DESCENT: FREESPACE - THE GREAT WAR
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A shoot 'em up for purists

By STAVROS

Prepare for war! The people from Interplay who gave us Descent and Descent II have come back with one of the most outstanding space sims of all time.

Now everybody knows that Descent games are based in and around mines. Descent Freespace has the added thrill of full-on dogfighting in space.

To help you get accustomed to flying your Apollo space craft there is a series of training drills to give you a bit of an insight as to how this thing works.

In the top right-hand corner of the training screen there is a skip training button. I strongly recommend that you DO NOT push this button. Give the training a go, it will give you some extra knowledge to use in the main game to stay alive.

The graphics and sound that have been produced are excellent and help make the game a more satisfying experience.

As seems to be standard nowadays, there is the obligatory 12-player multiplay facility built-in, plus a real fun gadget in the form of real-time voice messaging. Just think what your friends will think when you suddenly appear behind them with a blood curdling scream thrown in just as you launch an MX-50 right into their engines.

No weapons left? No counter measures left? Call in the supply ship. This is an excellent way for you to just go out and blast anything that moves. The supply ship can pretty much do everything for you in the way of repairs and reload, except for fixing the main hull. Who cares? Just use the good old ETS (Energy Transfer System) to transfer more energy into your shields. If that is still going to be a problem because your hull integrity is down to 4 or 5, call in the reinforcements, sit back, target the enemy and tell your guys to blow him out of the sky!

Want to play around and torture your enemy? Freespace will let you do that too. Just target the individual subsystems on your enemy's ship and blast away with your disrupter. Eventually, he will be left floating in space with nothing to do except watch through his screen as you surgically destroy him.

If you're not happy with the provided missions on the CD, make up your own. Using FRED (Freespace Mission Editor) you can create detailed missions for single or multiplayer games.

A terrific game.

ORIGINALITY 90%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 95%
PLAYABILITY 90%
ADDICTION 95%
ENJOYMENT 95%