How did you discover the I-War game(s)?

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  • #17975
    admin
    Keymaster

    I’m curious if all you lads have bought the games when they came out or if you stumbled over them in mysterious ways. πŸ™‚

    I first discovered Edge of Chaos in January 2005 – I was a big fan of a German computer magazine called “PC Action”. Because of nostalgic reasons, I still have all of the magazines from that time.

    They bundled the (unpatched) German version of the game on their DVD and this is what got me into I-War. I immediately liked it, although trying to play it without a joystick was painful. I believe I persuaded my parents to buy me a crappy joystick which wouldn’t center if I didn’t touch it and had rubber feet. :sick:

    It still wasn’t perfect, but way better to play and I spent hours with it. And of course, with this website. So if it hadn’t been for PC Action, this site would’ve probably been gone.


    Space. The final frontier.

    #17988
    AdmiralZeratul
    Participant

    My grandmother got this game for me for my birthday. No, she’s not a pirate. πŸ˜› At the time, I was around the same age as the young Cal Johnston, so the fact that it was Cal’s birthday at the start of the game was a lovely coincidence that made me identify with him that much more. I used to tear up every time I watched the opening cutscene.

    I was also terrible at the game, unfortunately. I never managed to complete it. In fact, I never managed to even make it to act 1, back then. I did bring home a surprising amount of cargo though; I just went to space stations and asteroid colonies and waited until someone dropped their cargo, then I docked with the pod I wanted and brought it home.

    When I finally got to the point in the game where I could just use Jafs, I still always carried one home myself. Now, I will especially make sure not to let Jafs handle the antimatter. His accidents have caused many, many deaths.


    Overthinking is kind of a habit of mine.

    #17992
    7upMan
    Participant

    I discovered I-War (1) some time after watching Babylon 5 for the first time. Remember the first episode “Midnight on the Firing Line”, where Garibaldi disrupts a Raider attack on a cargo vessel? That was the FIRST time ever I had seen a fight in space with actually realistic physics. I was in love, pure and simple – and I was a lost cause for all the Star Wars, Star Treks and whatnot.

    So when the first I-War game came out and promised me the “B5” feeling I was in, head over heels. πŸ˜‰

    Fortunately, I had a Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick at the time bought for a game like Strike Commander or something along those lines. I was quite heavily into simulation games at that time. Still, even with the joystick (which I threw away not to long ago for it being a Gameport joystick, which in turn required a Soundblaster card), I wasn’t terribly good at playing the game. But I was not terrible, either, so with enough patience I managed to finish the first game and was well on my way with the add-on “Defiance” when I encountered a mission that I was unable to finish. And believe me, I tried hard, and often. πŸ˜‰ I still have to finish I-War and Defiance again. Unfortunately, the often cited issues with hit detection in I-War make it hard not to lose interest. Also, being an adult, I have much less time for gaming than I used to have.

    Anyway, WRT Independence War 2, I did play the demo back in the day, but while I-War and Defiance managed to get me fall in love heavily, IW2 didn’t get my excited AT ALL. With the first 2 games, I loved the awesome (even by today’s standards!!!) CGI sequences, coupled with the story-driven mission and the overall feel. IW2, however, was more like Elite’s pretty and shallow little brother. Also, I didn’t care for the Storm Petrel (I still love the shape of the Dreadnaught), and… I dunno, it just wasn’t my thing.

    Only when the I-War games were released on GOG (I still have the original CDs for I-War and Defiance in my shelf, looking straight at me), I finally realized that IW2 was actually a fairly decent game and grows with you the longer you play it. Granted, it does have a lot of shortcomings, but graphics-wise it is still among the most beautiful space games ever made.

    I have all games installed on my computer and plan to re-visit them properly as soon as my time allows.

    #18034
    IronDuke
    Participant

    My older brother roped me into I-war 2. (Mostly because I asked…) I used to play Search and Rescue (a helicopter flight sim) and when I first spotted the comsec’s cockpit on his screen, I asked if it was a very cool chopper. πŸ˜† In my defense, he was on the other end of the room.
    So after watching him play for a few hours (act 1 – much piracy grabbed me attention!) I asked him to install it on my computer. He did so and I spent the next nine months playing the campaign. I finally finished, rather spooked by the Chaos Aliens (they were cool though,) but it took me another couple years to get I-war 1. I heard it was on GOG, so I bought it and hammered through the story in a few weeks, which is also how long it takes me now to get through the I-war 2 story.
    Speaking of, the EoC story didn’t make much sense when I first played, but I was seven at the time. I didn’t even know half the words they used, so… Since then, I scrutinized the story to figure it out, and it’s epic.

    –IronDuke


    I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
    Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. πŸ™‚

    #18072
    Chessking
    Participant

    My dad bought the game bundled with Flight Simulator 98 and MechCommander 2. I think he got stuck in Act 0 because of a glitch, and it wasn’t till many years later that I put the disk in and tried it. I was quickly hooked. I then bought I-War 1, Deluxe through Amazon. I found out later that it was supposed to have four disks, and I only got the first two. πŸ™


    This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

    Storm Petrel

    #18540
    Thovian
    Participant

    I’ll start off.

    I was introduced to Iwar2 when I was a kid, back in 2005. I was browsing the local Dollar Tree and I saw this disc in the dollar game rack. I thought it was one of those third person ceiling view strategy “shooters”, like the original grand theft auto or spore. I was surprised to find out, when I got home, that it was the furthest thing from that. Back in the day, it was the most challenging game I had ever played. And even now, though I’m a veteran of Kerbal Space Program and Star Wars Battlefront II, it’s hard to fight and fly. Especially with the fact that I don’t have a joystick xD.

    But how were you introduced to this great game?

    #18542
    7upMan
    Participant

    I think we had this conversation already, and not too long ago. Or was that in the Steam forum? Anyway, I remember that I had bought I-War 1 on release and loved it, despite it being so frustratingly hard.

    I-War 2, however, was a whole different beast. Initially, I was quite hyped for the game, but before I bought it I wanted to give its demo version a spin. And what can I say: I didn’t like it at all. Nothing about this game touched me, nothing at all. Only many many years later, when both games were released on GOG.com, I decided to buy it and try it out for myself.

    And what can I say: I really liked it a lot! Granted, the game is full of design flaws and could have easily been better and WAY more successful (they sold like 50k copies, compared to 350k for I-War 1), but it’s still beautiful and really not bad once you get the hang of it.

    In the end, while I don’t play it very often, I do love to get my tug out for a spin or to kill a few pirates/marauders here and there, just to give poor old Jafs something to do. πŸ˜‰

    #18544
    admin
    Keymaster

    [quote=”7upMan” post=19996]I think we had this conversation already, and not too long ago.[/quote]

    We did. Threads merged. B)


    Space. The final frontier.

    #18546
    Thovian
    Participant

    Sorry about that! I didn’t see this thread xD.

    I enjoyed the game on a deeper level when I learned how to modify it. I would spend hours unpacking and repacking the Resource zip and giving all my missiles antimatter properties, then doing all sorts of others ridiculous things.

    #18849
    Detritus
    Participant

    I’m assuming that even though the last post was almost a half year ago this thread is just waiting for someone to post in it.

    So

    I never ‘found’ this game. Me older brother, shall we say, made me want to play it. Nothing telepathic or anything, let’s get that straight right away. Don’t know when it started exactly, just one day I found myself playing it as if I was taken control of telepathically. Again I say, my it wasn’t actually telepathic, let’s keep that straight. And as of late I’ve found myself jumping into instant action a bit, shooting reds, shooting blues when the reds aren’t enough, shooting browns (asteroids) when the next wave takes a bit (aka the supply vessel came but I forgot I had missiles (or lack thereof) and left it alone, to go mining with neutron PBCs!)

    I couldn’t find a ‘hi! I’m new!’ thread, so meh, I’ll just sorta… blend in. Hope you don’t mind my advanced patcom sitting on that port with the heavy corvette, all the dock ports were full (again, dang it)

    Hope to get to meet you all!
    –Detritus

    #18853
    7upMan
    Participant

    Hi Detritus, and welcome to the forums! You don’t happen to have taken your name from the novel series of a very famous British writer who has passed away recently?

    #18855
    Detritus
    Participant

    No, actually, I got it from Elite: Dangerous, which I’m assuming you’ve heard of, perhaps even play. I was watching my brother play it, before I chose whether I want to play it or not, and one of the NPCs was named ‘Detritus’. So I thought meh, that name works.

    I’ve never heard of any British writer who has passed away recently though. So the answer there is no.

    #18857
    Chessking
    Participant

    Hello Detritus! Your picture looks very scary… Please don’t eat me.


    This is one tough navy, boy. They don’t give you time off, even for being dead. -Clay

    Storm Petrel

    #18859
    admin
    Keymaster

    Welcome and thanks for docking on to our filthy, old station.

    Still working, though!

    Hopefully no one noticed the lights going out for a few minutes. :whistle:


    Space. The final frontier.

    #18861
    IronDuke
    Participant

    [quote=”Chessking” post=20159]Hello Detritus! Your picture looks very scary… Please don’t eat me.[/quote]
    LEGO Rock Raiders FTW! o/

    –IronDuke


    I-War 2 Discord: https://discord.gg/RWaabWB
    Very little about the game is not known to me. Any questions you got, throw them at me. πŸ™‚

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