Frontier: First Encounters

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
Frontier: First Encounters is not quite the exact same game as FE2, but the similarities are enough to warrant it being more of an update than a separate game (indeed, FFE was going to be an expansion pack for FE2, but David Braben could not integrate the updates into FE2 smoothly and therefore decided to release this game as a stand alone product). So, that being the case, what has been updated? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.

For starters, combat is much more reasonable, as it sets the enemy craft you are dogfighting as the object you are "relative" to (yes, the game still uses newtonian physics), so you no longer have the old 1000 km/s "jousting" duels and the combat is now much more close quarters. That's quite a bit of an improvment, if you ask me.

Also the sound and music is not longer of poor quality or ripped off from other games in the series, and actually have been redone rather well in places. The new sample based sound system instead of the old "Elite Plus" FM-based sound is a massive improvment to the enjoyment of the game, though you probably will tire of these new sounds after a bit anyway and will turn them off regardless. The remastered musical pieces from FE2 that are present in this game sound much better than they did originally. And the new music pieces done for this game, which were rendered by the Quality Quartet, are also very good and easy to listen to.

Apart from the said major changes, the minor ones make quite a bit of a difference as well. New features like newspapers you can subscribe to, various new ships (some of them very good and enjoyable to fly around in, the others being quite average) and items (like the Tractor Beam Cargo Scoop), plus a new political super power makes it feel like the game's universe really has progressed 50 years since FE2. Which it has. In the game, that is.

All and all this is a very solid update indeed.

Oh, and the Thargoids are back, but not in the way you imagine.

The Bad
Well, it's famous (or is that infamous) for being quite buggy. The only games that come to mind that are more buggy than this game in particular are the Battlecrusier games and eXtreme Paintbrawl, and those were heavily crippled due to the bugs! FFE narrowly manages to avoid this and remain playable, but only just. Even after these many years, it still doesn't work with Windows boxes in a natural sense, and only recently did a fan, John Jordan, manage to reprogram the executable file so that it would run in a Windows environment. While the fan made hacks do fix many of the problems the game had when it was released, it would have been nice to have it work properly in the first place.

The Bottom Line
This is a worthy update to FE2. In fact it is quite a good standalone game, and is worthy of your time and energy. However, you will have to search around the Internet a little bit for John Jordan's webpage with his fixed version of the executable file for FFE. Unless you don't want to play it in Windows.

The Good
The immense universe, realistic, hand coded missions, alot of different of ships to pilot, Actually have to work to get somewhere in it., Millions of stars to explore., Can do what you want to (open ended). be a Pirate, Trader, Military, Bounty Hunter Etc., great graphics (for when it was made.) JJFFE (Google it.) Lets it run in windows with direct X support., Jades FFE Page (Google this one also.)

I've spent many evenings exploring the galaxy in this huge universe in my Imperial Explorer (my favorite ship) and I worked at it from the bottom up getting killed many times in my smaller ships, while learning the ropes for controlling and fighting the bad guys, learning the trade lanes and seeing what could be done. I've followed the missions from the beginning and until Jade's came around never finished them. With Jade's aid finally finished the missions (woooo hoo) and am working towards elite status. This is one of those games that has basically never left my hard drive since I installed it. Along with Doom, Civilization II, Total Annihilation, Master of Orion 2, Homeworld.

 If you expect to jump into the ship here and own the universe don't bother, but if you like a challenge and working towards an end in a HUGE game universe worth the effort in gaming fun.

The map and manuals are great and come with quite a bit of good imaginative fiction and are well worth the read.

See you on the Frontier, Stim

The Bad
I found Frontier and First Encounters by accident in a bargain bin and I've been an elite fan from the beginning the no advertising part stunk, not letting your fans know it's out there doesn't help.

 Initial release of the title was very buggy, but I called Gametek and was immediately sent the 1.06 remastered version which is alot more stable, so no complaints. It's still a bit buggy some of the hand coded missions still don't work right or you have to do them a particular way, basically what could've been an awesome release was killed by rushing the developer with the product out the door.

The station personnel videos are cool at first but get on your nerves after awhile .....

The Bottom Line
Open ended space simulation, be a trader, pirate, assassin, military officer. Realistic controls and space physics. Lots of different ships to own and pilot; from the lowly Saker Mark 1 to the Thargoid Warship if you can find it! Can be frustrating at first but if you learn it loads of fun.