What happened to the Space Combat sim genre?

Hello!

Ever since I got my Hotas X flightstick I have been revisiting a favourite genre of mine. The space combat sims. In the last week I have been enjoying the shit out of Freespace 2 and even bought a couple of other games like Dark Horizon and Strike suit zero.

Other than that though it is a very dead genre and only Strike suit zero is "new" of the 3 I mentioned. Why is this? The Freespace games are some of my favourite games ever made with a great story and pretty amazing graphics for its time.

 I am happy to see that with Steam alot more indie games are being developed and that among these are a few space combat sims. Sol:Exodus is a game that I have had my eyes on but I have not bought it yet. I will though. Just because.

Strike suit zero is also a game that was supposed to "bring back" the space combat sim genre but I suppose it is just too niche. I find it weird though when I see that the flight sim genre seems to be alright with a number of titles being released each year. Is "space" and "Scifi" really what makes the difference?

For me the space combat sims and scifi represents the dream of us humans one day taking the first true step out among the stars. It is true adventure. The exploration of space and in the case of the space combat sims, the battle for survival against the unknown.

Freespace 2. Attack on the Ravana inside a nebula. An old game but one of the best.

You get alot of this stuff from fps games nowadays but nothing beats the overwhelming sense of urgency and immersion that you get from sitting in your small spacefighter going up against a capital warship. Dodging missiles and lasers while at the same time worrying about your subsystems malfunctioning.

Everything about the space combat sims are on such a different scale and scope that it is not even comparable to other sims. We need more of them.

Either way I will always be a fan and I am going to review all of these games in the coming weeks in order to further promote the epicness that is the space combat sims.

By the way. If you like Freespace 2 but think the graphics are a litte dated then check out the Freespace 2 source code project. It is pretty much an overhaul project and it works very well.

Take care everyone.