Freespace and Freespace 2 were IMO good games, not excellent but good. I did not put much favor in the cutscenes or how they drop you right in the middle of battle instead of flying to the combat zone so you can at least get your systems adjusted prior to hitting combat. Plus the cumbersome keystrokes and steps just made the game FS and FS2 too cumbersome during a heated combat situation. Who has time to fumble thru selecting which flight group, which fighter and wich command to give when 6 fighters are launching missiles up your tailpipe! I often ignored the com's commands and just took care of everthing myself, which in the long run, turned out to be the best since I was very well capable of defending a cargo group while the other fighters (AI) who are supposed to be there to assist, couldnt hit the broad side of a barn if they were 1 inch from it even after telling them to attack that target!
The only reason why I enjoyed FS and FS2, was the mulitplayer capability, and the fact that they included FRED, the editor to create new missions and combat scenarios. Those two things gave the game a little extra kick. Without them, FS and FS2 would have died out much sooner than it did. Well, it isnt exactly "dead" yet, cause I see thousands of players still playing mulitplayer games each day.
The days of "single player only" are long gone. Any game made that only focuses on single player usually does not last very long. Doesnt matter what platform it is on, GBA, PS, XB, PC. The old days of low processing power and narrow bandwidth internet are long gone, and so are the ways games are created. Just look at the trend of what kind of games are hitting the market. Very very few are single player only games, and there is a reason for that. They dont live past the final mission or final level till one drags out the game a few months or years later to revisit. By that time, hundreds of improved, far better games have hit the market and surpassed the old ones with new features and capabilities.
Either the games keep up with the times and requests of the buyers, or it will fade into the abyss of "once was, now is not".