Frontier: First Encounters

The Good
It's big. Once patched several times, it worked. Sort of. The planned Amiga version was never released, so they weren't ripped off - I dread to imagine how incomplete, bugged and irritating that would've been

The Bad
Basing it on the initial shop release (the one you paid good money to take home, and the one you'd be stuck with for a while if you didn't have a modem (not many did at the time, there isn't a word in the dictionary to describe how bad this is. Bugs permeate constantly, making almost all the features virtually useless. As said elsewhere, the graphics are awful and many gameplay features, especially the combat, where badly designed. David Braben had a very high opinion of himself, but he should've sat back and thought "is this going to be fun to play?"

The Bottom Line
A shoddy, badly designed and rush-released fiasco

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

The Good
Many of my friends who have seen this game alwys ask me questions like, how many levels does first encounters have and how do you complete it? I then tell them that there is no set goals or end to the game, which i believe is one of the games most appealing features. You can play the game any way you like, such as completing the missions to find the insect thargoids, or you can just cruise around space reliving the moon landings or trying to land on Pluto. The point being, there is no linear game structure, you can pretty much do what you like (barring leaving your ship, which is a pity.). This is not the only good point of FFE. Others include contacting the Thargoids (They were not present in Frontier.), completing both military and the set missions which are provided, which can include nuking reserch bases of the enemy militia, assassinating high ranking figures and even smuggling spies from one planet to the other. Finally the graphics of the game are on the whole improved from Frontier with texture mapped planets and more exotic space ports and orbital space ports.

The Bad
One of the most irritating issues to this game is the amounts of bugs present. Some of these remain even after the patch disks later released by Gametek, after the first unplayable version of the game was released. These bugs include the joystick going crazy, and certain problems with the set missions ( wont give away too much so as not to spoil the game for those who havent done them.), and some ships (such as a gun turret being placed behind the hull, which registers as a hit on your ship if you fire this gun. Very annoying.). The graphics can also be a bit dodgy at times, with problems such as cities appearing to "hover" on the planets surface and when you land sometimes your ship appears to sink beneath ground level producing graphical glitches. The auto pilot can also crash you rather than land you in a space port. But on the whole, the game is playable and enjoyable once you get into it.

The Bottom Line
So to sum up, if you liked Frontier, missed the Thargoids and enjoy a long running complex space sim, you could do worse than get a copy of First Encounters. But if youre in to blasting everything in sight and easily pick up and play games, then I wouldnt reccomend this title. But overall FFE is a pretty descent space sim which you can play to your own rules without following a set game plan.