Just bought Rise of Prussia Gold. Did I also get a game instruction manual? I can't seem to find it.

It was only four months ago that my coffee-stained, ash-strewn desk found itself supporting a brand new PC, a machine that now, thanks to the ever-increasing demands of PC gaming, is prematurely approaching early retirement. At the time I naively thought it would take years to fill its cavernous 10Gb hard drive. Now, just a few months later, I'm having to hunt down the smallest of text files to fit the next game on. FreeSpace 2 didn't help matters. Needing a massive 1.5Gb on full install (I wouldn't have it any other way), it's ironic that a game calling itself FreeSpace leaves you none at all.

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Still, I managed to find the room from somewhere and now the game, sequel to the best space combat game in living memory - if you've yet to reach the grand old age of two -has taken up semi-permanent residence. I say 'semi' because just two minutes ago I completed the game after five hard days of incessant dogfighting and capital ship assault. During that time, my palms have poured sweat, my eyes have run dry and the coffee machine has popped its Colombian clogs. I don't know if I can go through all that again.

Like its relatively youthful predecessor, itself barely a year old, FreeSpace 2 is a punishingly addictive game. Five days may seem like a relatively short life-cycle for a game, but it's the intensity of those five days, the sheer unadulterated excitement that takes hold throughout the 40-odd missions that makes FreeSpace 2 such a joy to play. Even a game that could take you months to complete would be hard pushed to provide the same level of relentless chair-bound agitation. Of course, once completed, the question is whether you would want to try over again? I'm not sure I would, but maybe that's just me.

Jackanory

Set 30-odd years after The Great War, FreeSpace 2 sees you flying again for the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). Since joining forces to defeat the Shivan incursion in the first game, the Alliance has miraculously managed to survive the three intervening decades, exchanging technologies, ideas and cylindrical meat products. Unfortunately, some human xenophobes see the alliance as a threat and have formed the Neo-Terran Front (NTF), waging a pseudo-civil war against the Alliance with a view to splitting the two races apart.On starting the game, the war against the NTF hangs in the balance. In your role as rookie fighter pilot, your job is to hold off the fighters and take out a few bombers. As the war wears on however, new equipment and machinery become available, and more specialist squadrons require your emerging talents giving you the chance to fly Vasudan ships in special operations.

Although the mission structure is pretty linear, the sorties themselves are incredibly varied. You could be sent to escort a supply convoy to a jump node, when, unexpectedly, a huge battle group appears. Bomber attacks on your capital ships are a particular highlight, shooting down slow bombers as they unleash their ordinance. When you shoot down your first missile - no doubt more due to luck than skill - you'll whoop for joy. Even more impressive are the assaults on Cruisers, Destroyers and Juggernauts - massive behemoths sporting beam turrets that can cut through the hull of the bigger ships like the proverbial knife through butter. Woe betide any fighter that gets in the way of these weapons.

Close Combat

The style of FreeSpace 2s action is much like that of a WWII dogfight simulation, only without the effects of gravity. It's close-up-the-arse action all the way. Buzzing around the hulking cruisers, flak guns track the enemy ships with human precision, while you slip through their jutting structures to line up your next target. Watching your wingmen form up alongside and pummel fire into the still sparking hull of your foe, you almost feel as if you are playing the lead role in Star Wars, Battlestar Gatactica, or any one of a number of sci-fi films where space combat featured heavily. FreeSpace 2 may not be the most original game ever released, but it has been faultlessly designed with a view to making gameplay king. Unlike most games of this type where you are made to feel indomitable, in FreeSpace 2 you are part of a vast navy. You have your assigned duty, so going after a capital ship, no matter how well armed, will almost certainly get you killed.

If you're in a bomber, you must make sure your fighters stay to protect you, while you target the weapons and sub-systems that will make your part in a mission a success. All very well and good if you do manage to exceed your objectives, but most of the time you won't. FreeSpace 2 is nothing if not well balanced.

Let's Talk Graphics

It's no secret that FreeSpace 2 uses the vaguely tweaked graphics engine of Its predecessor. To some that may sound as If developers Volition have just created a mission pack and could have released this as a simple add-on. Perhaps they could have, but that would only have served to devalue the game. Even today the original FreeSpace towers above its peers in its graphical finesse, and yet FreeSpace 2 looks even better. The textures may lack detail close up (very close up mind), but the explosions are still out of this world, especially as the great capital ships split apart. Fires erupt from damaged ships, electrical fires sparkle across damaged hulls and the arc of intense laser fire as two massive fleets engage across the void and will very likely have you running to show your kids/parents/friends (delete as applicable). Epic is perhaps the word I am wrangling for, especially in relation to the size of the battles and ships. Take part in one of the missions in the dense cloudy nebulae, where spacecraft emerge like ghost ships and lightning forks across the vast billowing expanse, and the tense atmosphere multiplies still further.

There's Always A But..

FreeSpace 2 is not without its faults. Again, like any Wing Commander-stye title, the game is a mixture ot escort and assault missions, played out in the backdrop of a galactic war. If L you've played through the L original FreeSpace, you'll probably get through the B first half ol the sequel with a tangible feeling that you've seen it all before To be honest, originality isn't a problem. As you progress, the game gets better and better. When the war is over, you'll sit back and look back on a job well done. I guarantee you will have enjoyed yourself. Whether or not you'll feel that Pound-40 is worth it for a few days play is another matter. If you are one of those people who is quite happy to do the whole thing again on a harder setting or determined to fulfil those secondary objectives you missed first time around, then FreeSpace 2 certainly has weeks of playability - so feel free to add to the score. Me, I'm done. Time to think about freeing more space on my hard drive before FreeSpace 3 appears. Frankly, I don't rate my chances.

The Great Spacewar

Checking out FreeSpace 2s online bits

Reading through the manual, FreeSpace 2 really does boast a frightening array of multiplayer options. As well as straight free-for-all deathmatches, co-operative missions and entire campaigns can be played out online. Get a squadron together and you can even compete in SqaudWar, where teams fight over a number of galactic 'maps', vying for domination. There's even the option for real-time voice communication, speaking to team-mates via a headset, without the need to mis-type phrases and invariably end up vaporised. While a bog-standard 56K modem can just about handle a four-player deathmatch with all the graphical settings at minimum, you will ideally need a faster Net connection to play the game at full whack with pilots shouting down your ear. If you do have the capabilities, FreeSpace 2 is without doubt the best online space game you can buy, dwarfing X-WIng Alliance by miles. I played a few games using more conventional means, and got kicked out with annoying regularity. No doubt the speed of the service will improve with patches, until then I would advise trying the demo, which is admirably well supported - and popular - on the Parallax site.

It was only four months ago that my coffee-stained, ash-strewn desk found itself supporting a brand new PC, a machine that now, thanks to the ever-increasing demands of PC gaming, is prematurely approaching early retirement. At the time I naively thought it would take years to fill its cavernous 10Gb hard drive. Now, just a few months later, I'm having to hunt down the smallest of text files to fit the next game on. FreeSpace 2 didn't help matters. Needing a massive 1.5Gb on full install (I wouldn't have it any other way), it's ironic that a game calling itself FreeSpace leaves you none at all.

Still, I managed to find the room from somewhere and now the game, sequel to the best space combat game in living memory - if you've yet to reach the grand old age of two -has taken up semi-permanent residence. I say 'semi' because just two minutes ago I completed the game after five hard days of incessant dogfighting and capital ship assault. During that time, my palms have poured sweat, my eyes have run dry and the coffee machine has popped its Colombian clogs. I don't know if I can go through all that again.

Like its relatively youthful predecessor, itself barely a year old, FreeSpace 2 is a punishingly addictive game. Five days may seem like a relatively short life-cycle for a game, but it's the intensity of those five days, the sheer unadulterated excitement that takes hold throughout the 40-odd missions that makes FreeSpace 2 such a joy to play. Even a game that could take you months to complete would be hard pushed to provide the same level of relentless chair-bound agitation. Of course, once completed, the question is whether you would want to try over again? I'm not sure I would, but maybe that's just me.

Jackanory

Set 30-odd years after The Great War, FreeSpace 2 sees you flying again for the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). Since joining forces to defeat the Shivan incursion in the first game, the Alliance has miraculously managed to survive the three intervening decades, exchanging technologies, ideas and cylindrical meat products. Unfortunately, some human xenophobes see the alliance as a threat and have formed the Neo-Terran Front (NTF), waging a pseudo-civil war against the Alliance with a view to splitting the two races apart.On starting the game, the war against the NTF hangs in the balance. In your role as rookie fighter pilot, your job is to hold off the fighters and take out a few bombers. As the war wears on however, new equipment and machinery become available, and more specialist squadrons require your emerging talents giving you the chance to fly Vasudan ships in special operations.

Although the mission structure is pretty linear, the sorties themselves are incredibly varied. You could be sent to escort a supply convoy to a jump node, when, unexpectedly, a huge battle group appears. Bomber attacks on your capital ships are a particular highlight, shooting down slow bombers as they unleash their ordinance. When you shoot down your first missile - no doubt more due to luck than skill - you'll whoop for joy. Even more impressive are the assaults on Cruisers, Destroyers and Juggernauts - massive behemoths sporting beam turrets that can cut through the hull of the bigger ships like the proverbial knife through butter. Woe betide any fighter that gets in the way of these weapons.

Close Combat

The style of FreeSpace 2s action is much like that of a WWII dogfight simulation, only without the effects of gravity. It's close-up-the-arse action all the way. Buzzing around the hulking cruisers, flak guns track the enemy ships with human precision, while you slip through their jutting structures to line up your next target. Watching your wingmen form up alongside and pummel fire into the still sparking hull of your foe, you almost feel as if you are playing the lead role in Star Wars, Battlestar Gatactica, or any one of a number of sci-fi films where space combat featured heavily. FreeSpace 2 may not be the most original game ever released, but it has been faultlessly designed with a view to making gameplay king. Unlike most games of this type where you are made to feel indomitable, in FreeSpace 2 you are part of a vast navy. You have your assigned duty, so going after a capital ship, no matter how well armed, will almost certainly get you killed.

If you're in a bomber, you must make sure your fighters stay to protect you, while you target the weapons and sub-systems that will make your part in a mission a success. All very well and good if you do manage to exceed your objectives, but most of the time you won't. FreeSpace 2 is nothing if not well balanced.

Let's Talk Graphics

It's no secret that FreeSpace 2 uses the vaguely tweaked graphics engine of Its predecessor. To some that may sound as If developers Volition have just created a mission pack and could have released this as a simple add-on. Perhaps they could have, but that would only have served to devalue the game. Even today the original FreeSpace towers above its peers in its graphical finesse, and yet FreeSpace 2 looks even better. The textures may lack detail close up (very close up mind), but the explosions are still out of this world, especially as the great capital ships split apart. Fires erupt from damaged ships, electrical fires sparkle across damaged hulls and the arc of intense laser fire as two massive fleets engage across the void and will very likely have you running to show your kids/parents/friends (delete as applicable). Epic is perhaps the word I am wrangling for, especially in relation to the size of the battles and ships. Take part in one of the missions in the dense cloudy nebulae, where spacecraft emerge like ghost ships and lightning forks across the vast billowing expanse, and the tense atmosphere multiplies still further.

There's Always A But..

FreeSpace 2 is not without its faults. Again, like any Wing Commander-stye title, the game is a mixture ot escort and assault missions, played out in the backdrop of a galactic war. If L you've played through the L original FreeSpace, you'll probably get through the B first half ol the sequel with a tangible feeling that you've seen it all before To be honest, originality isn't a problem. As you progress, the game gets better and better. When the war is over, you'll sit back and look back on a job well done. I guarantee you will have enjoyed yourself. Whether or not you'll feel that Pound-40 is worth it for a few days play is another matter. If you are one of those people who is quite happy to do the whole thing again on a harder setting or determined to fulfil those secondary objectives you missed first time around, then FreeSpace 2 certainly has weeks of playability - so feel free to add to the score. Me, I'm done. Time to think about freeing more space on my hard drive before FreeSpace 3 appears. Frankly, I don't rate my chances.

The Great Spacewar

Checking out FreeSpace 2s online bits

Reading through the manual, FreeSpace 2 really does boast a frightening array of multiplayer options. As well as straight free-for-all deathmatches, co-operative missions and entire campaigns can be played out online. Get a squadron together and you can even compete in SqaudWar, where teams fight over a number of galactic 'maps', vying for domination. There's even the option for real-time voice communication, speaking to team-mates via a headset, without the need to mis-type phrases and invariably end up vaporised. While a bog-standard 56K modem can just about handle a four-player deathmatch with all the graphical settings at minimum, you will ideally need a faster Net connection to play the game at full whack with pilots shouting down your ear. If you do have the capabilities, FreeSpace 2 is without doubt the best online space game you can buy, dwarfing X-WIng Alliance by miles. I played a few games using more conventional means, and got kicked out with annoying regularity. No doubt the speed of the service will improve with patches, until then I would advise trying the demo, which is admirably well supported - and popular - on the Parallax site.