I've been wondering this myself, for a very long time. Eve online doesn't even count... I want my x-wing vs tie fighter back!!!
Space, Flying and Space Flying
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Amusingly, Star Trek Online would seem to fit what you're after, at least in theory. The actual quality and pacing of it may be arguable, but ... space game. With ground combat levels. No insta-switch between them, as far as I'm aware, although it's not inconceivable...
Thee people were the game developers, so the major flaws Yahtzee pointed out were stuff they would agree with as it was more related to the powers that be, the budget giving out and the game having to be shorter even though it was just findig getting into the wing of things.Tonimata said:
Maybe they'll take it constructivly.
Maybe this is why it's so fun to fly in Mario games: because Mario's "combat" (if you can call it that) is equal-parts aerial head-stomping and ground-based fistfighting.
The posibility of making a full stop maked a lot of difference, gameplaywise, to me. Besides, space flights games have had battles against larger than life space stations, which I haven't seen in flight games (unless you count attacking bases, but it just doesn't feel the same)KDR_11k said:
Agreed. Always enjoyed Tachyon: The Fringe.
Why did space flight sims die? I had this same conversation with a complete stranger some time ago. An easy explaination is that proper sci-fi contains too many complicated themes, far removed from modern life, to commanded a mass market appeal. Take Firefly; a piece of excellent screenplay whose success never matched its quality. The most successful stuff has gotten around this by cutting out the difficult stuff and keeping Sci-Fi in the simplistic mould of US contemporary military culture; Macho space marines, evil aliens, awesome humans. For reference see Halo, Gears, Mass Effect, Resistance, Killzone.
Not the whole explaination, but certainly part of it.
Why did space flight sims die? I had this same conversation with a complete stranger some time ago. An easy explaination is that proper sci-fi contains too many complicated themes, far removed from modern life, to commanded a mass market appeal. Take Firefly; a piece of excellent screenplay whose success never matched its quality. The most successful stuff has gotten around this by cutting out the difficult stuff and keeping Sci-Fi in the simplistic mould of US contemporary military culture; Macho space marines, evil aliens, awesome humans. For reference see Halo, Gears, Mass Effect, Resistance, Killzone.
Not the whole explaination, but certainly part of it.
"Ohhh. I see your plan. You're trying to make me say something nice about Sonic Unleashed so you can quote it out of context on forums full of oblivious furry-loving dickbiscuits still manfully trying to convince themselves that Sonic is worth a damn."
BEST LINE EVER!
I laughed so fucking hard.
Also, i always liked "Descent: Freespace - The great War", also known as "Conflict: Freespace"
Altho it has crude grafics, the story had nice parts to it and you could choose the loadout of you and your squadmates, as well as their ships, before each mission. Also it was always an epic moment when you finally took down that fucking huge Battleship, after destroying almost all of it´s subsystems, so it cannot effectively fight back and shoot your bombs.
Also it had a nice system of managing the energy supply of your ships systems...
When you are tailed by 5 enemy fighters, or are approching a battleship, giving the shields more energy and transferring the most energy to the most vunerable side (front, back, left or right sides respectivly) with the arrowkeys had a nice feeling of "fuck my shields gonna blow soon! I gotta do something!" which was usually when i put all left over energy into the engines, did a U-turn and blew a multi-warhead missile up their ass XD
BEST LINE EVER!
I laughed so fucking hard.
Also, i always liked "Descent: Freespace - The great War", also known as "Conflict: Freespace"
Altho it has crude grafics, the story had nice parts to it and you could choose the loadout of you and your squadmates, as well as their ships, before each mission. Also it was always an epic moment when you finally took down that fucking huge Battleship, after destroying almost all of it´s subsystems, so it cannot effectively fight back and shoot your bombs.
Also it had a nice system of managing the energy supply of your ships systems...
When you are tailed by 5 enemy fighters, or are approching a battleship, giving the shields more energy and transferring the most energy to the most vunerable side (front, back, left or right sides respectivly) with the arrowkeys had a nice feeling of "fuck my shields gonna blow soon! I gotta do something!" which was usually when i put all left over energy into the engines, did a U-turn and blew a multi-warhead missile up their ass XD
the main reason i love your reviews and writing is that you have some of the most bizarre and funniest metaphors, seriously where do you come up this stuff?
I know you don't like MMORPGs very much, Yahtzee, but you might find Star Trek online to be a little more to your taste than EVE Online was - you can progress just fine going solo, but if you do join up with a group, the gameplay scales pretty well too. More importantly to your article today - the combat is much more fly-around and blow-stuff-up-y than Eve Online is. Specifically, you have more control over your weapons and how your ship maneuvers.
If I were sitting in a chair, I might just have fallen out of it laughing. Alas, that experience will be one I'll have to miss.Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Also, I share your feelings on space games. I still have fond memories of stuff like Conflict: Freespace 1&2.
"Dive dive dive! Hit your burners pilot!"
I think a big reason why the Space Flight Sim died out was the rise of the console and gamepad and the decline of the PC joystick. Games like X-Wing and TIE fighter gave way to games like Crimson Skies and the Star Wars: Starfighter series.
If you look at all of the old school Military flight sim games you needed nearly a full keyboard to make it work in addition to a Joystick. It also didn't help that gamers generally don't want to buy Steel Battalion-like joysticks and think landing on an airstrip is too aggravating.
I love spaceflight sim games, even the only where you had to go trade stuff on occasion. What's annoyed me though is that most of the games I'd be interested are MMOs now.
Options:
City of Heroes, you can have characters with Flight which can be pretty fun in and of itself, although the warehouse thing gets old quick.
Champions Online - See city of heroes although prettier, more flexible but it has some content issues.
Star Trek Online - Starship combat is great fun, ground combat is... serviceable. The game is new so it's still have some issues to be worked out.
Jumpgate - Elite as MMO, they're planning on releasing a sequel but who knows when that will be. The original is a little dated but it looks more Wing Commander/Elite and less like EVE.
If you can find it there's a game called Tachyon: The Fringe which came out some time around 2000-2002 or so. It had no joystick support which is why I passed on it, but it did have Bruce Campbell as the player voice.
One genre I miss was the "Colonize the Solar System" games, where it was less about building a Star Wars-like space empire and more about how to colonize the Moon, Mars, and the rest of the Solar System. I heard NASA is working on an MMO though, if the budget for it hasn't gotten hacked to pieces.
If you look at all of the old school Military flight sim games you needed nearly a full keyboard to make it work in addition to a Joystick. It also didn't help that gamers generally don't want to buy Steel Battalion-like joysticks and think landing on an airstrip is too aggravating.
I love spaceflight sim games, even the only where you had to go trade stuff on occasion. What's annoyed me though is that most of the games I'd be interested are MMOs now.
Options:
City of Heroes, you can have characters with Flight which can be pretty fun in and of itself, although the warehouse thing gets old quick.
Champions Online - See city of heroes although prettier, more flexible but it has some content issues.
Star Trek Online - Starship combat is great fun, ground combat is... serviceable. The game is new so it's still have some issues to be worked out.
Jumpgate - Elite as MMO, they're planning on releasing a sequel but who knows when that will be. The original is a little dated but it looks more Wing Commander/Elite and less like EVE.
If you can find it there's a game called Tachyon: The Fringe which came out some time around 2000-2002 or so. It had no joystick support which is why I passed on it, but it did have Bruce Campbell as the player voice.
One genre I miss was the "Colonize the Solar System" games, where it was less about building a Star Wars-like space empire and more about how to colonize the Moon, Mars, and the rest of the Solar System. I heard NASA is working on an MMO though, if the budget for it hasn't gotten hacked to pieces.
I tend to agree that I would like to see more space games, though admittedly I kind of like the "Elite" type format where there is more to it than just flying around and shooting stuff. As far as having space flight and ground based stuff in one game, well I suspect the reason you don't see that too often is because it basically amounts to developing TWO games and only making the profits of one, since your basically developing two entire engines/sets of commands/etc...
My personal "dream game" is pretty much the above as an RPG or action RPG. So far the only attempt to do this has been Star Trek Online, and despite wanting to love it, I left beta figuring "meh" and decided to give it a pass. I'm not going to go into my full analysis here, but understand that I am a veteran beta player, understand it was a beta, and saw what they were launching with, as well as what they could potentially do with the engine. I think it was a lot of lost potential...
I don't know, someday we can always hope Anarchy Online has a love child with Earth and Beyond's corpse.
My personal "dream game" is pretty much the above as an RPG or action RPG. So far the only attempt to do this has been Star Trek Online, and despite wanting to love it, I left beta figuring "meh" and decided to give it a pass. I'm not going to go into my full analysis here, but understand that I am a veteran beta player, understand it was a beta, and saw what they were launching with, as well as what they could potentially do with the engine. I think it was a lot of lost potential...
I don't know, someday we can always hope Anarchy Online has a love child with Earth and Beyond's corpse.
I got serious space-sim nostalgia a while ago, failed miserably to get anything better than Beyond the Red Line (Freespace mod, I think) working and lost interest.
However, I've been keeping an eye on Black Prophecy [http://www.blackprophecy.com/], a twitch version of EVE online, by the sounds of things. That is, you actually pilot your ship, rather than command it.
Then there's Naumachia [http://naumachia.aureasection.com/], which despite its silly name actually looks FUCKING AWESOME - 'realistic physics, but immediate controls' sounds like it could be perfect (if they pull it off
Space sims and mechwarrior-esque games are two groups that I would love to see fleshed out - so along comes those two mentioned above and Mechwarrior Living Legends [http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/] to neatly keep me happy! Sometimes life is kind.
Sometimes.
However, I've been keeping an eye on Black Prophecy [http://www.blackprophecy.com/], a twitch version of EVE online, by the sounds of things. That is, you actually pilot your ship, rather than command it.
Then there's Naumachia [http://naumachia.aureasection.com/], which despite its silly name actually looks FUCKING AWESOME - 'realistic physics, but immediate controls' sounds like it could be perfect (if they pull it off
Space sims and mechwarrior-esque games are two groups that I would love to see fleshed out - so along comes those two mentioned above and Mechwarrior Living Legends [http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/] to neatly keep me happy! Sometimes life is kind.
Sometimes.