There was a lot of hype about Freelancer but for the most part it was off my radar. It seemed to be in development forever and I ignored the buzz until the demo came out. The game isn’t perfect but it does provide an enjoyable gaming experience.

Installing the game is straightforward; the game takes up about 2.6 gigabytes of space. There’s also an option to install the server files (another gigabyte you’ll have to dedicate to the game) in case you want to host a multi-player game on your PC (or setup your own server). The game is fairly complete and bug-free (the game has yet to crash on me after about 20 hours of play). It’s nice to have a big name game released without having to download and install a patch the day it hits the shelves.

Freelancer is set in the same universe as Starlancer and takes place long after the war between the Alliance and the Coalition is over (Starlancer’s main focus). The Coalition wins but before they can be wiped out the Alliance sends five sleeper ships into deep space to start over in the Sirius Sector. The five sleeper ships represent the five houses of the Alliance, the Liberty (Americans), Bretonia (British), Kusari (Japanese), Rhineland (Germans), and the Hispania (Spanish). Freelancer is set 800 years after the sleepers reach the Sirius sector so each house has developed and flourished. While this is good background, it doesn’t play too heavily during the game.

Against this canvas, you play Edison Trent, a pilot for hire who doesn’t have a lot of luck. Right after signing a large deal, the base you were on is attacked by a mysterious force and you’re catapulted into a galaxy-wide plot involving all of the houses, as well as some mysterious third parties (oohh….dramatic). The single player portion of the game is fairly deep and will take you about 12-18 hours to finish depending on how much you focus on the single player missions. I played through the single player portion in about 16 hours but I did take some time to tour the galaxy a little. A word of warning, you will get hooked on this game. I had a lot of “Just one more mission” moments that resulted in looking up and seeing that it was absurdly early in the morning.
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