Independence War on GOG - $5.99

[Jade Falcon]

Yes, you heard it right, Independence War, a game that is fairly well thought of but that never received much in the way of sales is on GOG.com

$5.99 gets you the deluxe edition which includes the Defiance expansion. Now I've played I-War years back, but I don't know what the Defiance pack brings to it. This means it will work on newer OS's. From what I remember of this game a joystick is pretty much a must, though I'll admit I may be wrong. It's not a pick up and play arcade shooter though.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_deluxe

I'll assume this means we will also be getting Independence War 2 as well.

[Stark]

Did they fix arcane 3dfx not working?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Yes, you heard it right, Independence War, a game that is fairly well thought of but that never received much in the way of sales is on GOG.com

$5.99 gets you the deluxe edition which includes the Defiance expansion. Now I've played I-War years back, but I don't know what the Defiance pack brings to it. This means it will work on newer OS's. From what I remember of this game a joystick is pretty much a must, though I'll admit I may be wrong. It's not a pick up and play arcade shooter though.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/independence_war_deluxe

I'll assume this means we will also be getting Independence War 2 as well.

I-War and Independence War 2 are still my favorite space combat games. The somewhat newtonian motion makes the experience notably different from other space combat games, which more or less stick to the "flying in a thick molasses" paradigm. The original I-War does have a fairly steep learning curve, though, and I recommend that you play the tutorial fairly religiously if you don't remember how it plays. You do need a joystick and preferably a flight stick, since many of the functions are much more comfortable to use on a joystick instead of reaching for the keyboard.

The original I-War had decent sales if I remember correctly. If it didn't they probably would not have made a sequel. It did not do nearly as well, but that was not its fault, really, but rather the whole space combat game genre was losing popularity fast at that point and of course the different physics were always a risk.

[Stark]

If they had decent UI design and multi the game would still be good.

[Tolya]

I played any I-War many years ago. What was wrong with the UI? I don't recall anything fundamentally wrong about them.

[Stark]

I played any I-War many years ago. What was wrong with the UI? I don't recall anything fundamentally wrong about them.

Except they were cluttered, low-res screens with small viewing windows that required a thousand presses of various 'mode' buttons to do anything? It wasn't as bad as Battlecruiser 3000 but it was pretty bad and that complexity was largely unnecessary.

[PeZook]

It also had awesome missions like "Fifteen minute introduction followed by one crucial defining moment you must pull off via perfectly positioning the ship". If you failed the crucial moment, have fun doing the introduction (where you do nothing at all but listen to dialogue) all over again.

Of course, that was pretty much the same thing like in any other sim of the era, like Tie Fighter. Part of the reason I can't be bothered to play them today.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Of course, that was pretty much the same thing like in any other sim of the era, like Tie Fighter. Part of the reason I can't be bothered to play them today.

Please don't call Tie Fighter a sim. It's not a simulation or even a "simulation". It's a space combat game. Even the I-War games are not simulations despite the somewhat more realistic physics.

Yes, I know it was a fairly standard practice to call games like the X-Wing/Tie Fighter and Wing Commander series simulations, but that was just stupid. They did not simulate any real world vehicle or entity and neither did they even try to imagine any remotely realistic space vehicle to simulate. Your average FPS is a much more realistic combat simulation than most of the space combat games, but it's not even right to call them unrealistic, since they don't try to simulate anything real.

[PeZook]

Yeah, yeah. I made a slight mental shortcut there

[Admiral Valdemar]

Well, simulating Newtonian space combat is better than "You're in a plane, but it's in SPAAAAAACE!".

And I don't recall ever playing the first game, but the second I had and the UI wasn't a pain to me, though they refined a lot more from the first game with the command module being used by a single pilot.

I loved the intro to the first game, mind. Though missions where you have to do something perfect after a huge build up is annoying, it's the exact same problem in more than just space flight "sims". GTA, anyone?