I bought this game because the demo blew me away. The first mission begins with the launching of your mothership. This is no cut-scene. This is a fully interactive script that borrows a page from the beginning of Half-life. You can zoom the camera around while you listen to Barber's Agnus Dei interspersed with radio traffic from the launch process. You are enveloped by the majesty of the situation.

Then you hit the first mission. Pretty lame and a bit slow. The following missions get a bit better, but overall they are pretty easy and not that interesting.

The interface is extremely well done. There is a great tutorial and once you get used to the three dimensional aspect of everything you grow to love it. This is the first game I've played where everything is three dimensional from system navigation all the way down to scoutship maneuvering. This gives the came a flavor of reality that I've never felt in a space game before.

It did pretty well on my PII-300 with Nvidia Riva 128. It did slow down quite a bit when there were a lot of ships, but it was still very playable.

Overall, this is a great game that has opened some new arenas in the real-time strategy genre.





Recommended: Yes