Privateer 2: The Darkening

The Good
The story is quite fascinating. It is also developed in an interesting way. The acting is not bad for a computer game, although it cannot be compared to real movies. Most of the motivation is caused by wanting to get money for new ships and equipment.

The Bad
The game design is not as good as in Privateer 1. There you were first in a solar system where nothing really bad could happen to you. In Privateer 2 you are in the same area all the time. That means that at the beginning you have to deal with the same amount of pirates as later and at the beginnig they are unbeatable. So you have to save your game everytime you leave a planet and hope you do not encounter any enemies. Another option would be invulnerability but it should be possible to play the game without it. In this game it is not. Always coming to the same planets all through the game also gets a bit boring. The space combat is also quite tiring sometimes. As you can only jump to the next NAV-point when there are no enemies around, you have to kill them all first. But if it takes you too long, more and more of them will arrive and attack you. I sometimes came in a situation I could not escape, because there was an unlimited number of pirates and it was not a mission but just an ordinary flight. I had one of the best ships and killed about 100 of them without being severely wounded, but after fighting this battle more than an hour I was just frustrated and I had to restore the game. And this happened to me several times!

The Bottom Line
The concept has been stolen from Elite and a story was added. It is a game from Origin's Interactive Movie period.