I’m rewatching Babylon 5 and it’s putting me in the mood for an immersive game where I get to command a spaceship and blast stuff with lasers or plasma cannons or whatever.
I fondly remember playing Tie Fighter, Elite 2 and Privateer, and I was wondering if there were good games from this side of the millennium? I’ve tried playing Tie Fighter Total Conversion, but without a joystick I found it very hard to control. I’ve played some Elite Dangerous, and enjoy a bit of trading, but the combat is a bit too hard for me.
I’m a very casual gamer, and not looking for an mmo, or anything particularly challenging. I just want to zoom around in a spaceship as epic battles rage around me, and have a bit of a power fantasy.
Any suggestions?
Try out Star Conflict https://store.steampowered.com/app/212070/Star_Conflict/
It has the following gameplay types that you can switch to and play as long as you like:
- PvE missions where you and other humans (team or randos) battle AI
- PvP missions where its you and your team up against anther human team
- Free Space missions that you can complete solo or in teams
- Free Space exploring where you can jump system-to-system and explore without any objectives
The game studio, Gaijin, is Russian-based and has a tank game War Thunder (infamous for real-world military leaks) and a vehicular combat game called Crossout, though I’ve never played them.
Anyway Star Conflict is free-to-play, pay-to-win (PvP), but if you play the PvE and open space parts you don’t need to invest any money to have fun. You can stick to the lower ship tiers for casual gaming, and switch between fighting styles and ship roles easily. You can pilot blazing-fast interceptors, balanced mid-size fighters, heavy-hitting frigates, or super-slow but massive destroyers, and customize each one with a huge selection of weapon types, shields, and auxillary syatems. The underlying fighting principle is kinda like rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock, so an interceptor can easily solo a destroyer, a destroyer can take out a group of frigates, frigates outpower fighters, fighters hunt interceptors, etc. And the same goes for weapons and shields too, with thermal, EM, and kinetic types and their shield counterparts. If you venture into a space region infested with pirates who use kinetic weapons and thermal shields, then equip your ship with weapons of the opposite type of their shields to maximize damage, and equip shields of the same type as their weapons to minimize damage.
Anyway go try it out and let me know what you think!
Everspace 2 might be what you’re looking for. It’s fighter piloting and npt battleship style combat bit it’s one of the closest feels I had to what Xwing vs Tie Fighter was back in the day. You can drift and swap end for end just like XvT.
You might also like the spaceship portions of Star Wars Outlaws. I’ve been having fun in there, too.
Very cool, very indie game where you explore a solar system, and the Newtonian-style dog fights are wicked awesome. But it’s also got boarding ships, and realtime atmospheric entry.
It’s one single developer creating it, and it’s been 2 years since the last update, but there is a recent post saying a new one’s coming.
You might want to check out Chorus, it’s on sale super cheap on GOG right now. It’s an action game with some levels on foot and others in space.
An honorable mention is Star Wars Battlefront 2 (classic) - maybe not exactly what you want, but it has space combat where most of the action is with ship dogfights, where you can also attack the opposing capital ship and disable its core systems to win the match. The whole single player game ensures you’ll get one hell of a power fantasy as the ace/hero, even on harder difficulties.
Ooh Chorus is a good suggestion, it reminded me of Everspace when I played it, which is why also recommended Everspace 2 elsewhere.
X4 foundations is a space shooter sandbox, with empire building, diplomacy and all what you can expect from a space game.
A lot of different ships and loadouts.
Not sure I’d describe that spreadsheet simulator as casual lol
If you’re into Babylon 5, there’s actually a game called Babylon 5: I’ve Found Her that captures the spirit of the fighter combat pretty well IMO. Might be worth checking out!
Wow! Didn’t know about that, thanks!!
Freelancer is still the best of its genre, IMO.
It’s abandonware, so you can download it for free, and the community has released a ton of mods over the years.
Oh no, mods… If it’s anything like skyrim I’ll spend more time messing around with mods than playing the game… But a bit of reading suggests that just the HD mod is a good choice for a 1st time playthru?
I’ve never played them myself, but I’ve seen some mods that completely overhaul the game.
That being said, I would recommend playing the vanilla experience first, with an HD mod if you’d like.
but the combat is a bit too hard for me
I haven’t really played since I was at most a teen so maybe the later battles aren’t actually as hard as I remember, but if this is a bottleneck then OP may find later sections of the game’s main story frustrating. I think the game itself is a good vibe fit and has broadly aged well, but something to keep in mind for OP!
everspace 2 should scratch that itch
I haven’t played it in years, but I have fond memories of FreeSpace 2 and its open source community version. A quick search turned this up.
There was also a Babylon 5 mod for Free Space 2
If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.
Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.
NO Mans Sky. You can dogfight space pirates. I need to spin the game up again now that custom ships are a thing.
Unless they did a proper rework of space combat, it’ll get old fast, just like ground combat. I also remember you could pile up dozens of “Kill space pirate Whoever” from several systems, travel super far away so that you could reset the quests, reset said quests, then manage to complete ALL of them by killing only one target
The custom interiors and crew based stuff is really interesting and I want to see it as a light no fire testbed if nothing else after they said it was the same core tech as their ocean faring ships.
If you want bigger ships than fighters:
Rebel Galaxy(its completely different compared to RG Outlaw) - big ships, can hire a single mercenary, combat for you happens in 2D and its more of naval style with broadsides and automated turrets.
Between the Stars - you have a spaceship with a crew and can also hire 2 more ships to help you out(once you gear them), game got plenty of quests with some puzzles to boat, “ground combat” which is using dice(or can be disabled completely) and space combat takes a bit to get used to.
+1 for Rebel Galaxy.
It came out a few years ago but it’s still a really good game that I’ll pick up every now and then. The combat is surprisingly good for a space game that’s on a 2d plane.
Completely offline which is nice also.
+2
It’s also got a badass soundtrackyes! believe it or not most of the music in the game is also copyright free music. like “Evil Ways” for example which was also the theme song for professional wrestler AJ Styles when he was in TNA.
star trek online, i never gotten used to liking the game, eventhough i dont play it, but trek fans do. it doesnt jive with me, eventhough i like the franchise. probably not for the casual gamer, as it seems pretty complex.
maybe elite dangerous?
Star Wars Squadrons is pretty good fun.
This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the Tie Fighter mention. Though OP mentioned not having a joystick and I don’t have direct experience playing on controller so YYMV.
The single player campaign is short but fun and very nostalgic for enjoyers of the X-Wing/Tie Fighter era of games!
The online (if anyone even still plays) is anything but casual so I don’t necessarily recommend that unless you are super invested in it.
That looks fun! I am a sucker for games set in classic SW.
Fun in VR, too
Everspace 2 is a blast(er). The combat is pretty arcadey but has some decent crafting and upgrading mechanics to it
Came here to say this!
I am not into crafting or upgrading at all, but the story, quests and simple but cool-looking combat kept me on it more than I am willing to admit.
Just be sure to take the second one, as the first one is a completely different type of game.
