without a doubt the best game GGotD has ever given.

game is fantastic
downloaded installed and ran perfectly.
graphics are real smooth and vivid
game play is going to have to be gotten used to .
slow matbe but haven't played enough to say for sure
just got through the training mission.
if you use fx nvidia cards turn off glow
and the game simply respondes and flies perfect

I know it's a bit late to post a comment but I felt I should congratulate the developers on an excellent game. It genuinely suprised me that a game of this quality is available through GGOTD. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on Merscom in the future. Well done.

The quality of the engine and graphics were greater than I expected for a budget title. Apart from a serious stutter when there were large explosions, the game ran surprising smoothly on a low end machine. Having missions both in space and on the planetary surface provides some much needed variety. Planetary installations are many and all are destructable.

However, there are a number of problems.
- The game length is too short; I finished in four or five hours on medium difficulty.
- The mouse controls generally work well, although I would have preferred to use a joystick. There is no way to turn off pilot assistance, which insists on constantly trying to re-orient your ship.
- The artificial height restriction on planetary missions also breaks the immersion.
- The mission design is repetitive and too straightforward; its predictable and monontonous and the enemy AI is a simpleton.
- I don't need a lame exclamation from my wingmen every single I time I shoot down an enemy, especially when I am doing it about twenty times a mission.
- Having no radar is immensely frustrating. The HUD indicators which point out enemies are not accurate enough and do not distinguish between classes of ships.

I know it sounds like I have a lot of complaints, but overall this was an enjoyable (albeit short) experience. I can't help comparing it to Freespace 2, which is always going to hurt it. However, it really has more in common with Rogue Squadron and the like.

Always appreciate not having another tetris or breakout clone.

Thought I'd post back with what appears to be the solution for the game crashing immediately after start-up.

1. (Re)move the mpg files in the "movies" folder as commented earlier (#85) (Thanks for that!!)
2. Restart game
3. Go into options and change screen resolution

If the game still closes to the taskbar (doesn't exit the game), try and set the resolution of your own screen to that of the game (multiple tries sometimes necessary).
The game still might close to the taskbar from time to time when starting up, but you can open it from the taskbar again and then it works just fine.

Ugh, mission 15 is seriously frustrating me. Alien AI is pretty good, but my own allies are retarded. Seriously, how hard is it to defend the command ship? There are 9 of you, and I finished off 70% of the attacking ships... just keep the rest occupied!

Where quick load button? quicksave F5 and quickload ...?

"scott",
I really could care less about what you think of me, or why you think being a world class hypocrite (spouting abusive nonsense critiquing my comments on GGOTD) is going to fix your problems (whatever they may be). Oh and you might want to think about brushing up on your basic English skills such as punctuation and grammar, before you start calling other people "idiot". Your future comments will be ignored.

#102, "scott", do me a favor and read your own comment. You are abusive, and hypocritical, two things I am certainly not when I post comments. Grow up, yourself.

This game is highly recommended.

For those of you who's PC's crash when this game starts or receive the "project freedom critical error: could not create device" error - this forum for merscom has some help solutions

http://www.merscomsupport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36

Same problem with crashing (before ever getting to a menu) I've tried moving the videos to another file...didn't help. Instead it crashs sooner! GAOTD do you have a solution? Reinstalling is not working because the activation time period is up.

Thanks

Another great game from Merscom, I love Space/SciFi games! I had no trouble downloading and installing, the graphics look great and the gameplay is smooth albeit a bit simplistic but that's ok, my only complain is the cluttered opening sound. But overall an excellent download. Thanks GGOTD and please keep feeding us with great games.

I know this is a different day and this game is no longer a free download, but, for anyone reading the reviews on this game, seriously, this is well worth the $19.95/99 or whatever it was/is. I can't get over the detail and workmanship that is put into this game. 2 thumbs up on this game.
If anyone was wondering if the price is fair or worth it, Yes it is.

computer crasht

To everyone who crys that they cant get broadband in their area and that they are stuck with dialup....the only possible reason for not having highspeed is the cost....that is the only reason. because it doesnt matter where you leave..even on an island....they always have satellite anywhere in the world..

Yup, best one yet - still shows it's worth checking in on this site once in a while.

This is probably the most enjoyable game I've downloaded from GGotD. Retail-quality stuff, thanks for this!

#91: I hate to repeat, every time, that not having broadband is not always the user's fault. Again: I live in a small Italian town which, despite being just 70 kilometers from Rome, is NOT covered by broadband. Dialup is the only alternative here, right now. Saying "get rid of your dialup and upgrade to highspeed" makes no sense: I simply cannot do it, even if I and my father want.

This said, you are right that there are whiners here, complaining for what, even if it could be the best ever made, is just a video game. There are dozens more if you can't download this one. I'm also surprised to see some people that, even if they have much faster connections than mine, lament that it will take a couple of hours or something more to get the game. Do you know what "patience" means, or are you used to always have everything served on a plate with the snap of a finger? Are you really interested in trying the game, or just stockpile the files you download on your hard disk and leave them forgotten in some partition?

Sorry for the rant.

i just finished downloading this game but now it's too late :(
they should extend it a day to give 56kers a chance

--- Comment was deleted for using offensive language ---

took most of the day to d/l @ 256k dsl. only played first level, but seems like a nice enough game. 8/10.

I have finished this game. ITs really nice game. I'm hoping that they will come out with the second version. Cheer

Same error as many others listed:
"Project Freedom critical error: Could not create device"

#85 - The Coop - Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try moving those files later when I have more time.

Best game ever here on GAOTD (imho). Beautiful graphics, strong story. The game is easy to control but a challenge to play, the way i like it. Thumps up!

this game is really GREAT! for those who cannot play the game, check your system specs

Same problem as Ronald and Funner. Any help?

Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about! GREAT GAME Merscom LLC and many thanks GAOTD!!!
Excellent graphics, Awesome Sound and wonderful playability! Worth every nickle of $19.99! I will definately purchase the license for this one. Very Impressive. 10 Stars!

Ok..i installed this on my vista premuim computer..installed ok.slowly and works but audio isnt good..the mouse control is extremely sensitive and ill needto adjust it...I then installed on my other pc with xp..it installed smoothly and plays even better and that system is only half as good as my gamer vista one. then i tried to install on my laptop. it installed and played intro..then went to desktop with the critical error thing...dont know why...eveything is updated on his..maybe its my onboard video card that it doesnt like....has all of you guys that had issues using a shared onboard card?

oops forgot to mention Ive got satellite wifi internet generally runs about 1500 mb.

Super slow download, I,ve got 1 meg of ram, 2.4 processor and 250 gig disk and this things only downloading at around 85-90kbps, at this rate its going to take a couple hours, Guess i,ll take anap or watch a movie.

I agree with #52. Complaining about the size of the game is beyond lame. To be brutally honest: get rid of your dialup and upgrade to highspeed or shut up. Quite often dialup actually costs exactly the same as broadband... Nobody wants to listen to the hypocrisy of complaining about something that is in fact your own fault.

#10 ROTFLMFAO
After reading the reviews which had the same criticism I had yesterday about the soundfiles. But actually this one isn't that bad! (btw Merscom, I found the soundfiles in the biathlon games. Is it possible to make your one ones and replace the originals? That would be great!)

I can't help but love space games and this one has a Battlestar Galactica feel to it. Really nice! I give this an 8/10 because my favorite wish is a Civ/Age of kind of game in space together with like this kind of action. That would be an ultimate 100/10.

Thank you Giveaway of the day! This looks like it will be fun.
Maybe somtime you can give out glyph too since that looks good.
Thumbs Up!

Thanks GGOTD!!!! This game and most of the games from Merscom are on another level than most your offerings. This is a really well made game as was Extinction. Games like this make me want to check out the publishers site and actually buy something.

directions say if it can't open an object you must update directx
did that, it still won't run.

Oh yeah, and I can't get Activated. It justs sits there saying "Starting...." and won't activate even after hours.

Since this seems to be a problem everyone is having (I spent my waiting time doing some reading over at the Forums) and it seems plenty of people are having alot of assorted problems with this game offering. Perhaps, GGOTD could straighten thigs out and offer it again, another day.

For all those having trouble getting the game running, try removing the movies from the game's "movies" folder. Just make a new folder where the game was installed, and put all the files that end in ".mpg" in that new folder so the game can't access them when it's running (don't delete them, as you can still watch them on their own). For those who don't have file extensions enabled on their PCs, the files to be moved are "cs000", "cs001", "cs002", "cs003", "cs004", "csati", and "cscda". I repeatedly got a crash to desktop right after the initial loading screen, but removing the movies did the trick, as now the game runs fine. Must be something about the movie files that some systems don't like.

Hope that helps.

I've downloaded this program TWICE and still can't install.

I keep getting "Runtime error!" and "abnormal program termination".

Something is definitely wrong with this program.

I have extremely fast cable but I'm not going to download this large file a THIRD time.

Finally !! Bout time the server issue got fixed. Downloaded it no problems. Installed with no problems. The game is cool. Thank you very much for the game and for fixing the server problem. I like the graphics. I have to figure out how to play the game Lol. I only lasted about 2 minutes on the easy mode Lol. But, I only played the game one time.
Thanks again, GGAOTD. thumbs up on this game.

Same problem as comment 61, activation just sits. Help please

Same problem as comment 61, activation just sits.

I could not activate my game!

it keep saying "could not connect to game.giveawayoftheday.com".

how do you solve this problem? I could activate other games but not this one.

Same problem as #74. Game goes to loading screen, finishes loading then crashes back to desktop. Using WinXP and have a radeon X1950.

11 minutes to d/l with fios
then the opening is good. Then it crashes. Says it can't create an object
reinstalled 3 times still hangs.

#30, I'm with ya' on getting GOTD to somehow allow us with 56k to get these larger games too.

Seems to me it would be pretty easy to just rerun some of the large file givaways in a few weeks, so we all have plenty of time to download them, then we can activate them once they are put up again. Or just put up 4 or five of them in one day, maybe designate a Saturday a month to that so we can activate all our past downloads.

I imagine there are a number of ways to do it, but I guess it's just a matter of getting GOTD to go along with it. Maybe if enough 56k folks emailed GOTD with the request, they might have mercy on us. Low bandwidth people have friends to recommend these games to just like anyone else, so it would seem to me a good business decision to allow us an equal chance to try these out.

And no, this is not a complaint about large files. I'm very glad GOTD is putting some nice games up for y'all to try. Wish I could.

FUn! How about some cheats ;)

so is this kind of like Star Wars?

Same Problem as ronald (#27)
Usually the posts help with issues like this quickly... but no help on this one. Any ideas anyone? Thanks!

Downloaded in 4 minutes (GAOD has very fast servers!), nice game!

10 stars guys, tis game is awesome!! I never comment but I had to this time. Unfortunate for those out there that are on dialup.

GOTD an Merscom, keep up the good work!