Customer Reviews

Hardwar: The Future is Greedy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even now 27-01-2006 I stil concider Hardwar (released 1998) to be the best game ever. The freeform game mechanics have been executed with such good judgement that it has not been surpassed by other freeform spacegames of the 21st century like I-warII. egosoft's X series or freelancer.

The setting of the game has a cult atmophere, it reminds strongly of the 2000ad comics and the cult film "Hardware". the cutscenes often related to a plotline you can choose to follow are done with great taste and black humor.

When you play you'll soon find that the AI in this game has a life of it's own. The AI characters have a job, a bankaccount friends and enemies and sometimes a bounty on their head. If you would do nothing they'd still go on with their busines and life goes on. This means that no two games you play wil ever be the same.

I can go on for hours about this game, but a friend of mine put it like this "If I devide the price I paid fro this game by the hours I've played it, no game would come close even if I had paid 200 euros".

I own 5 coppies of Hardwar just to make sure I'll never run out.

There is still a lively community of hardwar players and the programmers even bring out updates now and then even when the companies responsible (Gremlin and the software refinery) have faded long ago.

This game is a gem.

Xaffax out!

I can honestly say that Hardwar is one of the finest games I've played in my life. Sure, it's dated graphically, but the game is like Elite, but with gravity and solar power. And amazing music.

I originally bought Hardwar for a penny at EB Games. It just didn't do well when it came out.

I bought it again on Amazon after losing the discs ages ago. And it's still a great time. A patch that you can find on the Internet will give a mild graphics update along with support for newer systems (I run it on Windows 7 Home 32 bit) and widescreen monitors.

I can run it with no problems on all max settings on my Windows 7 machine. And it even accepts modern joysticks.

I've put in several hours of this game in the past week and it's more than 10 years old. That means it's a classic.

You can't find this game anywhere due to scrambled ownership/copyright rights, so I'd pick one up while you still can.

If you like X: Beyond the Frontier, you'll love Hardwar.

I have to agree with the above comments; this game is my favorite ever. The only reason the overall rating is 4 stars is because the graphics are low by today's standards, but in 1998, they were some of the best. The network games were a blast, but sometimes one your partners would freeze up and be unable to move. Maybe if they update and re-release this game the network games will be able to handle large networks of players and maybe they can work some AI Karma into the plot line. I seldom play this game (or any other) now, but I played it when my neices and nephews were visiting and my wife commented, "You've been playing that game for 10 years!" It is pretty awesome.

Hardwar is a futuristic space colony game where you are given a choice as how you wish to survive in the colony by either choosing to be a trader, scavenger or a pirate. Regardless of your choice , you will have to fight pirates along the way. You will be outfitted with a "moth" which you can upgrade as you obtain money from from trade, scavanging or from obtaining bounties by killing other wanted pirates. Along the way, you will create enemies and allies.

I had remember playing this came a long, long time ago (1998?)and thought I had really enjoyed it. I guess back then, I did. I ordered the game thinking it would be fun to have and play again. The game arrived and I quickly loaded into onto my computer. The game quickly installed and when I went to play it, the game would only give me sound but no video. Despite several reloads, I could not get it to instal properly. I checked the web for possible fixes and found that there are only a couple of sites that offer any help regarding this game. I also learned that it does not play on the newer versions of microsoft. I downloaded several patches that in hindsight, I believe actually will give you the game for free. Whatever these patches did, they caused the game to work and I do not need the disk to play (Which is why I think the patches actually include the game). I started playing the game and for the first hour it was enjoyable, now it is boring. I now remember reaching the same level of interest years ago. It was a great idea for a game, it just needed further development to keep the game going.

It was a good game during its time but not worth the trouble anymore. Unless it is updated, I wouldn't waste my money on it.