Now the control system was hyped as one of the most innovative features of Freelancer and it most certainly is that. Eschewing the standard joystick controls for the universally present mouse, Digital Anvil have taken a bold step, one that is bound to be copied and refined. This system really works. The mouse is used to move the aiming reticule about and the standard WSAD keyboard layout is used to maneuver the ship. This in effect makes the whole game like an in space and will allow those who are normally frightened of space-shooters to feel right at home. The controls do take a little getting used to if you are used to playing with a stick, but soon the extra benefits from the mouse system will outweigh any reservations due to the lack of a big rod to jerk around with. A simple tap of a key will morph your mouse back into its familiar role as a pointer, allowing you to click on any of the screens that populate the HUD. Need to target an outpost? Just click on it. Need to warp to that outpost? Just click on the warp icon. This system works so well I found it hard to imagine what it would be like to return to the menu-scrolling navigational torture of old. In fact it is so simple to fly around space that the player can be left with little to do as their ship flies from one nav-point to another. Combined with the tradelanes that connect all the popular spots and the warp gates that connect each system the player can be reduced to clicking on a nav-point and hitting a key in a succession of jumps until the destination is reached. Labour-saving to a degree there is still room for more automation, but I fear any more would have led to a game that gets dull even quicker.

The pointing abilities of the mouse will quickly be replaced by the many hotkeys, which like all of the controls are fully configurable, but to fly around with a few presses of the keys and deft sweeps of the mouse is a joy. When combined with the strafing facilities of the ships you can have a real blast sliding around asteroids and bases to close in on an enemy from behind. There is a good sense of being in control of a starfighter, which is unfortunately let down by some predictable and dull AI. The enemy ships at first seem to have some real bite and gusto to their attacks but it soon becomes apparent that most of these maneuvers are nothing more then the limits of the flight model; it’s depressing that once again most dogfights will often degenerate into nothing more then space-jousting. It is possible to get on the tail of an enemy and try to have a good scrap, but too often they will either boost away to make a u-turn for a frontal assault or bounce around in front of you off of your shields. Make no mistake, when you have a large melee on your hands the combat gets very tense and exciting, but the frequent small skirmishes get rather dull rather quickly. The combat also suffers from the influence, where the shooting is very much a clicky-click affair, where the space equivalent of health potions magically restore your shield and/or armour. While this does make fighting a powerfully quick experience with minimal faffing around trying to target enemies and shuffling ship systems to keep your craft in one piece, it also eventually becomes repetitive. And dare I say it, dumbed down. At times I felt like I was playing a glorified version of something like Missile Command or Minesweeper with extremely pretty pictures. Which is a real shame because the graphics really scream out excitement which the combat model cruelly swipes from your heart. Possibly I am being too harsh however, maybe every game can’t be as fun to fight in as the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games, but dammit, why couldn’t they have gotten this bit perfect?

Perhaps it was because there are non-violent ways to make your money. The three requisites of the Elite genre of games is combat, trading and exploration. The exploration side is nicely handled. There are five different major regions of space, each with a culture modeled on a nation of old earth. So we have German, British, American, Japanese and Spanish systems each with their own spacecraft and installation designs. The political undertones mirror that of the real world - parts of this game that I played as the tension in the Gulf rose seemed eerily similar in tone and intention to the actions of world leaders playing out on my TV screen. As I said before there are many interesting regions to fly through which keeps everything from looking uniformly black and uninteresting.