Having played almost everything in the genre, here's what I have to say about them...

• X-Wing - The original wing commander clone that made wing commander irrelevant by doing it better. X-Wing is unapologetically hard and the only choices the game offers you are git gud or eat shit. What you will eventually learn is that the mooks that are attacking YOU are the least of your concerns.

• TIE Fighter: For about half the game you don't have shields and take hits about as well as Mario, but it's alright because you're a veteran of the previous game's much more ruthless mission scripting. Any rebel not in an A-Wing has stormtrooper-grade aim.

• TIE Fighter Defenders of the Empire: SO MANY EXPLOSIONS SO MANY EXPLOSIONS SO MANY EXPLOSIONS SO MANY EXPLOSIONS SO MANY EXPLOSIONS OMG THRAWN SO MANY EXPLOSIONS

• X-Wing Alliance: Holy shit, we can afford enough polygons that fighters don't look like origami when viewed head on. Goodbye gouraud shading, hello really shitty low res bitmap textures. And let's squeeze in all the EU ships since we've got a whole CD to play with.

• Descent FreeSpace: Despite sharing basically no assets, story, or code with Descent, we'll call it that because Freespace is trademarked. The GTF Apollo is shit, you're supposed to think it's shit, and it never gets better. Eventually you unlock the GTF Hercules and the Prometheus cannon, at which point the game has to give the shivans an invincible supership to stop your march of terror.

• Independence War: WHEEEE I CAN DO THAT STARFURY THRUSTER TRICK FROM BABYLON 5. Too bad the game disc went to pressing with a catastrophic bug towards the end of the storyline that has a coin-toss chance of bricking your campaign that takes a save hack to fix.

• I-War 2: Sold pretty well in the UK, but they're about the only market that got discs it; stateside it was on shelves for all of about a month. By the time I got my hands on a copy of it I'd already played the much better...

• FreeSpace 2: The end of the genre. Seriously, after this there was nothing. The prometheus cannon from the first game was so good they have to contrive a reason to take it away for two thirds of the game. Unlike last time, nothing the shivans have is strictly speaking invincible; if you want to spend half an hour holding the trigger you WILL eventually kaser their juggernaut to death.

Having played almost everything in the genre, here's what I have to say about them...

• X-Wing - The original wing commander clone that made wing commander irrelevant by doing it better. X-Wing is unapologetically hard and the only choices the game offers you are git gud or eat shit. What you will eventually learn is that the mooks that are attacking YOU are the least of your concerns.

• TIE Fighter: For about half the game you don't have shields and take hits about as well as Mario, but it's alright because you're a veteran of the previous game's much more ruthless mission scripting. Any rebel not in an A-Wing has stormtrooper-grade aim.

• X-Wing Alliance: Holy shit, we can afford enough polygons that fighters don't look like origami when viewed head on. Goodbye gouraud shading, hello really shitty low res bitmap textures. And let's squeeze in all the EU ships since we've got a whole CD to play with.

• Descent FreeSpace: Despite sharing basically no assets, story, or code with Descent, we'll call it that because Freespace is trademarked. The GTF Apollo is shit, you're supposed to think it's shit, and it never gets better. Eventually you unlock the GTF Hercules and the Prometheus cannon, at which point the game has to give the shivans an invincible supership to stop your march of terror.

• Independence War: WHEEEE I CAN DO THAT STARFURY THRUSTER TRICK FROM BABYLON 5. Too bad the game disc went to pressing with a catastrophic bug towards the end of the storyline that has a coin-toss chance of bricking your campaign that takes a save hack to fix.

• I-War 2: Sold pretty well in the UK, but they're about the only market that got discs it; stateside it was on shelves for all of about a month. By the time I got my hands on a copy of it I'd already played the much better...

• FreeSpace 2: The end of the genre. Seriously, after this there was nothing. The prometheus cannon from the first game was so good they have to contrive a reason to take it away for two thirds of the game. Unlike last time, nothing the shivans have is strictly speaking invincible; if you want to spend half an hour holding the trigger you WILL eventually kaser their juggernaut to death.

Having played almost everything in the genre, here's what I have to say about them...

• X-Wing - The original wing commander clone that made wing commander irrelevant by doing it better. X-Wing is unapologetically hard and the only choices the game offers you are git gud or eat shit. That's not to say the enemies will kill you; I mean, they might, but they're far more likely to kill whatever you were supposed to prevent them from killing; you'll eventually learn that everything that is attacking YOU is one less thing you have to worry about.

• TIE Fighter: For about half the game you don't have shields and take hits about as well as Mario, but it's alright because you're a veteran of the previous game's much more ruthless mission scripting. Any rebel not in an A-Wing has stormtrooper-grade aim.

• X-Wing Alliance: Holy shit, we can afford enough polygons that fighters don't look like origami when viewed head on. Goodbye gouraud shading, hello really shitty low res bitmap textures. And let's squeeze in all the EU ships since we've got a whole CD to play with.

• Descent FreeSpace: Despite sharing basically no assets, story, or code with Descent, we'll call it that because Freespace is trademarked. The GTF Apollo is shit, you're supposed to think it's shit, and it never gets better. Eventually you unlock the GTF Hercules and the Prometheus cannon, at which point the game has to give the shivans an invincible supership to stop your march of terror.

• Independence War: WHEEEE I CAN DO THAT STARFURY THRUSTER TRICK FROM BABYLON 5. Too bad the game disc went to pressing with a catastrophic bug towards the end of the storyline that has a coin-toss chance of bricking your campaign that takes a save hack to fix.

• I-War 2: Sold pretty well in the UK, but they're about the only market that got discs it; stateside it was on shelves for all of about a month. By the time I got my hands on a copy of it I'd already played the much better...

• FreeSpace 2: The end of the genre. Seriously, after this there was nothing. The prometheus cannon from the first game was so good they have to contrive a reason to take it away for two thirds of the game. Unlike last time, nothing the shivans have is strictly speaking invincible; if you want to spend half an hour holding the trigger you WILL eventually kaser their juggernaut to death.

Having played almost everything in the genre, here's what I have to say about them...

• X-Wing - The original wing commander clone that made wing commander irrelevant by doing it better. X-Wing is unapologetically hard and the only choices the game offers you are git gud or eat shit.

• TIE Fighter: For about half the game you don't have shields and take hits about as well as Mario, but it's alright because you're a veteran of the previous game's much more ruthless mission scripting. Any rebel not in an A-Wing has stormtrooper-grade aim.

• X-Wing Alliance: Holy shit, we can afford enough polygons that fighters don't look like origami when viewed head on. Goodbye gouraud shading, hello really shitty low res bitmap textures. And let's squeeze in all the EU ships since we've got a whole CD to play with.

• Descent FreeSpace: Despite sharing basically no assets, story, or code with Descent, we'll call it that because Freespace is trademarked. The GTF Apollo is shit, you're supposed to think it's shit, and it never gets better. Eventually you unlock the GTF Hercules and the Prometheus cannon, at which point the game has to give the shivans an invincible supership to stop your march of terror.

• Independence War: WHEEEE I CAN DO THAT STARFURY THRUSTER TRICK FROM BABYLON 5. Too bad the game disc went to pressing with a catastrophic bug towards the end of the storyline that has a coin-toss chance of bricking your campaign that takes a save hack to fix.

• I-War 2: Sold pretty well in the UK, but they're about the only market that got discs it; stateside it was on shelves for all of about a month. By the time I got my hands on a copy of it I'd already played the much better...

• FreeSpace 2: The end of the genre. Seriously, after this there was nothing. The prometheus cannon from the first game was so good they have to contrive a reason to take it away for two thirds of the game. Unlike last time, nothing the shivans have is strictly speaking invincible; if you want to spend half an hour holding the trigger you WILL eventually kaser their juggernaut to death.

Having played almost everything in the genre, here's what I have to say about them...

• X-Wing - The original wing commander clone that made wing commander irrelevant by doing it better. X-Wing is unapologetically hard and the only choices the game offers you are git gud or eat shit.

• TIE Fighter: For about half the game you don't have shields and take hits about as well as Mario, but it's alright because you're a veteran of the previous game's much more ruthless mission scripting. Any rebel not in an A-Wing has stormtrooper-grade aim.

• X-Wing Alliance: Holy shit, we can afford enough polygons that fighters don't look like origami when viewed head on. Goodbye gouraud shading, hello really shitty low res bitmap textures. And let's squeeze in all the EU ships since we've got a whole CD to play with.

• Descent FreeSpace: Despite sharing basically no assets, story, or code with Descent, we'll call it that because Freespace is trademarked. The GTF Apollo is shit, you're supposed to think it's shit, and it never gets better. Eventually you unlock the GTF Hercules and the Prometheus cannon, at which point the game has to introduce an invincible supership to stop your march of terror.

• Independence War: WHEEEE I CAN DO THAT STARFURY THRUSTER TRICK FROM BABYLON 5. Too bad the game disc went to pressing with a catastrophic bug towards the end of the storyline that has a coin-toss chance of bricking your campaign that takes a save hack to fix.

• I-War 2: Sold pretty well in the UK, but they're about the only market that got discs it; stateside it was on shelves for all of about a month. By the time I got my hands on a copy of it I'd already played the much better...

• FreeSpace 2: The end of the genre. Seriously, after this there was nothing. The prometheus cannon from the first game was so good they have to contrive a reason to take it away for two thirds of the game. Unlike last time, nothing the shivans have is strictly speaking invincible; if you want to spend half an hour holding the trigger you WILL eventually kaser their juggernaut to death.