Old computer space game HELP title!

Hi. I am looking for an old computer game that I played when I was a little kid and I remember very clearly that it was a space game and the atmosphere of the game was dark and gloomy. I was in control of a space ship and I do not remember clearly the object of the game because i was little and couldnt figure out what i had to do in the game at that age. But the atmosphere was thunderous and it was raining hard. I want to say that I vaguely remember there sounding something like 'hylander' in the title. I believe it might have been an XNA game. The OS was no further than windows 98. It was a demo, so this was the only level there was to play. This was a rad game and one of my first so it stuck with me. Can you please help? Thanks.

freelancer?

Any idea of how many years ago (based on your age)? Sounds like the opening of Prey, but back in the days of 98 (which lasted longer cuz ME was to be avoided, so harder to place the time period) I was playing games like Maelestrom and Escape Velocity on Macintosh. When you were in control of the spaceship (rain in space?), flying around, or was it a click-adventure game like The Dig?

At least it has me waxing nostalgic ^_^
Btw, if you liked freelancer, have you tried Galaxy on Fire? I'm not sure if there's a windows version, but it was made for tablets/smartphones and a spec'd up version was released for Mac OS X. Very fun!

http://spacesimcentral.com/ have a look here they may have it...
http://spacesimcentral.com/?page_id=336 here in particular.

Could use a bit more information, what you've provided for us is rather vague. Was controlling the spaceship the main part of the game, or was it like a mini-game within the game itself?

afaik, there's only freelancer. never seen freelancer 2

freelancer 2 was gonna be released but got canned at the last minute... shame really as the first 1 is a classic.

T.T < that's how I feel every time shenmue 3 is mentioned

I have to agree that freelancer is simply majestic game. I only played it for the first time in 2011, but hell, that game was amazing even for 2011.

Regarding the OP's mystery game, I PLAYED IT AS A KID TOO and I can't find the damned games name anywhere on the internet either

It's been driving me nuts for months now... But to clarify some things. It is very similiar to Descent, but takes place outdoors (raining) and the environment is very dark and gloomy and you fly your ship above/around/into various mountains and caverns in a wide open 'free-roam-esque' level. I too only played the demo. The time frame is roughly 1996.

The enemies were mostly robots or drones if i recall correctly. There may or may not have been an option to 'display' the pilot's hand and joystick on the cockpit overlay, if that makes sense.

As far as the OP mentioning "hylander" or highlander as being similar to the title, i can't say for certain because i can't remember anything about the title of the game. Just that it was a demo and that I loved playing it.

I'd love to finally figure out which game I should be hunting down on eBay...