Warhead

The Good
First, the game ambiance is made scary by the introduction explanation of the situation where intelligent insect-like life form tries to take control of our solar system. Next, during the game you really just feel like in the box lost in void but quickly you find out how to control the space ship inertia and to master its armament. Many points were amazing: the travel system (comparable to later Frontier/FirstEncounter), the spaces you enter (standard system, nebulas, asteroid fields, black hole proximity,...), the docking rules and autopilot, the variety of situations encountering the two intelligent forms of the game: insectoïds and the 2001 intelligent monolith and the weapons palette (including an innovative probe missile which gathers data about encountered ships instead of damaging them or the missile of the monolith, able to destroy everything in a 4km blast radius). The vessels were gouraud shaded with some specular effect making them shiny in the darkness of space and it really is the former form of space simulations like I-War, Frontier, FirstEncounter,...

The Bad
Sometimes, it was hard to find enemy but it was part of tactics, the inertia making a bad approach/placement much more dangerous than with X-WingVsTieFighter-like dynamics. It just can be disorientating for a while.

The Bottom Line
Off charts space simulation, with a very good ambiance and nice control while dynamically close enough to a simulation. A good trip through space, along a nice and quite surprising storyline. A reference to be reminded.