Frontier: First Encounters

The Good
It was real fun looking at the starmaps, spinning and turning them around in 3D mode and look where to warp to next. If you have enough motiviation you can go and on, it's real fun exploring a whole universe that fits on only 3 disks! Also that trading stuff and the different missions are nice features.

The Bad
The problem is your motivation: if it isn't high enough, you won't get very far and you'll be disappointed soon. Also the controls are a bit complicating.

The Bottom Line
If you don't get lost too soon in games and a bit complexer controls don't disturb you and you're fascinated by this huge universe, then this is your game!

The Good
Its the 2nd sequel to one of my all time favorites, Elite! The trading and ship upgrade options as well as the variety of ships you can pilot is quite extensive.

Unlike the other games in this series, this one does have a bit more plot that you can follow (at your option). But its still essentially an open ended game of exploration, combat and trading.

The Bad
To start the graphics are bad. The previous game, Frontier, had pretty spartan graphics but they were functional. In this game they decided to jazz up the graphics and the result is quite ugly. Its like watching a computer animated movie done by film students. You know what they were intending to do but the look is really rough and amatuerish. The best way to describe it is that it looks like a teenage girl who is trying too hard to look pretty by using too much makeup and having deep blue mascare on a pale complextion.

If you read my review of Frontier, then you know how I don't like the combat in that game. This one has improved the engine but its still quite dull and frustrating with too much empahsis on physics over fun.

The cd version has voices and some full motion video. Since this game was made in 1995 you know that this was a trendy thing to do and most of the time it was a lot of bad acting. This game is no exception, the acting is horrid and does not belong in the game, it just does not add anything to it.

Worst of all are the bugs. If you thought the tribbles were annoying in the orginal Elite then wait until you play this game. You will beg for a cargo hold of tribbles rather than put up with the crashing, freezing and graphic problems of this game. The game was unplayable in its orginal release, patches were made that will let you play it but the fact the game is full of design problems that no patch can fix doesn't help. It should not have been released in the state it was.

The Bottom Line
This game belongs with infamous titles like Battlecrusier 3000AD (another Gametek product), Starfleet II and Outpost which were buggy beta versions released as complete games on unsuspecting customers. When will publishers learn that a buggy release will only hurt game sales? Bad game collectors will like it, so everyone else should stay away. A sad sequel to a classic original game. With two duds in a row it seems that Elite co-creater Ian Bell, who was not involved in either of the sequels, was the real genius behind the making of the classic original not David "its not a bug, its a feature" Braben.

The Good
The graphics and physics are definitely the two strongest points of Frontier: First Encounters (FFE), I mean, for its time, the graphics of FFE are simply excellent - with complex and detailed planetary bases, surfaces, and ships. But the physics engine of FFE features things amazingly rare in other simulators, namely inertia-physics flight! Sure, the engine is nowhere as good as that of Orbiter 2004 or I-War, but it's still quite good for its time - impressive actually.
The atmosphere of the game is good at most times, when you occasionally are left alone to explore and discover - unfortunately, these times seems to be quite rare, as I'll mention later.

The well-written plot is evolving as you play the game, with interesting twists and turns, but you're not in any way bound to follow it.

The freeware aspect is excellent, as usual in the Elite-series, makes you wonder why they don't make games like this anymore (at least not commercial developers).

The Bad
A lot.
Where to start?

Well, for starters, there are the bugs: a whole lot of bugs. As you probably know already, FFE was skipped before it was anywhere near ready, and the costumers ended up with a very unstable release of the game. Sure, a few patches has fixed most of the problems - it doesn’t crash at all anymore, but there's still a few bugs to boot: for example, the extremely annoying pirates which just keep popping out of nowhere without any warning. I mean; is it too much to ask just to enter a new star system without being blown of the face of the universe?!

The pirates are definitely one of the worst things which brings this game's rating down - and then there's some of the issues of atmospheric flight, where the ship sometimes just blow up without any reason.

Also, why did they flood the interface with so much nonsense and words everywhere? Sometimes it gets extremely irritating; as in ship combat, where one is usually blown up before one can find out how to counter-attack. Actually, combat itself seems to be very poor elements in the game, at least as far as I've played of it. I have already mentioned enemies just keep popping out of nowhere, but at the start of the game, you don't got a chance to defend yourself before you’re blown away; simply because one can't afford a shield generator at the start. It's not like I'm asking for an easy start, but any new players barely gets much of a fighting chance.

There are some other things as well, but after the patches, these are now mostly minor issues

The Bottom Line
In the end, Frontier: First Encounters is a good game. Although it is quite troubled by various bugs, if you could oversee those and learn to live with them, you'll find yourself getting hooked in this wonderfully detailed galaxy where you are literally your own boss.
With great, crisp VGA-graphics, outstanding physics (for its time and genre), unprecedented (even today?) open-ended Gameplay, and a well-written plot, FFE is a wonderful gem among the classic star-flight simulators. In many ways, we can call it a very faulty piece of art, but if you can learn to live with these faults, I think you'll find FFE to be quite enjoyable - despite its many problems.

Final score: 6/10