FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project
Some notable original mods and campaigns have been created, such as "Wings of Dawn" which takes place in an anime-style world, and "Blue Planet" which offers a continuation of "Freespace 2", telling of a civil war between Earth and the GTVA. "The FreeSpace Port", sometimes called FSPort, ports the original "Descent: FreeSpaceThe Great War" to the "FreeSpace 2" and SCP engine with many graphical enhancements, and serves as a base for many mods set in the FreeSpace: Great War era, such as "Shrouding the Light" and "Awakenings". "Silent Threat: Reborn" similarly ports the "Silent Threat" expansion for Descent: Freespace into the Freespace 2 SCP engine.
FreeSpace 2
"FreeSpace 2"s key attraction is its dogfights. CNN.com said the close-ranged dogfights make for engrossing, and exciting skirmishes. FiringSquad described it as a "total thrill" to be among 20 fighters flying in between opposing capital ships with beams, missiles, and flak all around and warnings going off, as they try to seek out and destroy their opposite numbers, a view which GameSpot agreed with. The game's AI was judged adequate to provide for such fights, being cunning enough to trick others to crash into the walls of narrow openings, and good enough to detect and warn their wingmen of enemies coming up directly behind them. There are those who expressed minor disappointments with the AI tending to collide too often with other objects. While the dynamic mission objectives were celebrated for coming up with twists and turns to spice up the story, there were a few who found these "in-game red herrings" overused instead.
Sharky Extreme praised "FreeSpace 2" for having the enormous capital ships, as this burst the "trapped in a bubble" trend in "Wing Commander"- and ""- type games. Instead of the action simply coming to the player, it flows all around, and the player is the one who has to go and seek it. The scenes of these giant ships duking it out, with many gnat-like fighters swarming around in their little dances of death, have led reviewers to feel a sense of epicness, comparable to reliving battles in science fiction series like "Babylon 5" and "Star Wars". Similarly, PC Gamer praised the scaling of ships and battles and said that they "[came] as close to creating the feeling of a World War II naval battle in space as any game has ever come" and that "That's what fighter combat, in space or on Earth, should be all about.".