of game. Mine just happens to be space combat sims. This doesn't mean I own them all... Just the best ones. For my own personal reasons, I consider the best sims to be Tie Fighter, and Freespace 1 and 2. The Freespace games are not really innovators exactly, though they do bring better-than-usual graphics into the equation, and of course the kilometer long capital ships are just badass. The ship in the original Descent:Freespace with the hole in it that you can fly through is just wonderful.

(Subtitle: What's wrong with navigating space sims today?)

At this point, it's hard to imagine someone not having played a space sim at some point. Whether it's the pithy original Wing Commander, or the venerable X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, or the more modern Descent:Freespace titles, we've all at least seen them, and most of us have done our best to break a joystick or two (I killed one playing Freespace... A Wingman Warrior, too!) dodging enemies.

You may have noticed that just about every game today is done in three dimensions. Even card games have cute little shadow effects. These days, form is seen as just as important as function everywhere; Take a look at a Ram truck sometime.