Space Rangers 2

[SamuelAWilkinson]

Anyone else played this? It's shockingly brilliant. Imagine, if you will, a 2d turn-based Elite, with all the trading, bounty hunting and pirating shindigs therein, with a huge chunk of extra minigames bolted on for good measure - there's a passable RTS that kicks in when you take part in a military invasion, a political simulator for when you want to get elected as a planet's president, a shoot-em-up when you enter a wormhole, and even an old-skool text adventure. The only problem is the poor translation from the original Russian, but even that's brilliantly hand-waved away in the manual by explaining that it's not poorly translated at all, but that the characters are speaking some kind of space-dialect removed from modern English. That's showing balls, that is.

Even better, I managed to pick it up for the mad price of three quid from the HMV sale - look for it in the crappy discount software section, as it's on some crappy label over here, more's the pity. Also, quite confusingly, it'll be under the name Space Rangers without the 2, because the first one never got released in the English-speaking world.

Anyway, if you like Elite, buy this fucker.

[Jared Katooie]

I hadn't heard of this one at all, but, the reviews seem to be very good. I may have t give this one a try - if I can find it.