Best space shooter sims since 2000?

The Freelancer mouse controls worked really well. It's a lot of fun taking on missions with a friend and upgrading your ship. It should only take you a few afternoons to get the best ship and equipment, but it's certainly worth picking up cheap.

Protostar: War on the Frontier is an older game that has both atmospheric and space flight. What you say to an alien pilot can determine if they'll attack you or not.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/protostar-war-on-the-frontier/screenshots/gameShotId,56666/
 
Space Interceptor: Project Freedom is a bargain title. The story is simple, but the game is fun.
 
Gameplay and graphics-wise, it's hard to beat Freespace 2, especially after the SCP improved the engine A LOT.

I know you've beaten it, but you should try it again with the new graphics.

There's also UE, Standoff and Saga.
 
Freelancer with the no story mod. (it opens all the jumpoints, all the factions are neutral and you can buy anything if you collect the money)
 
I really loved Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Even though you are not a fighter pilot, you do control larger ships and fleets. The Fleet control is good, the eye candy is beautiful, and the story is compelling.
 
Freelancer with the no story mod. (it opens all the jumpoints, all the factions are neutral and you can buy anything if you collect the money)
There's also mods that get rid of the Diablo-like difficulty system, so with that you can have a fairly good free-roaming universe.
 
I would say that vanilla Freelancer is okay, but it's much better if a person can find a mod that suits their tastes and go multiplayer with it on one of the decently-sized servers. While the communities aren't as numerous as they used to be there are still teams out there who are pushing the game as far as they can. I won't suggest any of them in particular since that's just not the right thing to do, but I will say that the game reminds me a lot of Privateer.

I've played it for two years and as far as I've seen some of the mods outright suck and others turn it into something that resembles an entirely revived (and better) game. Some focus on PvP, others converted the game to another franchise, and the best generally find new, creative ways to advance the plot (since it didn't exactly have much depth to it in the first place). Throw in a balanced group of mercenary, police, pirate, and trading clans and it's all good imho. All biased of course since I really worked hard to reap the fruits of my labor... but until a new WC title comes out for PC it's what I'm sticking to. Of course, in all seriousness there isn't really a best game I would think so much as a game that best suit a given type of person. ;)
 
I would say that vanilla Freelancer is okay, but it's much better if a person can find a mod that suits their tastes and go multiplayer with it on one of the decently-sized servers. While the communities aren't as numerous as they used to be there are still teams out there who are pushing the game as far as they can. I won't suggest any of them in particular since that's just not the right thing to do, but I will say that the game reminds me a lot of Privateer.

I've played it for two years and as far as I've seen some of the mods outright suck and others turn it into something that resembles an entirely revived (and better) game. Some focus on PvP, others converted the game to another franchise, and the best generally find new, creative ways to advance the plot (since it didn't exactly have much depth to it in the first place). Throw in a balanced group of mercenary, police, pirate, and trading clans and it's all good imho. All biased of course since I really worked hard to reap the fruits of my labor... but until a new WC title comes out for PC it's what I'm sticking to. Of course, in all seriousness there isn't really a best game I would think so much as a game that best suit a given type of person. ;)

That's one of the great things about PC gaming: Mods. Even for people who don't like multiplayer much, there's plenty of awesome mods for a lot of great games.
 
That's one of the great things about PC gaming: Mods. Even for people who don't like multiplayer much, there's plenty of awesome mods for a lot of great games.
Yeah, hell, there's so many TCs out there that make games into things that are barely anything like the original game, and mods can have some really innovative things.
 
Darkstar One was nice, but you couldnt fly different ships. You only could upgrade your own. Freelancer was better in that point.
 
Freelancer was pretty easy to mod if you have to patience to get a feel for the modding tools available. I used to have a rebalance mod going on that added nothing new to the game, but just rebalanced all the strengths and prices of the ships and equipments. I never finished it, but modding really does give the game more life.
 
I thought of two more.

Starshatter (or its newer, shinier version Starshatter: The Gathering Storm)

and

Echelon
 
I'm really a big fan of X-Wing Alliance. I thought the story was pretty good, except i hated it that it didn't finish up the Family storyline. There is a fan project that upgrades the graphics and textures of the ships, which makes them way better.

Looking for a copy of Freespace 2.

Didn't finish I-War 2....seemed very slow and i don't like how it works. Not that great to me..

Darkstar One just plain sucks. Way too tedious. The need to constantly upgrade all your system parts in each sector before moving onto the next, or you're space dust...gets really old really quick. Not much different from Freelancer. The "solar systems" aren't systems at all, rather boring and pretty much all the same.
 
I really loved Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Even though you are not a fighter pilot, you do control larger ships and fleets. The Fleet control is good, the eye candy is beautiful, and the story is compelling.

Oh yes, I agree 100 %! the ships of the terran fleet (well, the old ones!) where just brillant!

And someone gives a word to Echelon... hm... can we really call this game a spaceshooter? Well, how about Yager then?
 
I really, really, really enjoyed playing Freelancer. Probably enjoyed it more than I should have or care to admit. It was a fun, easy space sim that had a lot of neat things in it. I don't think I could recommend it to just anyone, but its the only game since 2000 that I can think of where I enjoyed just exploring the game instead of finishing it.

I tried Nexus: The Jupiter Incident - its a *beautiful* game but I couldn't get into the gameplay. The controls struck me as clunky and confusing, considering the HUD had a zillion small buttons on it.
 
FL MP is pretty nice, more if you have friends playing with you (i remember playing it with some people from this forum for a month or so), even more, there are a few RPG servers out there.
 
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