Star Wars: TIE Fighter

The Good
The game itself is simple - you fly around with your high-tech spacecraft and destroy others. However the best part of the game is the constant challenge. Disintegrating "bad guys" is not enough. You must protect cargo vessels from enemies and so on, similarly to some other space sims, but sometimes it is needed to defend a disabled enemy from your own of being destroyed. And there is of course, awesome variety of vessels for you to fly. Starting with the original Tie Fighters, Bombers and Interceptors, later come the Advanceds and Defenders (in the Defender of the Empire expansion pack). And besides the Ties there are Assault Gunboat with its superior successor Missile boat. The story is linear - your success in the game is in no way affecting the story. But in the story there are some great cinematic sequences that remind you all of the Star Wars movies.

The Bad
Besides everything there are some lackings in the game. You can not choose ship for your mission and sometimes not even the weaponry. If you deliberately fail a mission (to eliminate Darth Vader or the Emperor) you are forced to refly the mission. Although the game does not require a joystick, it is almost impossible to fly without one. Keyboard is too slow for even fine aiming and mouse...well, after first week of playing, half of my mouse pad was stuck under my mouse.

The Bottom Line
It is worth playing if you like space sims of Star Wars trilogy. However, it is not free for downloading and when you need to invest some of your hard-earned money into it, you would probably prefer newer versions of the game, maybe X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter.